e
Khan of the Crimea, advanced upon the Golden Horde, and pushed their
victorious arms into the very den of the Tartars, at the time that
the Tartar forces were drawn off in the invasion of Russia. Speedy
intelligence of this disaster having reached the enemy, he made a
precipitate retreat, in the hope of reaching his fastnesses on the
frontier in time to avert the destruction that threatened him; but
the Russians had been too rapid in their movements; and the work of
devastation, begun by them, was completed by a band of marauding Tartars,
who entered soon after they retired, and, carrying away the women and
the remnant of the treasures left behind, reduced the city of the Golden
Horde to ashes before the distant army could accomplish its retrograde
march. Nor was this all the triumph that Ivan was called upon to share,
without any participation in the danger. The return of the Tartars was
arrested midway by a hetman of the Cossacks and the mirza of the
Nogais, who, falling upon the confused and disorderly ranks, on their
ill-conducted flight homeward, cut them in pieces, and left scarcely a
living vestige on the field of the ancient and implacable enemies of the
country.

The extinction of the Tartars was final. The Golden Horde was
annihilated, and the scourge of Russia and her princes was no more. In
a better educated state of society, these events, so sudden and so
important, must have been attributed to proximate and obvious causes--the
combinations of operations over which Ivan had no control, and the
dismay into which the Tartars were surprised, followed up quickly by
overwhelming masses who possessed the superiority in numbers and in plan.
Ivan, who could lay no claim to the honors of the enterprise, would not
have been associated in its results had the people been instructed in
the respect which was due to themselves. But the Russians, profoundly
venerating the person of the Grand Prince, and accustomed to consider
him as the depository of a wisdom refined above the sphere of ordinary
mortality, did not hesitate to ascribe this transcendent exploit to the
genius of the reluctant autocrat. They looked back upon his pusillanimity
with awe, and extracted from his apparent fears the subtle elements of a
second providence. He was no longer the coward and the waverer. He had
seen the body of the future, before its extreme shadows had darkened
other men's vision; and the whole course of his timid bearing, even
inclu