Boris Godunov was the most powerful and sagacious of the boyards spared by Ivan the "Terrible"; he was best fitted to direct the policy of the government, and later the people looked to him as the only ruler possible. A man who could satisfy Ivan, yet take no part in his orgies, who could keep the goodwill of the foreign residents, yet be beloved of the Muscovites, must have possessed abilities of no mean order. Boris was a great man to whom historians have done scant justice. He is described as inordinately ambitious and accused of unscrupulousness in his methods, but the court in which he was schooled may be adduced in extenuation of his crimes, whilst ambition, an undesirable quality for a subject to possess, is a laudable virtue in monarchs. It was his misfortune not to have been born in the purple--his contemporaries and the historians have counted this a fault, but it is too late to blame him for acting as a king when he was by birth a simple noble. Boris Godunov, as brother of the Tsar's wife, had a recognised position apart from the favour the Tsar's father had shown him. The relatives of the Tsarina were always counted less dangerous to the dynasty than were the Tsar's blood relations, and their influence at Court was greater than their precedence warranted. Theodore was the opposite of his father, unintelligent, feeble-willed, incompetent, he thrust greatness upon Boris Godunov, who saved Moscow. At that time the Tsar held territory in Europe larger than that ruled by any of his contemporaries; the conquests of Yermak in Asia brought as much more under his dominion. Enemies, active, watchful, virulent, were ever ready to harass its rulers. Poles and Swedes expected Moscow sooner or later, to fall to them, and lost no opportunity to effect the overthrow of the Russians. Tartars and others kept up predatory wars and, within the empire, towns and districts, devastated by the wanton cruelties of Ivan, were anxious to get back their independence. There were no men able to rule. Ivan had put to death those brave enough and independent enough to assert authority; what was worse for Russia, he had driven into exile competent and influential nobles, who, maddened by his persecutions, became enemies of their fatherland and plotted with foreign sovereigns against the state.