Ivan had carefully matured his plan. He took possession of a certain number of cities and country districts, expelled the proprietors from them, declared them territory forfeited to the government, and distributed them among certain of his own adherents upon whose fidelity he could count. These adherents generally were taken from the lowest classes of the people, knew no other law than the will of their master, and obeyed him blindly. While confiscating all these estates without mercy or hesitation, on the most trivial or far-fetched pretexts, he was shrewd enough to respect constitutional rights in other parts of the Empire. His plan was to increase the imperial private domains gradually to enormous proportions by dispossessing year after year the legitimate proprietors of the soil, and by this method to destroy the power of the nobility. In order to accomplish this purpose he did not hesitate to employ the most cruel and disreputable means for the conviction and punishment of his intended victims.
One of his favorite ways for entrapping and punishing a rich boyar was to order one of the servants employed in the imperial household to steal jewelry or other valuables, and then to seek refuge in the boyar’s residence. Of course, the fugitive was closely pursued by the Czar’s guards, drawn from his hiding-place, and then massacred together with the boyar and his family, who, the Czar pretended to believe, were the thief’s accomplices and deserved death as well as the offender. But much oftener the terrible Czar rushed down, with a numerous suite of his followers, upon the residence of a wealthy boyar, put all the men, the children and the old women of the domain to the sword, carried off the young women and girls, and abandoned them on the highways after he and his gang had satisfied their desires on them. On the trumped up charge that Grand Duke Wladimir, his own cousin, as well as the Grand Duke’s wife and grown daughters had participated in a conspiracy against the Czar’s life, he forced him to commit suicide by drinking poison, while the Grand Duchess and her beautiful young daughters, and all their ladies of honor and female servants, were divested of their garments, exposed in a state of complete nudity on the market space of the town adjacent to their domain, and afterwards butchered in cold blood. Wladimir’s immense wealth and all his real estate were confiscated by the crown. In this manner Ivan succeeded in overpowering the boyars, one after another, in a very short time, and acquiring immense wealth. He visited the different provinces and departments in succession, and wherever he appeared he left a track of desolation, rapine, and murder. From the capital of each province he organized marauding tours in all directions, placing each under the command of an officer on whose devotion to himself and ferocity to others he could count. But the most terrible expeditions were those which he commanded himself. It can truthfully be said that wherever Ivan “visited,” he destroyed everything in sight,--not only the human inhabitants, but also the farm and domestic animals, even dogs and cats. He took also a pleasure in draining ponds and creeks, so as to cause the fish to die, and after having killed or mutilated all things living, he ordered the buildings to be set on fire, and left the scene of his cruelty and lust amidst the wild huzzas of his comrades. No civilized, or half-civilized country had ever witnessed such atrocities on the part of its own ruler.