"Kniaz Ivan Kuraken, being found drunk, as was pretended, in Wenden when besieged, being voievod thereof, was stripped naked, laid on a cart, whipped through the market with six whips of wire, which cut his back, belly and bowels to death. Another, as I remember, Ivan Obrossimov, was hanged naked on a gibbet by the hair of his head; the skin and flesh of his body from top to toe cut off and minced with knives into small gobbets, by four _palatsniks_ (chamberlains). The one, wearied with his long carving, thrust his knife in somewhat far the sooner to dispatch him, and was presently had to another place of execution and that hand cut off; which, not being well seared, he died the next day. "That was the valley compared to Gehenna or Tophet, where the faithless Egyptians did sacrifice their children to the hideous devils. "Kniaz Boris Telupa was drawn upon a sharp stake, soaped to enter his body and out at his neck, upon which he languished in horrible pain for fifteen hours and spake unto his mother, the duchess, brought to behold that woeful sight. And she, a good matronly woman, given to one hundred gunners who did her to death. Her body lying naked in the Place, Ivan commanded his huntsman to bring their hungry hounds and devour her flesh, and dragged her bones everywhere. The Tsar saying: 'Such as I favour I have honoured, and such as be treytors will I have thus done unto.'"--_Horsey._ Another boyard impaled, during the long hours he remained conscious, never ceased calling upon God to forgive the Tsar. On one occasion, during a time of great scarcity, Ivan caused it to be made known that at a certain hour alms would be distributed at his palace. A great crowd of needy people assembled, and seven hundred were promptly knocked on the head by the opritchniks and their bodies thrown into the lake; a death so merciful, Horsey terms it "a deed of charity." Ivan forced father to kill son, and son father. His two once favourites, the Gluiskis, also suffered; the son being beheaded as he reverently raised the head just struck from his father's body. On that same day another prince was impaled and four others beheaded. Many were hung up by the feet, hacked with knives, and whilst still living, plunged into a cauldron of scalding water. On one occasion, eight hundred women were drowned together. The opritchniks, of whom at one time Ivan had seven hundred, killed scores of people daily.