apparently than that of terrorizing the population and rewarding his myrmidons—and during a residence of six weeks in Novgorod, lest the old turbulent spirit of the municipal republic should revive, he massacred, it is said, no less than 60,000 of the inhabitants, including many women and children. It is quite possible, as some apologists suggest, that the number of his victims may have been exaggerated, but that they are to be counted by thousands there can be no doubt. In the monastery of St Cyril has been preserved a list of those for whom he requested the prayers of the Church, the total being 3470. The only reference to Novgorod in this curious document is: “Remember, O Lord, the souls of thy Novgorodian servants to the number of 1505 persons.” According to the Novgorodian annalists as many as 1500 persons were sometimes put to death in a single day. Perhaps the discrepancy is to be explained by supposing that the pious tsar did not consider all his victims as servants of the Lord, whose souls deserved the prayers of the faithful.
While thus uniting under their vigorous autocratic rule the small rival principalities, the Moscow princes had to keep a watchful eye on their eastern neighbours. The Golden Horde, long weakened by internal dissensions, had now fallen into several khanates, the chief of which were Kazan, Astrakhan and the Crimea. As these independent Tatar states were always jealous of each other, and their jealousy often broke out in open hostility, it was easy to prevent any combined action on their part; and as in each khanate there were always several pretenders and contending factions, Muscovite diplomacy had little difficulty in weakening them individually and preparing for their annexation. In the case of Kazan and Astrakhan the annexation was effected without any great effort in 1552-54, and two years later the Bashkirs, who had likewise formed part of the great Mongol empire, consented to pay tribute. On the other hand, the khans of the Crimea were able, partly from their geographical position and partly from having placed themselves under the protection of the sultans of Turkey, to resist annexation for more than two centuries and to give the Muscovites a great deal of trouble, not only by frequent raids and occasional invasions, but also by allying themselves with the Western enemies of the tsars. As late as 1571 Moscow was pillaged by a Tatar horde; but there was no longer any question of permanent political subjection to the Asiatics, and the Russian frontier was being gradually pushed forward at the expense of the nomads of the steppe by the constant advance of the agricultural population in quest of virgin soil. These latter, like the colonists in the American Far West, had to be constantly on the alert against the attacks of their troublesome neighbours, and they accordingly organized themselves in semi-military fashion. Those of them who lived on the outskirts of the pacified territory adopted a mode of life similar to that of their hereditary opponents, and constituted a peculiar The Cossacks. class known as Cossacks, living more by flocks and herds and by marauding expeditions than by agriculture. In the basins of the southern rivers they formed semi-independent military communities. Those of the Volga and the Don professed allegiance to the tsar of Muscovy, whilst those of the Dnieper recognized at first as their suzerain the king of Poland. In neither case did the allegiance involve strict obedience to orders from the superior, and their loyalty was always in danger of being troubled by their love of independence and equality and their desire for loot. More than once they raided and pillaged in wholesale fashion the territory they were supposed to protect. On the whole, however, at that period as in more recent times, they contributed largely to the process of territorial expansion. (See also Poland: History.)
Before the Eastern menace had been entirely removed the ambitious Relations with Poland and Lithuania. Moscow princes had begun to look with envious eyes beyond their western frontier. Here lay the principality of Lithuania and beyond it the kingdom of and Poland, two loosely conglomerated states which had been created by the Piast and Gedymin dynasties in pretty much the same way as the tsardom of Muscovy had been created by the descendants of Rurik. When the two became united under one ruler towards the end of the 14th century they formed abroad strip of territory stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea and separating Russia from central Europe. For Russian ambition the barrier was a formidable one, but it did not entirely preclude possibilities of expansion in a more or less remote future. When examined closely it was found to contain many internal flaws. In no sense could it be considered a homogeneous political unit, for in Lithuania the majority of the population were Russian in nationality, language and religion, whereas in Poland the great majority of the inhabitants were Polish and Roman Catholic. Gradually, it is true, the Lithuanian nobles, who possessed all the land and held the peasantry in a state of serfage, adopted Polish nationality and culture, but this change did not secure homogeneity, because the masses clung obstinately to their old nationality and religion, and all the efforts of the Church of Rome to bring them under papal authority proved fruitless. A further source of weakness was the political organization. Nominally it was an hereditary monarchy, but the warlike, turbulent nobles systematically encroached on the sovereign power till they reduced it to a mere shadow and made it elective, with the result that the kingdom of Poland, including the principality of Lithuania, was at last, politically speaking, the most anarchical country in Europe.
As the Muscovite and the Lithuano-Polish princes were equally ambitious and equally anxious to widen their borders, they naturally came into conflict. At first the Muscovite was decidedly the aggressor. On the death of Casimir, king of Poland and grand-prince of Lithuania, in 1492, the kingdom and the principality ceased to be united and Ivan III. considered he had a good opportunity for attacking the latter. After a short campaign a peace was concluded and Ivan's daughter was given in marriage to the Lithuanian grand-prince, but the matrimonial alliance did not improve the relations between the two countries. On the contrary it served as a pretext for Ivan to interfere in Lithuanian affairs. He not only insisted that his daughter's religion should be duly respected, but he constituted himself the protector of the Orthodox population and this led to a new war in 1499, which went on till 1503, when it was concluded by the cession to Russia of Chernigov, Starodub and 17 other towns. His successor, Basil, tried to get himself elected grand-prince of Lithuania when the throne became vacant by the death of his brother-in-law in 1506, but the choice fell on the late prince's brother Sigismund, who was likewise elected king of Poland. The two countries were thus once more united and better able to resist aggression, but some of the great nobles were discontented and Basil hoped with their assistance to attain his ends. He began war therefore in 1514 and at once captured Smolensk, but in the following year he was defeated, and the war dragged on during more than seven years, with varying successes and without any important result. In the negotiations for peace the inordinate pretensions of the Muscovite prince were put forward boldly: he not only refused to restore Smolensk, but claimed Kiev and a number of other towns on the ground that in the old time of the independent principalities they had belonged to descendants of Rurik.
The policy of expansion westwards, inaugurated by Ivan III., was modified and enlarged by Ivan the Terrible. The former Ivan IV. and western Europe. had aimed simply at making annexations in Lithuania; the latter aspired to obtaining a firm footing on the Baltic coast and establishing direct relations, diplomatic and commercial, with the Western Powers. In this respect he was a precursor of Peter the Great, but he greatly underestimated the difficulties of the task. To reach the Baltic he had to overcome the resistance, not only of the Lithuanians and the Poles, but also of the Teutonic and Livonian military orders, the Swedes and the Danes, who all had possessions in the intervening territory and who all objected to the barbarous Muscovites, already sufficiently formidable, strengthening themselves by direct foreign trade with western Europe and especially by the importation of arms and cunning
