Thus there can be no doubt that as a prince Ivan ranks high and belongs to the number of those regents who decide the fate of their people and land for many years, and are a blessed or a cursed remembrance to posterity: but neither can it be denied that his greatness and fame lose much when we come to consider him as a man, and see the harshness of his character, his unlimited pride, his contempt of all human rights, his wild and passionate nature, and his greed of power. That he was the founder of autocracy, as modern writers assert, is not altogether his own exclusive merit, although it cannot be denied that he contributed much towards it by his shrewdness and wise moderation. When in the early days of his youth he seized the reins of government, he found much that had been prepared towards the future greatness of Russia; but Russia was still in a chaotic condition, and its forces were scattered and sunk as it were in a lethargy; they required an awakening and regulating hand, and this was principally Ivan’s work. Owing to the unfortunate system of appanages, which had been the ruin of Russia for many centuries, by destroying all unity in course of time, sowing the seeds of discord, and making the Russian state an easy prey to its enemies, the idea of a common fatherland had quite disappeared; and the internal dissensions among the princes, as well as the despotic pressure of the foreign barbarians, had so deranged and disjointed it, that the praiseworthy attempts of individual grand princes could meet with no brilliant success, and it seemed as if Russia were fated to play a deeply subordinate part in the hierarchy of states. Nevertheless those attempts were not quite lost, and the prudent might surmise that the time would yet come when they would bear fruit, once the hydra of discord had been conquered and the scattered forces had been reunited. Ivan’s proceedings in this respect were certainly of a macchiavellian nature. We have seen that for twenty-three years he patiently acknowledged the rights of other Russian princes and even their independence, and that by keeping his conquests to himself and not sharing them with his brothers and the other princes, and by taking his brother’s inheritance and giving none to his other brothers, he first began to consider himself as autocrat and ruler of all Russia, and thus gradually prepared the princes for a recognition of his undivided sway and their own impotency and subordination.