imprisonment (the severities of which were eventually relaxed), while a crowd of allied or sympathetic boyarins were ordered into captivity or received governorships in remote parts of the country. No blood was spilt except incidentally that of serfs and servants, tortured to disclose incriminating information concerning their masters. That the Tzar, who had received his earliest impressions at the Court of Ivan the Terrible, did not act more in the spirit of his times is a circumstance which may stand to his credit, especially when regard is had to the influences which surrounded him. The Moskva of those days was an environment which in itself propagated monstrous and reactionary ideas. Here were to be seen on every hand wretched hovels, “dwelling-places for human beings,” dark suspicion-speaking bazaars, crowded rookeries of cramped caravansaries, wide open spaces, bleak and untenanted, chill and massive boyarin palaces, weird and awesome temples; and in the Kreml itself “violent juxtaposition of the German Gothic style with those of India, of Byzantium, of Italy--the same tangle of edifices, packed one within another like a Chinese puzzle; the same strange wild orgy of decoration, of form, of colour; a delirium and fever, a veritable surfeit of plastic fancy. Small rooms, surbased vaulted roofs, gloomy corridors, lamps twinkling out of the darkness, on the walls the lurid glow of mingled ochres and vermilions, iron bars to every window, armed men at every door; a swarming population of monks and warriors everywhere.”[182] Such was the capital of Russia in the last days of the Rurikovitch dynasty; such it remained throughout the seventeenth century. [Illustration: PLAN OF MOSKVA at the close of the Sixteenth Century. 1. Cathedral of Mikhail the Archangel. 2. Cathedral of the Assumption (_Ouspenski_). 3. Spasskie (Saviour) gate. 4. Nikolai gate. 5. Neglina gate. 6. Borovitzkie gate. 7. The Red Place. 8-8. Markets and Bazaars. 9. River gate. 10. Strietenskie gate. 11. Tverskie gate. 12. Nikolskie gate. 13. Arbatskie gate. 14. Tchertol’skie gate. 15. Swannery. ] FOOTNOTES: [175] N. Kostomarov, _Rousskaya Istoriya_, etc. [176] Karamzin distinguishes the first as Ivan Petrovitch Shouyskie, Kostomarov as Petr Ivanovitch Shouyskie, while Solov’ev gives an alternative of Ivan Petrovitch or Thedor Shouyskie. [177] According to Karamzin 900,000 roubles. [178] S. Solov’ev; N. Kostomarov, _Rousskaya Istoriya v’ jhizneopisaniyakh eya glavnieyshikh dieyatelen_. [179] S. Solov’ev, Karamzin. [180] Rambaud. [181] S. Solov’ev, Kostomarov. [182] K. Waliszewski, Peter the Great. CHAPTER X THE PHANTOM TZAR