them back, pursued them to
their homes, took both of these towns, erected fortresses, and
gradually brought the whole of Siberia under Russian sway. This great
conquest was achieved almost without bloodshed.

Boris Gudenow now exercised all the functions of sovereign authority.
His energy had enriched Russia with the accession of Siberia. He now
resolved to lay aside the feeble prince Feodor, who nominally occupied
the throne, and to place the crown upon his own brow. It seemed to him
an easy thing to appropriate the emblems of power, since he already
enjoyed all the prerogatives of royalty. Under the pretense of
rewarding, with important posts of trust, the most efficient of the
nobles, he removed all those whose influence he had most to dread, to
distant provinces and foreign embassies. He then endeavored, by many
favors, to win the affections of the populace of Moscow.

The young prince Dmitri had now attained his ninth year, and was
residing, under the care of his tutors, at the city of Uglitz, about
two hundred miles from Moscow. Uglitz, with its dependencies, had been
assigned to him for his appanage. Gudenow deemed it essential, to his
secure occupancy of the throne, that this young prince should be put
out of the way. He accordingly employed a Russian officer, by the
promise of immense rewards, to assassinate the child. And then, the
deed having been performed, to prevent the possibility of his agency
in it being divulged, he caused another low-born murderer to track the
path of the officer and plunge a dagger into his bosom. Both murders
were successfully accomplished.

The news of the assassination of the young prince soon reached Moscow,
and caused intense excitement. Gudenow was by many suspected, though
he endeavored to stifle the report by clamorous expressions of horror
and indignation, and by apparently making the most strenuous efforts
to discover the murderers. As an expression of his rage, he sent
troops to demolish the fortress of Uglitz, and to drive the
inhabitants from the city, because they had, as he asserted, harbored
the assassins. Soon after this Feodor was suddenly taken ill. He
lingered upon his bed for a few days in great pain, and then died.
When the king was lying upon this dying bed, Boris Gudenow, who, it
will be recollected, was the father of the wife of Feodor, succeeded
in obtaining from him a sort of bequest of the throne, and immediately
upon the death of the king, he assumed