ir domestic grievances, at length summoned the
citizens to appear before him at Moscow. The demand was as unexpected as
it was extraordinary.

Never before had the Novgorodians gone out from their own walls to sue or
receive judgment; but so seductive and treacherous were the professions
of Ivan that, unsuspicious of his designs, they consented to appear
before his throne. Throughout the whole of these encroachments on the
ancient usages in which the rights of the people resided, he appeared to
be lifted above all personal or tyrannical views. Marpha, the ambitious
widow, who had stirred up the revolt and sought to attach Novgorod to
Lithuania, had never been molested; and even the principal persons who
were most conspicuous in resisting his authority at the outset were
suffered to remain unharmed. These instances of magnanimity, as they were
believed to be, lulled the distrust of the citizens, and seduced them by
degrees to abandon their old customs one by one at his bidding. For seven
years he continued with unwearied perseverance to wean them from all
those distinctive habits that marked their original character and
separated them from the rest of the empire; and at last, when he thought
that he had succeeded in obliterating their attachment to the republican
form of government, he advanced his claim to the absolute sovereignty,
which was now sanctioned by numberless acts of submission, and by
traitorous voices of assent within the council of the citizens.

At an audience to which he admitted an envoy, that officer, either
wilfully or by accident, addressed him by the name of sovereign; and
Ivan, instantly seizing upon the inadvertency, claimed all the privileges
of an absolute master. He required that the republic should surrender its
expiring rights into his hands, and take a solemn oath of allegiance;
that his boyars should be received within its gates, with full authority
to exercise their almost irresponsible control over the city; that the
palace of Yaroslaff, the temple of Novgorodian liberty, should be given
up to his viceroy; that the forum should be abolished; and that the
popular assemblies, and all the corresponding immunities of the people,
should be abrogated forever.

The veil was dropped too suddenly. The citizens were not prepared for so
abrupt and uncompromising an assertion of authority. Hitherto they had
admitted the innovations of the Grand Prince, but it was of their
own free will. They did no