THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
The river Ugra is made the boundary between Moscow and Lithuania.
Invasion of Moscow by the Tatars, who burn many towns and villages, but fail to
capture the Kremlin.
1412 Vasili Dmitrievitch goes to the Horde, pays tribute, and the khan confirms to him
the grand princedom. 1435 Vasili Vasilievitch blinds his cousin Vasili Kossoi. 1446 Vasili Vasilievitch is blinded by Dmitri Shemiaka of Galicia.
1448 The archbishop Jonas is elected metropolitan by an assembly of the Russian bishops,
without regard to the patriarch of Constantinople. 1453 Dmitri Shemiaka is poisoned.
Ivan III, son of Vasili ascends the throne. He assumes the title gossudar (lord,
autocrat), and is regarded as the founder of autocracy.
The princes of Iaroslav cede their domain to Moscow.
Ivan gives the hand of his sister to Vasili, prince of Riazan, thus making sure of
the approximate annexation of that appanage. 1469 The khanate of Kazan becomes a dependency of Moscow.
1472 Ivan conquers Perm. Marries the Byzantine princess Sophia, niece of the last emperor of Constantinople, Oonstantine Palseologus. Assumes the title of czar and adopts the two-headed eagle as the symbol of his authority. In consequence of this marriage many Greeks come to Moscow, bringing with them Byzantine culture.
1474 The princes of Rostov sell their domain to Moscow.
The republic of Novgorod is annexed. The principal citizens are brought prisoners to
Moscow, their property is confiscated, the possessions of the clergy serve to endow the boyar followers of Ivan. Ahmed, khan of the Golden Horde, sends ambassadors demanding homage. Ivan puts the envoys to death, except one, who wa3 to take back the news to his master. The reply of Ahmed to this outrage is a declaration of war.
Ivan issues Sudebnik, or Books of Laws, second Russian code after the Russkaia
Pravda of Iaroslav. A comparison of two codes shows how much the Russian character was lowered by Mongol domination; it is in the reign of Ivan that we first hear of the use of the knout.
The Mongols invade Russia. The two armies meet on the banks of the Oka and
flee from each other in mutual fear. On his retreat Ahmed is killed and his army is annihilated by the Nogai Tatars. 1482 Cannon is used for first time at the siege of Fellin in Livonia. It was founded by the architect and engineer Aristotle Fioraventi of Bologna, the builder of the Kremlin.
1485 The principality of Tver is annexed to Moscow.
1485 The last prince of Vereya leaves his domains by will to Ivan.
1489 Viatka, a daughter of the city of Novgorod and Pskov, and like them a republic, is annexed.
1489 Poppel comes to Moscow as the first German ambassador.
1491 Mines of Petchora discovered. For first time silver and copper money is coined
at Moscow from produce of Russian mines. 1492-1503 A large part of Little Russia is reconquered from Lithuanians.
Alexander of Lithuania marries Ivan's daughter Helen.
Ivan, considering himself to have been insulted by a Hanseatic city, orders all mer
chants of all the cities of that union at Novgorod to be put in chains and their property confiscated. This marks the end of Novgorod's commercial greatness. 1499 The princes of Tchernigov and Novgorod-Seversk come over to Moscow.
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1601
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Russians routed in the battle of the Siritza, near Izborsk, by the grand-master of the Teutonic order, Hermann von Plettenberg.
A treaty is concluded with Lithuania. Moscow retains all her conquests, and Ivan is granted the title of sovereign of all Russia.
Death of Ivan. Vasili, second son of Ivan, succeeds him.
The Russian army is defeated by the revolted people of Kazan. The victors unite with the Tatars of the Crimea, invade Russia and carry their ravages up to the gates of Moscow. Vasili pays a large ransom for the safety of his capital, and signs a treaty by which he engages to become tributary to the khan. Thirty thousand prisoners are carried off by the invaders, and sold at Kaffa to the Turks.
Pskov, last Slavonic republic, annexed.
Smolensk is taken from the Lithuanians after being held by them for 110 years. But in the same year the Lithuanians defeat the Russian force at Orsha, on left bank of the Dnieper. Thirty thousand Russians are said to have fallen in battle.
Riazan and Novgorod-Seversk, the last independent principalities, are annexed. Crimean Tatars devastate the country.
A second expedition against Kazan, consisting of 150,000 men, fails of its object; one of its two divisions is almost annihilated.
Third expedition against Kazan. The city is surprised by night and 60,000 inhabitants are massacred. But the Russian commander, bribed, it is said, by the remaining Kazanians, enters into a treaty of peace with them.
Vasili dies. Regency of his wife, Helena Glinska, 1533-37. Supremacy of the Shuiski, 1537-43. Ivan is under the influence of the Glinski till 1547, when they were torn in pieces by the infuriated Moscow populace. Such was the youth of Ivan the Terrible.
Ivan is crowned and takes the title of Czar.
The Sudebnik of his grandfather Ivan III is revised.
The Stoglav, or Book of the Hundred Chapters, by which the affairs of the church were regulated, is issued.
Kazan, which had freed itself during his father's reign, is annexed.
Chancellor arrives at Archangel and proceeds to Moscow. The English secure great trading privileges and establish factories in the country.
Astrakhan is annexed. The power of the Mongols is now almost completely broken.
Treaty with Elizabeth of England. A Russian army invades Livonia and takes several towns. The Teutonic Order thereupon makes an alliance with Poland.
Ivan, with a few personal friends, retires to Alexandrovskoe, near Moscow, and tdoes not return until after repeated supplications by his nobles. A printing press established at Moscow.
The Mongols of Crimea invade Russia, burn Moscow, drag 100,000 Russians into slavery. Next year they make another raid, but are defeated.
Conquest of Siberia by the Cossack Iermak as far as the Irtish river.
Ivan kills his eldest son in a fit of fury.
Peace of Sapolye. Ivan is forced to surrender to Stephen Bathori (Battori) king of Poland all his conquests in Livonia. The attempt to open for Russia a passage in the Baltic fails for the present.
Death of Ivan. Feodor, his weak-minded son, succeeds Ivan. Boris Godunov, Feo- dor's brother-in-law, is the real ruler.
A company of Parisian merchants obtains trading privileges.
War with Sweden.
Dmitri, the younger brother of Feodor (Ivan's son by his seventh wife), and the only obstacle to Godunov's ambition, dies at Uglitch. The khan of Crimea makes one of his periodical raids against Moscow, but is repulsed with great slaughter.
Godunov issues a ukase (edict) binding the peasant to the soil, thus reducing him to unmitigated serfdom. As a result, peasants emigrate in large numbers to the Cossacks in order to preserve their freedom.