images and the
archives of the kingdom, all were devoured. The destruction of the
city was almost as entire and as signal a proof of the divine
displeasure as that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Even the metropolitan
bishop, who was in the church of the Assumption, pleading for divine
interposition, was with great difficulty rescued. Smothered, and in a
state almost of insensibility, he was conveyed through billows of
flame and smoke. Seventeen hundred adults, besides uncounted children,
perished in the fire.

For many days the wretched inhabitants were seen wandering about, in
the fields and among the ruins, searching for their children, their
friends or any articles of furniture which might, by chance, have
escaped the flames. Many became maniacs, and their cries arose in all
directions like the howlings of wild beasts. The emperor and the
nobles, to avoid the spectacle of so much misery, retired to the
village of Vorobeif, a few miles from Moscow. The whole population of
Moscow, being in a state of despair, and reckless of consequences,
were ripe for any conspiracy against an emperor and his favorites,
whose iniquities, in their judgment, had brought down upon them the
indignation of Heaven.

Several of the higher clergy, in cooeperation with some of the princes
and nobles, resolved to arouse the energies of the populace to effect
a change in the government. The Glinskys were the advisers and
instigators of the king. Against them the fury of the populace was
easily directed. These doomed minions of despotism were pursued with
fury energized by despair. Ivan IV. was quite unable to protect them.
The Glinskys, with their numerous partisans, had returned to Moscow to
make arrangements for the rebuilding of the Kremlin when the mob fell
upon them, and they were nearly all slain. In the eye of the populace,
there was something so sacred in the person of their prince that no
one thought of offering him any harm.

Ivan IV., astounded by this outbreak, was trembling in his palace at
Vorobeif, and his truly pious wife, Anastasia, was, with tears,
pleading with Heaven, when one of the clergy, an extraordinary man
named Sylvestre, endowed with the boldness of an ancient prophet,
entered the presence of the emperor. He was venerable in years, and
his gray locks fell in clusters upon his shoulders. The boy king was
overawed by his appearance. One word from that capricious king would
cause the head of Sylvestre to fall from the block