threatened with a new
subjection to the Tartars by the cowardice of its monarch, was finally
freed from these dreaded foes through the aid of her allies.

But the fruits of this harvest, sown by others, were reaped by the czar.
His people, who had been disgusted with his cowardice, now gave him
credit for the deepest craft and wisdom. All this had been prepared by
him, they said. His flight was a ruse, his pusillanimity was prudence;
he had made the Tartars their own destroyers, without risking the fate
of Russia in a battle; and what had just been condemned as dastard
baseness was now praised as undiluted wisdom.

Ivan would never have gained the title of Great from his deeds in war.
He won it, and with some justice, from his deeds in peace. He was great
in diplomacy, great in duplicity, great in that persistent pursuit of a
single object through which men rise to power and fame. This object, in
his case, was autocracy. It was his purpose to crush out the last shreds
of freedom from Russia, establish an empire on the pernicious pattern of
a Tartar khanate, which had so long been held up as an example before
Russian eyes, and make the Prince of Moscow as absolute as the Emperor
of China. He succeeded. During his reign freedom fled from Russia. It
has never since returned.

The story of how this great aim was accomplished is too long to be told
here, and the most important part of it must be left for our next tale.
It will suffice, at this point, to say that by astute policy and good
fortune Ivan added to his dominions nineteen thousand square miles of
territory and four millions of subjects, made himself supreme autocrat
and his voice the sole arbiter of fate, reduced the boyars and
subordinate princes to dependence on his throne, established a new and
improved system of administration in all the details of government, and
by his marriage with Sophia, the last princess of the Greek imperial
family,--driven by the Turks from Constantinople to Rome,--gained for
his standard the two-headed eagle, the symbol of autocracy, and for
himself the supreme title of czar.

_THE FALL OF NOVGOROD THE GREAT._

The Czar of Russia is the one political deity in Europe, the sole
absolute autocrat. More than a hundred millions of people have delivered
themselves over, fettered hand and foot, almost body and soul, to the
ownership of one man, without a voice in their own government, without
daring to speak, hardly daring to thi