Vassili

“ But the troika had stopped, and Vassili sprang out upon the snow. Through the illuminated windows the tzigane music poured forth its waves of sensuous melody—and alas! the rhythmic [89] swing of it swept away, as in a whirlwind, the peaceful dreams of Italy, of the rose-clad mansion and the Italian poets.
While the servants were taking our cloaks and snowshoes from us I whispered hurriedly to Vassili: “Dearest, be good to-night. Do not drink much.” ”

“ André, the youngest of the brothers of Vassili, a man of feeble character, now alone remained of the royal princes at court. He was nominally the tutor of his nephew, the young emperor, Ivan IV., and though a prominent member of the council which Vassili had established, he had no influence in the government which had been grasped so energetically and despotically by Hélène and her paramour Telennef. At length André, trembling for his own life, timidly raised the banners of revolt, and gathered quite an army around him. But he had no energy to conduct a war. ”

“ The Khan of the Crimea, the useful friend of Vassili's father, had become the son's enemy; Vassili offset him by an alliance with the Khan of Astrakhan. When Sigismund tried to secure the help of Sweden, Vassili sought that of Denmark; and when his enemy set the Dnieper Cossacks at him, the grand duke induced the Teutonic Order to invade Poland. After Sigismund was defeated at Smolensk, the Emperor of Germany and the Pope offered to mediate; the latter advised Vassili to let Lithuania alone, and to turn his attention toward Constantinople. ”

“ The king sat upon his throne, his bonnet upon one side of him, his scepter upon the other. His nobles were seated around upon couches draped in purple and embroidered with pearls and gold.
Following the example of Ivan III., Vassili was unwearied in his endeavors to induce foreigners of distinction, particularly artists, physicians and men of science, to take up their residence in Russia. Any stranger, distinguished for genius or capability of any kind, who entered Russia, found it not easy to leave the kingdom. A Greek physician, of much celebrity, from Constantinople, visited Moscow. ”

“ Vassili, not knowing the plot which his enemies were weaving, went on a pilgrimage to the Troitski monastery, with Ivan and Yuri, his two little sons. His attendants were a few intimate boyars, and a small number of servants. Shemyaká and Ivan rushed with all haste to Moscow and took possession of the city at night, through the help of confederates, who opened the gates to them. The Grand Prince’s mother, Sophia, and his wife were both captured; the treasury was pillaged; boyars faithful to Vassili were made prisoners and their property taken; wealthy citizens were robbed without ceremony. ”

“ In the cathedral of the Archangel Michael, within the sacred precincts of the Kremlin, lie now their coffins side by side, costly coverings of gold-bespangled velvet enshrouding each; a strange example of the equality of death. The story runs: so delighted was Ivan with the extraordinary and curious beauty of Vassili’s creation, that he gave a sumptuous banquet in his honor within the Imperial palace and there, lavishly bepraising him before the assembled company, declared that it were impossible for human mind to create another building so wonderful in all the world. ”

“ When, in 1610, Vassili was deposed by the Poles, forced to submit to tonsure, and immured in a monastery, Hermogenes, the patriarch, raised his voice in protest; when, subsequently, in a council of rebellious boyars and Polish nobles, some proposed the false Dimitri as tsar, and others successfully urged the election of Vladislas, son of the King of Poland, again the venerable prelate remonstrated, and implored the council neither to recognize a rebel nor to sanction the choice of a heretic and foreigner. ”

“ Later Ryapolovski and his brothers took the princes to Murom, and shut themselves up in the city, where a large force of warriors soon assembled.
February 14, Prince Ivan reached Moscow and lodged Vassili at Shemyaká’s court, where three days later his enemies blinded him, accusing him thuswise: “Thou didst bring Mongols to Russia, and give them land. Thy love for those enemies and their speech is beyond measure; thou givest gold, lands, and silver to them; thy oppression of churches is unsparing. Also thou didst blind Prince Vassili, son of Yuri.” ”

“ After that Dmitri gave troops to instate Yeremi in Gorodok.
During this year, 1368, Prince Vassili died in Kashin, and Michael, by the death of his uncle, became Prince of Tver in the fullest sense possible. He was now the eldest of the house, and besides, the Tver people were satisfied with him. The angry enemy of Moscow was strengthened. The position was still more entangled by the fact that the heir of the late Prince Vassili, also Michael, now Prince of Kashin, and married to Vassilissa, a daughter of Simeon the Proud, hastened in his turn to Moscow with petitions. ”

“ He suggested, that the Turks, in possession of the Tauride—as the country upon the north shore of the Black Sea, bounded by the Dnieper and the Sea of Azof was then called—threatened the independence of Russia herself; that Vassili had every thing to fear from the ferocity, the perfidy and the success of Selim, who, stained with the blood of his father and his three brothers, dared to assume the title of master of the world. ”

“ Vassili nodded, and suddenly launched into detail.
“Prince Pavlo Alexis,” he said, “is a young man who takes a full and daring advantage of his peculiar position. He defies many laws in a quiet, persistent way which impresses the smaller authorities and to a certain extent paralyzes them. He was in the Charity League—deeply implicated. He had a narrow escape. He was pulled through by the cleverest man in Russia.”
“Karl Steinmetz?”
“Yes,” answered Vassili behind the rigid smile; “Karl Steinmetz.” ”

“ In relating it, together with some most characteristic incidents which so far are but little known, Count Vassili remarks to{x} the public what a small circle only have known; persons more or less interested in keeping the facts as secret as possible. Count Vassili had known the Empress personally, in fact was regularly and most exactly informed by numerous friends as to all that went on at the Russian Court, and with all manner of intimate details concerning the existence led by the Czar and by his Consort in their Palace of Tsarskoye Selo. ”

“ Autocracy does not signify the absence of laws, since law is everywhere where there is any duty to be performed, and the first duty of princes, is it not to watch over the happiness of their people?"
To the traveler, in the age of Vassili, Russia appeared like a vast desert compared with the other countries of Europe. The sparseness of the habitations, the extended plains, dense forests and roads, rough and desolate, attested that Russia was still in the cradle of its civilization. But as one approached Moscow, the signs of animated life rapidly increased. ”

“ A beautiful woman, who, thanks to her origin, had enjoyed a comparatively superior education, Helen Glinski possessed charms which Vassili could not have found in any Muscovite. Her father, Vassili Lvovitch, had died when she was very young, and she had grown up under the guardianship of her uncle Michael, a former comrade-in-arms of Albert of Saxony and the Emperor Maximilian, a wandering knight, whose adventures had led him to Italy, where he had even become a Catholic. Thus did Western Europe find her way back into the Kremlin. ”

“ All the marriageable girls in the Empire belonging to the class of the 'men who serve' had been ordered to repair to Moscow. A huge building containing many rooms, each with twelve beds in it, had been prepared for their reception. On the occasion of Vassili's first marriage, 500 beauties, according to Francesco da Collo, or 1,500, according to Herberstein, had thus been brought together. ”

“ Light as air I swung round in Bozevsky's arm. I could have wished to dance thus forever—dance, dance to the very brink of life and, still dancing, to plunge over into the abyss of death.
As we whirled round I perceived that Vassili was watching us. He was drinking champagne with vodka in it and was laughing loudly while he spoke to Stahl; but his eyes never left me as I swept round the ballroom with Bozevsky. His gaze alarmed me. I was dizzy and out of breath, [92] but I did not dare to stop dancing for fear of Vassili. I danced and danced, breathless and distraught ”

“ All the Western powers were present, and, by specious promises of material assistance, he induced the Greeks to join. The participation of so powerful a member of the Eastern Church as Russia was most important, and Isidore had scarcely taken possession of his see ere he was summoned, and craved of Vassili permission, to attend. Vassili yielded a reluctant assent, and charged Isidore to strenuously uphold the Orthodox faith, and to return with it intact. "Our fathers," said he, "and our ancestors would never listen to the reunion of the Greek and Latin religions, nor have I any such intention. ”

“ Vassili recovered territory also from the Tatars and the Lithuanians. Russia expanded rapidly, and the splendour and autocracy of the court proportionately increased. There was now only one court for the innumerable descendants of the earlier princes and boyars, and the sternness of the competition for rewards made the nobles more and more sycophantic. ”

“ We must return to the beginning of Vassili’s reign.
The death of Vitold of Lithuania, in 1430, without heirs raised the great question: Who shall succeed? The former Russo-Lithuanian Grand Prince, Yagello, at that time King of Poland, hesitated to put the two crowns on his own head, fearing opposition from the Russo-Lithuanian boyars, who struggled against merging their own state in Poland. Besides Yagello, there were two grandsons of Gedimin, Svidrigello, Yagello’s younger brother, and Sigismund, the youngest brother of Vitold. ”

“ We go in to dinner; gipsy musicians arrive and play for us. Late at night when the garden is quite dark we go out again to the targets; instead of the bottles Vassili has ordered a row of lighted candles to be set up, and we are to extinguish them with our shots without knocking them down. There is much noise around me; Vassili is dancing a tarantelle with Ivan Grigorievsky on the lawn. Dr. Stahl and Bozevsky are always by my side. I keep on shooting at the candles, but they spin round before my confused eyes like catharine-wheels; and Stahl laughs, and Bozevsky sighs, and the gipsies play.... ”

“ Vassili, relying on this truce, sent his men for provisions. Kosói then attacked him, but Vassili did not lose his head; he sent messengers quickly to all sides to collect his forces. He seized a trumpet himself, and sounded it. His men rushed in, and won a complete victory. Kosói was taken prisoner, and led to Moscow (1436) . Kosói’s Vyatka warriors committed a desperate deed: The Grand Prince’s lieutenant in Pereyaslavl, Prince Bryuhati, was encamped near the junction of the Kotorosl and the Volga. ”

“ His ambition was fired by the promptings of the priesthood and of his Greek wife Sophia, who was a daughter of the Byzantine emperor, Constantine Paleologus. He persistently undermined the autonomy of other states; and, after adding all but Novogorod to his empire, he finally, with Mongolian aid, crushed that last stronghold of Russian independence. To Vassili the Great, Russia owes its claim to succeed the mighty emperors of the East and the grandiloquent style and title assumed by its Tsars, for he adopted the arms of Byzantium and was proclaimed Ruler of All the Russias. ”

“ But Russia was then all engrossed with the desire of obtaining provinces from Poland. Turkey was too formidable a foe to think of assailing, and the idea at that time of wresting any territory from Turkey was preposterous. All Europe combined could only hope to check any further advance of the Moslem cimeters. Influenced by these considerations, Vassili sent another embassador to Constantinople to propose a treaty with Selim, which might aid Russia in the strife with her hereditary rival. ”

“ She was a woman remarkable for spirit and beauty, and showed her courage in ruthlessly suppressing every attempt of high nobles to contest her authority. She sent her husband's brother George to prison, and let him die there. One of her own uncles, who had been in her confidence, showed too much ambition and suffered the same fate. Andrew, another brother of Vassili, tried to make his escape; he was promptly brought back and placed in confinement. This caused an unimportant war with Poland, ending in a truce in 1537. The Tartars of Kazan and the Crimea were frequently defeated. ”

“ Vassilissa drank some wine, and what was left in the tumbler she poured into her left sleeve. She ate some of the fried swan, and the bones she threw into her right sleeve. The wives of the two elder brothers watched her and did exactly the same.
When the long, hearty dinner was over, the guests began dancing and singing. The beautiful Vassilissa came forward, as bright as a star, bowed to her sovereign, bowed to the honorable guests and danced with her husband, the happy Tsarevitch Ivan. ”

“ The success of La Société de Berlin induced Madame Adam to publish other letters in the same style, devoted to other European capitals, with which, however, I had nothing to do, except those dealing with St. Petersburg life. The pseudonym of Count Paul Vassili remained a kind of public property divided between the Nouvelle Revue and my poor self. Just before the war, when, indignant at the manner in which Nicholas II. was compromising the work of his great father, I wrote the book Behind the Veil of the Russian Court, I bethought myself of assuming once more the old pseudonym. ”