quished all the provinces and forts which had been taken by the Russians, and contenting himself with the liberation of his own people, made peace with his father-in-law.
This Ivan Vasilievich was so successful, that he overcame the people of Novogorod in battle at the river Scholona,[1] and reduced them to acknowledge him as their lord and prince, on certain proposed conditions. He granted them a large sum of money and then left them, after having first appointed a representative to supply his place; then again returning after the lapse of seven years, he entered the city with the cooperation of the Archbishop Theophilus, reduced the inhabitants to the most abject servitude, and seizing the gold and the silver and all the goods of the citizens, carried off more than three hundred waggons full of booty.
He himself was only once engaged in war, when the principalities of Novogorod and Tver were taken possession of; at other times he never used to go to battle, but nevertheless always carried off the palm of victory; so that Stephen the great Palatine of Moldavia would often say, when speaking of him at his banquets: “That he increased his dominion while sitting at home and sleeping, while he himself could scarcely defend his own boundaries by fighting every day.” He even appointed and deposed the kings of Casan at his own pleasure; sometimes he threw them into prison, but at length, in his old age, received a severe defeat at their hands. He was the first who fortified his ducal residence at Moscow with a wall, as it is seen at this day. Moreover he was so hostile to women, that if any women met him by chance, they almost always fainted with terror at the sight of him. No access was allowed to him for poor men, who were oppressed by the more powerful or unjustly treated; he generally drunk so excessively at dinner as to fall asleep, and while his guests
- ↑ The river Chelon’, which rises in the government of Pskov, and flowing in a north-east direction, falls to Lake Ilmen at its south-west corner.
