The early part of Ivan’s reign, and the whole of the preceding one, are characterised by the recurrence at irregular periods of a deliberate campaign against Kazan. The Russians seem to have borrowed the tactics of the wolves which inhabited their steppes and forests, and to have leisurely and persistently wearied their quarry down, without caring to rush in and dispatch it. Again and again did the Tzar summon from the far corners of his dominions an enormous army, trail forth his ponderous siege-pieces and sacred banners, take an affecting farewell of his capital, and march upon the Tartar city. The wooden walls were relentlessly battered down, the garrison reduced to the last extremity, and then the Moskovite hosts would return home in good order. The walls were easily rebuilt and the Kazanese would pursue the even tenor of their way. It would almost appear as though the Russians were loth to irrevocably destroy the only enemy against whom they warred with any comfort. A more feasible explanation is that the Kazanese supplemented their feeble defences by a judicious outlay of the metal which corrupts, and that some of the Moskovite voevodas did not return empty-handed from these abortive expeditions. In 1552 Ivan determined to set once more in motion the huge army which had been left quartered on the frontiers of Kazan, a locality which had had a demoralising effect on the troops, many of whom had shaved off their beards to please the Tartar maidens who for the time being under-studied their wives, “to prove,” remarked a scandalised messenger from the Metropolitan, “by the indecent nudity of your faces, that you have shame to be men.” Familiarity had bred contempt, and the dwellers in the city by the Volga’s shore scornfully refused to open their gates at the approach of the 150,000 footmen and the 150 cannon which the Tzar brought against them. The Moskovites prepared for a long and obstinate resistance, and by way of a beginning erected and dedicated three pavilion churches in their camp. Events justified their expectations; the Kazanese held out stoutly against both the assaults of the besiegers and the offers of the Tzar. August and September passed in continual sorties and battles without the walls, skirmishing attacks by the Kozaks in the tzarskie army, and mining operations by the German engineers. The overwhelming forces and superior artillery which Ivan was able to bring against the city at length beat down the heroic defence, and the triumphant Moskovites put their stubborn and still resisting enemies to the sword. The Tzar is said to have been moved to tears at the sight of so many Tartar corpses; “they are not Christians,” he observed, “but yet they are men.” The reduction of Kazan was an event of the first importance in Russian annals. It marked an epoch. “The victory of Ivan the Terrible is the first great revenge of the vanquished over the vanquishers ... the first stage reached by European civilisation in taking the offensive towards Asia.”[142] Prudence suggested that Ivan should remain on the scene of his conquest until his authority over the neighbouring districts was assured; a desire to return to his capital in the full flush of triumph prompted him to disregard more solid considerations. He was still very young. The newly-acquired territory was therefore left under the united protection of the Christ, the Virgin, the Russian intercessory saints, and Aleksandr Shouyskie. Ivan, on his homeward way, received the welcome intelligence that his wife had given birth to a son, the Tzarevitch Dimitri, first of a series of Ivanovitches so named. The prolonged rejoicings, banquetings, and thanksgivings which ensued at Moskva were followed by a disagreeable sequel; Kazan, despite the august protection under which it had been left, rose in revolt, and the Russian ascendency was seriously imperilled. [Sidenote: 1553] The Tzar’s health at the same time broke alarmingly down, and another long minority seemed to threaten the State. The boyarins and princes, summoned to take an oath of allegiance to the infant Dimitri, showed a strong reluctance to bind themselves down in the manner required; the succession of Ivan’s child to the Tzardom would mean a Romanov regency and a repetition of the faction intrigues which had attended the early years of the present reign. Urii, the Tzar’s brother, appears to have been a weakling in mind and body, too feeble even to decorate with the divine attributes of monarch; in Vladimir Andreievitch, the Tzar’s first cousin, however, there existed a possible candidate for the throne, and even Silvestr and Adashev hesitated between the claims of the hereditary and collateral succession.