Rude as are the outlines of this great sovereign's historical
portrait, and rough as were the means by which he endeavoured to
ameliorate his country, it is impossible to deny him a place among
those rulers who have won the name of benefactors to their native
land."

When Iván III., then twenty-two years old, mounted the tributary throne of
Muscovy in 1462, the power of the Tartars, who for nearly two centuries
and a half domineered over Russia, had visibly declined. Tamerlane, at the
head of fresh swarms from the deserts of Asia, had stricken the Golden
Horde which still held Russia in subjection; and having pursued its
sovereign, Ioktamish Khan, into the steppes of Kiptchak and Siberia,
turned back almost from the gates of Moscow, to seek a richer plunder in
Hindostan. Before the Golden Horde could recover from this blow, it was
again attacked, defeated, and plundered, by the khan of the Crimea. Still
the supremacy of the Tartar was undisputed at Moscow. The Muscovite prince
advanced to the outer door of his palace to receive the ambassador of his
master; spread costly furs under his horse's feet; kneeled at his stirrup
to hear the khan's orders read; presented a cup of kimmis to the Tartar
representative, and licked off the drops that fell upon the mane of his
horse.

But during nearly a century and a half, the Muscovite princes had laboured
successfully to consolidate their own authority, and to unite the nation
against its oppressors. The principle of hereditary succession to the
dependent throne had been firmly established in the feelings of the people;
the ties of country, kindred, and language, and still more the bonds of
common religion, had united the discordant principalities into which the
country was still divided, by a sentiment of nationality and of hatred
against the Tartars, which made them capable of combining against their