Chapter 15

See, besides the works already referred to, the separate works on Ithaca by Schreiber (Leipzig, 1829); Rühle von Lilienstern (Berlin, 1832); N. Karavias Grivas (Ἱστορία τῆς νήσου Ἰθάκης) (Athens, 1849); Bowen (London, 1851); and Gandar, (Paris, 1854); Hercher, inHermes(1866); Leake’sNorthern Greece; Mure’sTour in Greece; Bursian’sGeogr. von Griechenland; Gladstone, “The Dominions of Ulysses,” inMacmillan’s Magazine(1877). A history of the discussions will be found in Buchholz,Die Homerischen Realien(Leipzig, 1871); Partsch,Kephallenia und Ithaka(1890); W. Dörpfeld inMélanges Perrot, pp. 79-93 (1903); P. Goessler,Leukas-Ithaka(Stuttgart, 1904).

(E. Gr.)

ITHACA,a city and the county-seat of Tompkins county, New York, U.S.A., at the southern end of Cayuga Lake, 60 m. S.W. of Syracuse. Pop. (1890) 11,079, (1900) 13,136, of whom 1310 were foreign-born, (1910 census) 14,802. It is served by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western and the Lehigh Valley railways and by inter-urban electric line; and steamboats ply on the lake. Most of the city is in the level valley, from which it spreads up the heights on the south, east and west. The finest residential district is East Hill, particularly Cornell and Cayuga Heights (across Fall Creek from the Cornell campus). Renwick Beach, at the head of the lake, is a pleasure resort. The neighbouring region is one of much beauty, and is frequented by summer tourists. Near the city are many waterfalls, the most notable being Taughannock Falls (9 m. N.), with a fall of 215 ft. Through the city from the east run Fall, Cascadilla and Six Mile Creeks, the first two of which have cut deep gorges and have a number of cascades and waterfalls, the largest, Ithaca Fall in Fall Creek, being 120 ft. high. Six Mile Creek crosses the south side of the city and empties into Cayuga Inlet, which crosses the western and lower districts, often inundated in the spring. The Inlet receives the waters of a number of small streams descending from the south-western hills. Among the attractions in this direction are Buttermilk Falls and ravine, on the outskirts of the city, Lick Brook Falls and glen and Enfield Falls and glen, the last 7 m. distant. Fall Creek furnishes good water-power. The city has various manufactures, including fire-arms, calendar clocks, traction engines, electrical appliances, patent chains, incubators, autophones, artesian well drills, salt, cement, window glass and wall-paper. The value of the factory product increased from $1,500,604 in 1900 to $2,080,002 in 1905, or 38.6%. Ithaca is also a farming centre and coal market, and much fruit is grown in the vicinity. The city is best known as the seat of Cornell University (q.v.). It has also the Ezra Cornell Free Library of about 28,000 volumes, the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, the Cascadilla School and the Ithaca High School. Ithaca was settled about 1789, the name being given to it by Simeon De Witt in 1806. It was incorporated as a village in 1821, and was chartered as a city in 1888. At Buttermilk Falls stood the principal village of the Tutelo Indians, Coreorgonel, settled in 1753 and destroyed in 1779 by a detachment of Sullivan’s force.

ITINERARIUM(i.e.road-book, from Lat.iter, road), a term applied to the extant descriptions of the ancient Roman roads and routes of traffic, with the stations and distances. It is usual to distinguish two classes of these,Itineraria adnotataorscriptaandItineraria picta—the former having the character of a book, and the latter being a kind of travelling map. Of the Itineraria Scripta the most important are: (1)It. Antonini(seeAntonini Itinerarium), which consists of two parts, theone dealing with roads in Europe, Asia and Africa, and the other with familiar sea-routes—the distances usually being measured from Rome; (2)It. HierosolymitanumorBurdigalense, which belongs to the 4th century, and contains the route of a pilgrimage from Bordeaux to Jerusalem and from Heraclea by Rome to Milan (ed. G. Parthey and M. Pinder, 1848, with theItinerarium Antonini); (3)It. Alexandriacontaining a sketch of the march-route of Alexander the Great, mainly derived from Arrian and prepared for Constantius’s expedition inA.D.340-345 against the Persians (ed. D. Volkmann, 1871). A collected edition of the ancient itineraria, with ten maps, was issued by Fortia d’Urban,Recueil des itinéraires anciens(1845). Of the Itineraria Picta only one great example has been preserved. This is the famousTabula Peutingeriana, which, without attending to the shape or relative position of the countries, represents by straight lines and dots of various sizes the roads and towns of the whole Roman world (facsimile published by K. Miller, 1888; see alsoMap).

ITIUS PORTUS,the name given by Caesar to the chief harbour which he used when embarking for his second expedition to Britain in 54B.C.(De bello Gallico, v. 2). It was certainly near the uplands round Cape Grisnez (Promuntorium Itium), but the exact site has been violently disputed ever since the renaissance of learning. Many critics have assumed that Caesar used the same port for his first expedition, but the name does not appear at all in that connexion (B. G.iv. 21-23). This fact, coupled with other considerations, makes it probable that the two expeditions started from different places. It is generally agreed that the first embarked at Boulogne. The same view was widely held about the second, but T. Rice Holmes in an article in theClassical Review(May 1909) gave strong reasons for preferring Wissant, 4 m. east of Grisnez. The chief reason is that Caesar, having found he could not set sail from the small harbour of Boulogne with even 80 ships simultaneously, decided that he must take another point for the sailing of the “more than 800” ships of the second expedition. Holmes argues that, allowing for change in the foreshore since Caesar’s time, 800 specially built ships could have been hauled above the highest spring-tide level, and afterwards launched simultaneously at Wissant, which would therefore have been “commodissimus” (v. 2) or opposed to “brevissimus traiectus” (iv. 21).

See T. R. Holmes inClassical Review(May 1909), in which he partially revises the conclusions at which he arrived in hisAncient Britain(1907), pp. 552-594; that the first expedition started from Boulogne is accepted,e.g.by H. Stuart Jones, inEnglish Historical Review(1909), xxiv. 115; other authorities in Holmes’s article.

ITO, HIROBUMI,Prince(1841-1909), Japanese statesman, was born in 1841, being the son of Ito Jūzō, and (like his father) began life as a retainer of the lord of Choshu, one of the most powerful nobles of Japan. Choshu, in common with many of his fellow Daimyos, was bitterly opposed to the rule of the shôgun or tycoon, and when this rule resulted in the conclusion of the treaty with Commodore M. C. Perry in 1854, the smouldering discontent broke out into open hostility against both parties to the compact. In these views Ito cordially agreed with his chieftain, and was sent on a secret mission to Yedo to report to his lord on the doings of the government. This visit had the effect of causing Ito to turn his attention seriously to the study of the British and of other military systems. As a result he persuaded Choshu to remodel his army, and to exchange the bows and arrows of his men for guns and rifles. But Ito felt that his knowledge of foreigners, if it was to be thorough, should be sought for in Europe, and with the connivance of Choshu he, in company with Inouye and three other young men of the same rank as himself, determined to risk their lives by committing the then capital offence of visiting a foreign country. With great secrecy they made their way to Nagasaki, where they concluded an arrangement with the agent of Messrs Jardine, Matheson & Co. for passages on board a vessel which was about to sail for Shanghai (1863). At that port the adventurers separated, three of their number taking ship as passengers to London, while Ito and Inouye preferred to work their passages before the mast in the “Pegasus,” bound for the same destination. For a year these two friends remained in London studying English methods, but then events occurred in Japan which recalled them to their country. The treaties lately concluded by the shôgun with the foreign powers conceded the right to navigate the strait of Shimonoseki, leading to the Inland Sea. On the northern shores of this strait stretched the feudal state ruled over by Prince Choshu, who refused to recognize the clause opening the strait, and erected batteries on the shore, from which he opened fire on all ships which attempted to force the passage. The shôgun having declared himself unable in the circumstances to give effect to the provision, the treaty powers determined to take the matter into their own hands. Ito, who was better aware than his chief of the disproportion between the fighting powers of Europe and Japan, memorialized the cabinets, begging that hostilities should be suspended until he should have had time to use his influence with Choshu in the interests of peace. With this object Ito hurried back to Japan. But his efforts were futile. Choshu refused to give way, and suffered the consequences of his obstinacy in the destruction of his batteries and in the infliction of a heavy fine. The part played by Ito in these negotiations aroused the animosity of the more reactionary of his fellow-clansmen, who made repeated attempts to assassinate him. On one notable occasion he was pursued by his enemies into a tea-house, where he was concealed by a young lady beneath the floor of her room. Thus began a romantic acquaintance, which ended in the lady becoming the wife of the fugitive. Subsequently (1868) Ito was made governor of Hiogo, and in the course of the following year became vice-minister of finance. In 1871 he accompanied Iwakura on an important mission to Europe, which, though diplomatically a failure, resulted in the enlistment of the services of European authorities on military, naval and educational systems.

After his return to Japan Ito served in several cabinets as head of the bureau of engineering and mines, and in 1886 he accepted office as prime minister, a post which, when he resigned in 1901, he had held four times. In 1882 he was sent on a mission to Europe to study the various forms of constitutional government; on this occasion he attended the coronation of the tsar Alexander III. On his return to Japan he was entrusted with the arduous duty of drafting a constitution. In 1890 he reaped the fruits of his labours, and nine years later he was destined to witness the abrogation of the old treaties, and the substitution in their place of conventions which place Japan on terms of equality with the European states. In all the great reforms in the Land of the Rising Sun Ito played a leading part. It was mainly due to his active interest in military and naval affairs that he was able to meet Li Hung-chang at the end of the Chinese and Japanese War (1895) as the representative of the conquering state, and the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902 testified to his triumphant success in raising Japan to the first rank among civilized powers. As a reward for his conspicuous services in connexion with the Chinese War Ito was made a marquis, and in 1897 he accompanied Prince Arisugawa as a joint representative of the Mikado at the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. At the close of 1901 he again, though in an unofficial capacity, visited Europe and the United States; and in England he was created a G.C.B. After the Russo-Japanese War (1905) he was appointed resident general in Korea, and in that capacity he was responsible for the steps taken to increase Japanese influence in that country. In September 1907 he was advanced to the rank of prince. He retired from his post in Korea in July 1909, and became president of the privy council in Japan. But on the 26th of October, when on a visit to Harbin, he was shot dead by a Korean assassin.

He is to be distinguished from Admiral Count Yuko Ito (b. 1843), the distinguished naval commander.

ITRI,a town of Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta, 6 m. by road N.W. of Formia. Pop. (1901) 5797. The town is picturesquely situated 690 ft. above sea-level, in the mountains which the Via Appia traverses between Fondi and Formia.Interesting remains of the substruction wall supporting the ancient road are preserved in Itri itself; and there are many remains of ancient buildings near it. The brigand Fra Diavolo, the hero of Auber’s opera, was a native of Itri, and the place was once noted for brigandage.

ITURBIDE(orYturbide),AUGUSTIN DE(1783-1824), emperor of Mexico from May 1822 to March 1823, was born on the 27th of September 1783, at Valladolid, now Morelia, in Mexico, where his father, an Old Spaniard from Pampeluna, had settled with his creole wife. After enjoying a better education than was then usual in Mexico, Iturbide entered the military service, and in 1810 held the post of lieutenant in the provincial regiment of his native city. In that year the insurrection under Hidalgo broke out, and Iturbide, more from policy, it would seem, than from principle, served in the royal army. Possessed of splendid courage and brilliant military talents, which fitted him especially for guerilla warfare, the young creole did signal service, and rapidly rose in military rank. In December 1813 Colonel Iturbide, along with General Llano, dealt a crushing blow to the revolt by defeating Morelos, the successor of Hidalgo, in the battle of Valladolid; and the former followed it up by another decisive victory at Puruaran in January 1814. Next year Don Augustin was appointed to the command of the army of the north and to the governorship of the provinces of Valladolid and Guanajuato, but in 1816 grave charges of extortion and violence were brought against him, which led to his recall. Although the general was acquitted, or at least although the inquiry was dropped, he did not resume his commands, but retired into private life for four years, which, we are told, he spent in a rigid course of penance for his former excesses. In 1820 Apodaca, viceroy of Mexico, received instructions from the Spanish cortes to proclaim the constitution promulgated in Spain in 1812, but although obliged at first to submit to an order by which his power was much curtailed, he secretly cherished the design of reviving the absolute power for Ferdinand VII. in Mexico. Under pretext of putting down the lingering remains of revolt, he levied troops, and, placing Iturbide at their head, instructed him to proclaim the absolute power of the king. Four years of reflection, however, had modified the general’s views, and now, led both by personal ambition and by patriotic regard for his country, Iturbide resolved to espouse the cause of national independence. His subsequent proceedings—how he issued thePlan of Iguala, on the 24th of February 1821, how by the refusal of the Spanish cortes to ratify the treaty of Cordova, which he had signed with O’Donoju, he was transformed from a mere champion of monarchy into a candidate for the crown, and how, hailed by the soldiers as Emperor Augustin I. on the 18th of May 1822, he was compelled within ten months, by his arrogant neglect of constitutional restraints, to tender his abdication to a congress which he had forcibly dissolved—will be found detailed under Mexico. Although the congress refused to accept his abdication on the ground that to do so would be to recognize the validity of his election, it permitted the ex-emperor to retire to Leghorn in Italy, while in consideration of his services in 1820 a yearly pension of £5000 was conferred upon him. But Iturbide resolved to make one more bid for power; and in 1824, passing from Leghorn to London, he published aStatement, and on the 11th of May set sail for Mexico. The congress immediately issued an act of outlawry against him, forbidding him to set foot on Mexican soil on pain of death. Ignorant of this, the ex-emperor landed in disguise at Soto la Marina on the 14th of July. He was almost immediately recognized and arrested, and on the 19th of July 1824 was shot at Padilla, by order of the state of Tamaulipas, without being permitted an appeal to the general congress. Don Augustin de Iturbide is described by his contemporaries as being of handsome figure and ingratiating manner. His brilliant courage and wonderful success made him the idol of his soldiers, though towards his prisoners he displayed the most cold-blooded cruelty, boasting in one of his despatches of having honoured Good Friday by shooting three hundred excommunicated wretches. Though described as amiable in his private life, he seems in his public career to have been ambitious and unscrupulous, and by his haughty Spanish temper, impatient of all resistance or control, to have forfeited the opportunity of founding a secure imperial dynasty. His grandson Augustin was chosen by the ill-fated emperor Maximilian as his successor.

SeeStatement of some of the principal events in the public life of Augustin de Iturbide, written by himself (Eng. trans., 1824).

ITZA,an American-Indian people of Mayan stock, inhabiting the country around Lake Peten in northern Guatemala. Chichen-Itza, among the most wonderful of the ruined cities of Yucatan, was the capital of the Itzas. Thence, according to their traditions they removed, on the breaking up of the Mayan kingdom in 1420, to an island in the lake where another city was built. Cortes met them in 1525, but they preserved their independence till 1697, when the Spaniards destroyed the city and temples, and a library of sacred books, written in hieroglyphics on bark fibre. The Itzas were one of the eighteen semi-independent Maya states, whose incessant internecine wars at length brought about the dismemberment of the empire of Xibalba and the destruction of Mayan civilization.

ITZEHOE,a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, on the Stör, a navigable tributary of the Elbe, 32 m. north-west of Hamburg and 15 m. north of Glückstadt. Pop. (1900) 15,649. The church of St Lawrence, dating from the 12th century, and the building in which the Holstein estates formerly met, are noteworthy. The town has a convent founded in 1256, a high school, a hospital and other benevolent institutions. Itzehoe is a busy commercial place. Its sugar refineries are among the largest in Germany. Ironfounding, shipbuilding and wool-spinning are also carried on, and the manufactures include machinery, tobacco, fishing-nets, chicory, soap, cement and beer. Fishing employs some of the inhabitants, and the markets for cattle and horses are important. A considerable trade is carried on in agricultural products and wood, chiefly with Hamburg and Altona.

Itzehoe is the oldest town in Holstein. Its nucleus was a castle, built in 809 by Egbert, one of Charlemagne’s counts, against the Danes. The community which sprang up around it was diversely called Esseveldoburg, Eselsfleth and Ezeho. In 1201 the town was destroyed, but it was restored in 1224. To the new town the Lübeck rights were granted by Adolphus IV. in 1238, and to the old town in 1303. During the Thirty Years’ War Itzehoe was twice destroyed by the Swedes, in 1644 and 1657, but was rebuilt on each occasion. It passed to Prussia in 1867, with the duchy of Schleswig-Holstein.

IUKA,the county-seat of Tishomingo county, Mississippi, U.S.A., about 25 m. S.E. of Corinth in the N.E. corner of the state and 8 m. S. of the Tennessee river. Pop. (1900) 882; (1910) 1221. It is served by the Southern railway, and has a considerable trade in cotton and farm products. Its mineral springs make it a health resort. In the American Civil War, a Confederate force under General Sterling Price occupied the town on the 14th of September 1862, driving out a small Union garrison; and on the 19th of September a partial engagement took place between Price and a Federal column commanded by General Rosecrans, in which the Confederate losses were 700 and the Union 790. Price, whose line of retreat was threatened by superior forces under General Grant, withdrew from Iuka on the morning of the 20th of September.

IULUS,in Roman legend: (a) the eldest son of Ascanius and grandson of Aeneas, founder of the Julian gens (gens Iulia), deprived of his kingdom of Latium by his younger brother Silvius (Dion. Halic. i. 70); (b) another name for, or epithet of, Ascanius.

IVAN(John), the name of six grand dukes of Muscovy and tsars of Russia.

Ivan I., calledKalita, or Money-Bag (d. 1341), grand duke of Vladimir, was the firstsobiratel, or “gatherer” of the scattered Russian lands, thereby laying the foundations of the future autocracy as a national institution. This he contrived to do by adopting a policy of complete subserviency to the khan of the Golden Horde, who, in return for a liberal and punctual tribute, permitted him to aggrandize himself at the expense of the lessergrand dukes. Moscow and Tver were the first to fall. The latter Ivan received from the hand of the khan, after devastating it with a host of 50,000 Tatars (1327). When Alexander of Tver fled to the powerful city of Pskov, Ivan, not strong enough to attack Pskov, procured the banishment of Alexander by the aid of the metropolitan, Theognost, who threatened Pskov with an interdict. In 1330 Ivan extended his influence over Rostov by the drastic methods of blackmail and hanging. But Great Novgorod was too strong for him, and twice he threatened that republic in vain. In 1340 Ivan assisted the khan to ravage the domains of Prince Ivan of Smolensk, who had refused to pay the customary tribute to the Horde. Ivan’s own domains, at any rate during his reign, remained free from Tatar incursions, and prospered correspondingly, thus attracting immigrants and their wealth from the other surrounding principalities. Ivan was a most careful, not to say niggardly economist, keeping an exact account of every village or piece of plate that his money-bags acquired, whence his nickname. The most important event of his reign was the transference of the metropolitan see from Vladimir to Moscow, which gave Muscovy the pre-eminence over all the other Russian states, and made the metropolitan the ecclesiastical police-superintendent of the grand duke. The Metropolitan Peter built the first stone cathedral of Moscow, and his successor, Theognost, followed suit with three more stone churches. Simultaneously Ivan substituted stone walls for the ancient wooden ones of the Kreml’, or citadel, which made Moscow a still safer place of refuge.

See S. M. Solov’ev,History of Russia(Rus.), vol. iii. (St Petersburg, 1895); Polezhaev,The Principality of Moscow in the first half of the 14th Century(Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1878).

Ivan II.(1326-1359), grand duke of Vladimir, a younger son of Ivan Kalita, was born in 1326. In 1353 he succeeded his elder brother Simeon as grand duke, despite the competition of Prince Constantine of Suzdal, the Khan Hanibek preferring to bestow theyarluik, or letter of investiture, upon Ivan rather than upon Constantine. At first the principalities of Suzdal, Ryazan and the republic of Novgorod refused to recognize him as grand duke, and waged war with him till 1354. The authority of the grand duchy sensibly diminished during the reign of Ivan II. The surrounding principalities paid but little attention to Moscow, and Ivan, “a meek, gentle and merciful prince,” was ruled to a great extent by thetuisyatsky, or chiliarch, Alexis Khvost, and, after his murder by the jealous boyars in 1357, by Bishop Alexis. He died in 1359. Like most of his predecessors, Ivan, by his last will, divided his dominions among his children.

See Dmitry Ilovaisky,History of Russia(Rus.), vol. ii. (Moscow, 1876-1894).

Ivan III.(1440-1505), grand duke of Muscovy, son of Vasily (Basil) Vasilievich the Blind, grand duke of Moscow, and Maria Yaroslavovna, was born in 1440. He was co-regent with his father during the latter years of his life and succeeded him in 1462. Ivan tenaciously pursued the unifying policy of his predecessors. Nevertheless, cautious to timidity, like most of the princes of the house of Rurik, he avoided as far as possible any violent collision with his neighbours until all the circumstances were exceptionally favourable, always preferring to attain his ends gradually, circuitously and subterraneously. Muscovy had by this time become a compact and powerful state, whilst her rivals had grown sensibly weaker, a condition of things very favourable to the speculative activity of a statesman of Ivan III.’s peculiar character. His first enterprise was a war with the republic of Novgorod, which, alarmed at the growing dominancy of Muscovy, had placed herself beneath the protection of Casimir IV., king of Poland, an alliance regarded at Moscow as an act of apostasy from orthodoxy. Ivan took the field against Novgorod in 1470, and after his generals had twice defeated the forces of the republic, at Shelona and on the Dvina, during the summer of 1471, the Novgorodians were forced to sue for peace, which they obtained on engaging to abandon for ever the Polish alliance, ceding a considerable portion of their northern colonies, and paying a war indemnity of 15,500 roubles. From henceforth Ivan sought continually a pretext for destroying Novgorod altogether; but though he frequently violated its ancient privileges in minor matters, the attitude of the republic was so wary that his looked-for opportunity did not come till 1477. In that year the ambassadors of Novgorod played into his hands by addressing him in public audience as “Gosudar” (sovereign) instead of “Gospodin” (“Sir”) as heretofore. Ivan at once seized upon this as a recognition of his sovereignty, and when the Novgorodians repudiated their ambassadors, he marched against them. Deserted by Casimir IV., and surrounded on every side by the Muscovite armies, which included a Tatar contingent, the republic recognized Ivan as autocrat, and surrendered (January 14, 1478) all her prerogatives and possessions (the latter including the whole of northern Russia from Lapland to the Urals) into his hands. Subsequent revolts (1479-1488) were punished by the removalen masseof the richest and most ancient families of Novgorod to Moscow, Vyatka and other central Russian cities. After this, Novgorod, as an independent state, ceased to exist. The rival republic of Pskov owed the continuance of its own political existence to the readiness with which it assisted Ivan against its ancient enemy. The other principalities were virtually absorbed, by conquest, purchase or marriage contract—Yaroslavl in 1463, Rostov in 1474, Tver in 1485.

Ivan’s refusal to share his conquests with his brothers, and his subsequent interference with the internal politics of their inherited principalities, involved him in several wars with them, from which, though the princes were assisted by Lithuania, he emerged victorious. Finally, Ivan’s new rule of government, formally set forth in his last will to the effect that the domains of all his kinsfolk, after their deaths, should pass directly to the reigning grand duke instead of reverting, as hitherto, to the princes’ heirs, put an end once for all to these semi-independent princelets. The further extension of the Muscovite dominion was facilitated by the death of Casimir IV. in 1492, when Poland and Lithuania once more parted company. The throne of Lithuania was now occupied by Casimir’s son Alexander, a weak and lethargic prince so incapable of defending his possessions against the persistent attacks of the Muscovites that he attempted to save them by a matrimonial compact, and wedded Helena, Ivan’s daughter. But the clear determination of Ivan to appropriate as much of Lithuania as possible at last compelled Alexander in 1499 to take up arms against his father-in-law. The Lithuanians were routed at Vedrosha (July 14, 1500), and in 1503 Alexander was glad to purchase peace by ceding to Ivan Chernigov, Starodub, Novgorod-Syeversk and sixteen other towns.

It was in the reign of Ivan III. that Muscovy rejected the Tatar yoke. In 1480 Ivan refused to pay the customary tribute to the grand Khan Ahmed. When, however, the grand khan marched against him, Ivan’s courage began to fail, and only the stern exhortations of the high-spirited bishop of Rostov, Vassian, could induce him to take the field. All through the autumn the Russian and Tatar hosts confronted each other on opposite sides of the Ugra, till the 11th of November, when Ahmed retired into the steppe. In the following year the grand khan, while preparing a second expedition against Moscow, was suddenly attacked, routed and slain by Ivak, the khan of the Nogai Tatars, whereupon the Golden Horde suddenly fell to pieces. In 1487 Ivan reduced the khanate of Kazan (one of the offshoots of the Horde) to the condition of a vassal-state, though in his later years it broke away from his suzerainty. With the other Mahommedan powers, the khan of the Crimea and the sultan of Turkey, Ivan’s relations were pacific and even amicable. The Crimean khan, Mengli Girai, helped him against Lithuania and facilitated the opening of diplomatic intercourse between Moscow and Constantinople, where the first Russian embassy appeared in 1495.

The character of the government of Muscovy under Ivan III. changed essentially and took on an autocratic form which it had never had before. This was due not merely to the natural consequence of the hegemony of Moscow over the other Russian lands, but even more to the simultaneous growth of new andexotic principles falling upon a soil already prepared for them. After the fall of Constantinople, orthodox canonists were inclined to regard the Muscovite grand dukes as the successors by the Byzantine emperors. This movement coincided with a change in the family circumstances of Ivan III. After the death of his first consort, Maria of Tver (1467), at the suggestion of Pope Paul II. (1469), who hoped thereby to bind Russia to the holy see, Ivan III. wedded the Catholic Zoe Palaeologa (better known by her orthodox name of Sophia), daughter of Thomas, despot of the Morea, who claimed the throne of Constantinople as the nearest relative of the last Greek emperor. The princess, however, clave to her family traditions, and awoke imperial ideas in the mind of her consort. It was through her influence that the ceremonious etiquette of Constantinople (along with the imperial double-headed eagle and all that it implied) was adopted by the court of Moscow. The grand duke henceforth held aloof from his boyars. The old patriarchal systems of government vanished. The boyars were no longer consulted on affairs of state. The sovereign became sacrosanct, while the boyars were reduced to the level of slaves absolutely dependent on the will of the sovereign. The boyars naturally resented so insulting a revolution, and struggled against it, at first with some success. But the clever Greek lady prevailed in the end, and it was her son Vasily, not Maria of Tver’s son, Demetrius, who was ultimately crowned co-regent with his father (April 14, 1502). It was in the reign of Ivan III. that the first Russian “Law Book,” or code, was compiled by the scribe Gusev. Ivan did his utmost to promote civilization in his realm, and with that object invited many foreign masters and artificers to settle in Muscovy, the most noted of whom was the Italian Ridolfo di Fioravante, nicknamed Aristotle because of his extraordinary knowledge, who built the cathedrals of the Assumption (Uspenski) and of Saint Michael or the Holy Archangels in the Kreml.

See P. Pierling,Mariage d’un tsar au Vatican, Ivan III. et Sophie Paléologue(Paris, 1891); E. I. Kashprovsky,The Struggle of Ivan III. with Sigismund I.(Rus.) (Nizhni, 1899); S. M. Solov’ev,History of Russia(Rus.), vol. v. (St Petersburg, 1895).

Ivan IV., called “the Terrible” (1530-1584), tsar of Muscovy, was the son of Vasily [Basil] III. Ivanovich, grand duke of Muscovy, by his second wife, Helena Glinska. Born on the 25th of August 1530, he was proclaimed grand duke on the death of his father (1533), and took the government into his own hands in 1544, being then fourteen years old. Ivan IV. was in every respect precocious; but from the first there was what we should now call a neurotic strain in his character. His father died when he was three, his mother when he was only seven, and he grew up in a brutal and degrading environment where he learnt to hold human life and human dignity in contempt. He was maltreated by the leading boyars whom successive revolutions placed at the head of affairs, and hence he conceived an inextinguishable hatred of their whole order and a corresponding fondness for the merchant class, their natural enemies. At a very early age he entertained an exalted idea of his own divine authority, and his studies were largely devoted to searching in the Scriptures and the Slavonic chronicles for sanctions and precedents for the exercise and development of his right divine. He first asserted his power by literally throwing to the dogs the last of his boyar tyrants, and shortly afterwards announced his intention of assuming the title of tsar, a title which his father and grandfather had coveted but never dared to assume publicly. On the 16th of January 1547, he was crowned the first Russian tsar by the metropolitan of Moscow; on the 3rd of February in the same year he selected as his wife from among the virgins gathered from all parts of Russia for his inspection, Anastasia Zakharina-Koshkina, the scion of an ancient and noble family better known by its later name of Romanov.

Hitherto, by his own showing, the private life of the young tsar had been unspeakably abominable, but his sensitive conscience (he was naturally religious) induced him, in 1550, to summon aZemsky Soboror national assembly, the first of its kind, to which he made a curious public confession of the sins of his youth, and at the same time promised that the realm of Russia (for whose dilapidation he blamed the boyar regents) should henceforth be governed justly and mercifully. In 1551 the tsar submitted to a synod of prelates a hundred questions as to the best mode of remedying existing evils, for which reason the decrees of this synod are generally calledstoglavorcenturia. The decennium extending from 1550 to 1560 was the good period of Ivan IV.’s reign, when he deliberately broke away from his disreputable past and surrounded himself with good men of lowly origin. It was not only that he hated and distrusted the boyars, but he was already statesman enough to discern that they could not be fitted into the new order of things which he aimed at introducing. Ivan meditated the regeneration of Muscovy, and the only men who could assist him in his task were men who could look steadily forward to the future because they had no past to look back upon, men who would unflinchingly obey their sovereign because they owed their whole political significance to him alone. The chief of these men of good-will were Alexis Adashev and the monk Sylvester, men of so obscure an origin that almost every detail of their lives is conjectural, but both of them, morally, the best Muscovites of their day. Their influence upon the young tsar was profoundly beneficial, and the period of their administration coincides with the most glorious period of Ivan’s reign—the period of the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan.

In the course of 1551 one of the factions of Kazan offered the whole khanate to the young tsar, and on the 20th of August 1552 he stood before its walls with an army of 150,000 men and 50 guns. The siege was long and costly; the army suffered severely; and only the tenacity of the tsar kept it in camp for six weeks. But on the 2nd of October the fortress, which had been heroically defended, was taken by assault. The conquest of Kazan was an epoch-making event in the history of eastern Europe. It was not only the first territorial conquest from the Tatars, before whom Muscovy had humbled herself for generations; at Kazan Asia, in the name of Mahomet, had fought behind its last trench against Christian Europe marshalled beneath the banner of the tsar of Muscovy. For the first time the Volga became a Russian river. Nothing could now retard the natural advance of the young Russian state towards the east and the south-east. In 1554 Astrakhan fell almost without a blow. By 1560 all the Finnic and Tatar tribes between the Oka and the Kama had become Russian subjects. Ivan was also the first tsar who dared to attack the Crimea. In 1555 he sent Ivan Sheremetev against Perekop, and Sheremetev routed the Tatars in a great two days’ battle at Sudbishenska. Some of Ivan’s advisers, including both Sylvester and Adashev, now advised him to make an end of the Crimean khanate, as he had already made an end of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan. But Ivan, wiser in his generation, knew that the thing was impossible, in view of the immense distance to be traversed, and the predominance of the Grand Turk from whom it would have to be wrested. It was upon Livonia that his eyes were fixed, which was comparatively near at hand and promised him a seaboard and direct communication with western Europe. Ivan IV., like Peter I. after him, clearly recognized the necessity of raising Muscovy to the level of her neighbours. He proposed to do so by promoting a wholesale immigration into his tsardom of master-workmen and skilled artificers. But all his neighbours, apprehensive of the consequences of a civilized Muscovy, combined to thwart him. Charles V. even went so far as to disperse 123 skilled Germans whom Ivan’s agent had collected and brought to Lübeck for shipment to a Baltic port. After this, Ivan was obliged to help himself as best he could. His opportunity seemed to have come when, in the middle of the 16th century, the Order of the Sword broke up, and the possession of Livonia was fiercely contested between Sweden, Poland and Denmark. Ivan intervened in 1558 and quickly captured Narva, Dorpat and a dozen smaller fortresses; then, in 1560, Livonia placed herself beneath the protection of Poland, and King Sigismund II. warned Ivan off the premises.

By this time, Ivan had entered upon the second and evil portion of his reign. As early as 1553 he had ceased to trustSylvester and Adashev, owing to their extraordinary backwardness in supporting the claims of his infant son to the throne while he himself lay at the point of death. The ambiguous and ungrateful conduct of the tsar’s intimate friends and protégés on this occasion has never been satisfactorily explained, and he had good reason to resent it. Nevertheless, on his recovery, much to his credit, he overlooked it, and they continued to direct affairs for six years longer. Then the dispute about the Crimea arose, and Ivan became convinced that they were mediocre politicians as well as untrustworthy friends. In 1560 both of them disappeared from the scene, Sylvester into a monastery at his own request, while Adashev died the same year, in honourable exile as a general in Livonia. The death of his deeply beloved consort Anastasia and his son Demetrius, and the desertion of his one bosom friend Prince Kurbsky, about the same time, seem to have infuriated Ivan against God and man. During the next ten years (1560-1570) terrible and horrible things happened in the realm of Muscovy. The tsar himself lived in an atmosphere of apprehension, imagining that every man’s hand was against him. On the 3rd of December 1564 he quitted Moscow with his whole family. On the 3rd of January 1565 he declared in an open letter addressed to the metropolitan his intention to abdicate. The common people, whom he had always favoured at the expense of the boyars, thereupon implored him to come back on his own terms. He consented to do so, but entrenched himself within a peculiar institution, theoprichinaor “separate estate.” Certain towns and districts all over Russia were separated from the rest of the realm, and their revenues were assigned to the maintenance of the tsar’s new court and household, which was to consist of 1000 carefully selected boyars and lower dignitaries, with their families and suites, in the midst of whom Ivan henceforth lived exclusively. Theoprichinawas no constitutional innovation. Theduma, or council, still attended to all the details of the administration; the old boyars still retained their ancient offices and dignities. The only difference was that the tsar had cut himself off from them, and they were not even to communicate with him except on extraordinary and exceptional occasions. Theoprichniki, as being the exclusive favourites of the tsar, naturally, in their own interests, hardened the tsar’s heart against all outsiders, and trampled with impunity upon every one beyond the charmed circle. Their first and most notable victim was Philip, the saintly metropolitan of Moscow, who was strangled for condemning theoprichinaas an unchristian institution, and refusing to bless the tsar (1569). Ivan had stopped at Tver, to murder St Philip, while on his way to destroy the second wealthiest city in his tsardom—Great Novgorod. A delator of infamous character, one Peter, had accused the authorities of the city to the tsar of conspiracy; Ivan, without even confronting the Novgorodians with their accuser, proceeded at the end of 1569 to punish them. After ravaging the land, his own land, like a wild beast, he entered the city on the 8th of January 1570, and for the next five weeks, systematically and deliberately, day after day, massacred batches of every class of the population. Every monastery, church, manor-house, warehouse and farm within a circuit of 100 m. was then wrecked, plundered and left roofless, all goods were pillaged, all cattle destroyed. Not till the 13th of February were the miserable remnants of the population permitted to rebuild their houses and cultivate their fields once more.

An intermittent and desultory war, with Sweden and Poland simultaneously, for the possession of Livonia and Esthonia, went on from 1560 to 1582. Ivan’s generals (he himself rarely took the field) were generally successful at first, and bore down their enemies by sheer numbers, capturing scores of fortresses and towns. But in the end the superior military efficiency of the Swedes and Poles invariably prevailed. Ivan was also unfortunate in having for his chief antagonist Stephen Báthory, one of the greatest captains of the age. Thus all his strenuous efforts, all his enormous sacrifices, came to nothing. The West was too strong for him. By the peace of Zapoli (January 15th, 1582) he surrendered Livonia with Polotsk to Báthory, and by the truce of Ilyusa he at the same time abandoned Ingria to the Swedes. The Baltic seaboard was lost to Muscovy for another century and a half. In his latter years Ivan cultivated friendly relations with England, in the hope of securing some share in the benefits of civilization from the friendship of Queen Elizabeth, one of whose ladies, Mary Hastings, he wished to marry, though his fifth wife, Martha Nagaya, was still alive. Towards the end of his life Ivan was partially consoled for his failure in the west by the unexpected acquisition of the kingdom of Siberia in the east, which was first subdued by the Cossack hetman Ermak or Yermak in 1581.

In November 1580 Ivan in a fit of ungovernable fury at some contradiction or reproach, struck his eldest surviving son Ivan, a prince of rare promise, whom he passionately loved, a blow which proved fatal. In an agony of remorse, he would now have abdicated “as being unworthy to reign longer”; but his trembling boyars, fearing some dark ruse, refused to obey any one but himself. Three years later, on the 18th of March 1584, while playing at chess, he suddenly fell backwards in his chair and was removed to his bed in a dying condition. At the last moment he assumed the hood of the strictest order of hermits, and died as the monk Jonah.

Ivan IV. was undoubtedly a man of great natural ability. His political foresight was extraordinary. He anticipated the ideals of Peter the Great, and only failed in realizing them because his material resources were inadequate. But admiration of his talents must not blind us to his moral worthlessness, nor is it right to cast the blame for his excesses on the brutal and vicious society in which he lived. The same society which produced his infamous favourites also produced St Philip of Moscow, and by refusing to listen to St Philip Ivan sank below even the not very lofty moral standard of his own age. He certainly left Muscovite society worse than he found it, and so prepared the way for the horrors of “the Great Anarchy.” Personally, Ivan was tall and well-made, with high shoulders and a broad chest. His eyes were small and restless, his nose hooked, he had a beard and moustaches of imposing length. His face had a sinister, troubled expression; but an enigmatical smile played perpetually around his lips. He was the best educated and the hardest worked man of his age. His memory was astonishing, his energy indefatigable. As far as possible he saw to everything personally, and never sent away a petitioner of the lower orders.

See S. M. Solov’ev,History of Russia(Rus.) vol. v. (St Petersburg, 1895); A. Brückner,Geschichte Russlands bis zum Ende des 18ten Jahrhunderts(Gotha, 1896); E. Tikhomirov,The first Tsar of Moscovy, Ivan IV.(Rus.) (Moscow, 1888); L. G. T. Tidander,Kriget mellan Sverige och Ryssland åren 1555-1557(Vesterås, 1888); P. Pierling,Un Arbitrage pontifical au XVIesiècle entre la Pologne et la Russie(Bruxelles, 1890); V. V. Novodvorsky,The Struggle for Livonia, 1570-1582(Rus.) (St Petersburg, 1904); K. Waliszewski,Ivan le terrible(Paris, 1904); R. N. Bain,Slavonic Europe, ch. 5 (Cambridge, 1907).

Ivan V.1(1666-1696), tsar of Russia, was the son of Tsar Alexius Mikhailovich and his first consort Miloslavzkoya. Physically and mentally deficient, Ivan was the mere tool of the party in Muscovy who would have kept the children of the tsar Alexis, by his second consort Natalia Naruishkina, from the throne. In 1682 the party of progress, headed by Artamon Matvyeev and the tsaritsa Natalia, passed Ivan over and placed his half-brother, the vigorous and promising little tsarevich Peter, on the throne. On the 23rd of May, however, the Naruishkin faction was overthrown by thestryeltsi(musketeers), secretly worked upon by Ivan’s half-sister Sophia, and Ivan was associated as tsar with Peter. Three days later he was proclaimed “first tsar,” in order still further to depress the Naruishkins, and place the government in the hands of Sophia exclusively. In 1689 the name of Ivan was used as a pretext by Sophia in her attempt to oust Peter from the throne altogether. Ivan was made to distribute beakers of wine to his sister’s adherents with his own hands, but subsequently, beneath the influence of his uncle Prozorovsky, he openly declared that “even for his sister’ssake, he would quarrel no longer with his dear brother.” During the reign of his colleague Peter, Ivan V. took no part whatever in affairs, but devoted himself “to incessant prayer and rigorous fasting.” On the 9th of January 1684 he married Praskovia Saltuikova, who bore him five daughters, one of whom, Anne, ultimately ascended the Russian throne. In his last years Ivan was a paralytic. He died on the 29th of January 1696.

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