The subjugation of Kazan left the field clear for his designs upon the three domestic republics. Vyatka, insolent in its own strength, declared itself neutral between Moscow and Kazan; and on the fall of the latter city, Novgorod, apprehensive that Ivan would turn his arms immediately against her, called upon the people of Pskof for aid, expressing her determination to march at once against the Grand Prince, in order to anticipate and avert his intentions. The Novgorodians were the more determined upon this bold measure by the personal pusillanimity which Ivan betrayed in a war where the advantages lay entirely at his own side. They calculated upon the terror they should inspire; and judged that if they could not succeed in vanquishing the Grand Prince, they should, at all events, be enabled to secure their own terms. Marpha, a rich and influential woman, the widow of a _posadnik_, and who was enamoured of a Lithuanian chief, conceiving the romantic design of bestowing her country as a marriage dower upon her lover, exerted all her power to kindle the enthusiasm and assist the project of the citizens. Her hospitality was unbounded. She threw open her palace to the people; lavished her wealth among them in sumptuous entertainments and exhibitions, and caused the _vetchooi kolokol_ ("assembling-bell"), which summoned the popular meetings to the market-place, to be rung as the signal of these orgies of licentiousness. The great bell in Novgorod was the type of the republican independence of the citizens, and represented the excesses into which they were not unwilling to plunge whenever it was necessary to testify their sense of that wild liberty which they had established among themselves. It was tolled on all occasions of a public nature, and the people gathered in multitudes at the well-known call. If any individual were accused of a crime against the republic or of any offence against the laws, the judges appeared at the sound of the bell to hold a summary court of justice, and the citizens surrounded the trial-seat, prepared to execute the sentence. Every citizen, with his sons, attended, carrying each two stones under his arms; and, if the accused were found guilty, lapidation instantly followed. The house of the culprit was also immediately plundered, cast down, confiscated, and sold for the benefit of the corporation. Except in China, where a law still more sanguinary and destructive prevails in cases of murder, there is hardly a similar instance of deliberate legal severity to be found among nations elevated above barbarism.