In this difficulty Ivan had no choice left but to submit to the will of the country.  He accordingly convoked a meeting of the bishops and boyars for the purpose of asking their advice; but their counsel was even still more conclusive; and the reluctant Prince was compelled to rejoin the army.  The fear by which he was moved, however, could not be concealed, and it gradually infected the ranks of the soldiery.  He had no sooner taken his station at the head of the army than he became spellbound.  A river, the Lugra, divided him from the enemy; he could not summon courage to attempt it, but stood gazing in disastrous terror upon the foe, with whom he opened negotiations to beg for terms.  In the mean time the news of his indecision spread, and the people at Moscow grew turbulent.  The Primate, perceiving the disaffection that was springing up, addressed the Prince in the language of despair.  He represented to him the state of the public mind, and the inglorious procedure of suing for a peace where he could insure a victory and dictate his own terms.  “Would you,” exclaimed the Primate, “give up Russia to fire and sword, and the churches to plunder?  Whither would you fly?  Can you soar upward like the eagle?  Can you make your nest amid the stars?  The Lord will cast you down from even that asylum.  No! you will not desert us.  You would blush at the name of fugitive and traitor to your country!”

Ivan was surrounded by two hundred thousand soldiers; reenforcements were thronging constantly to his side; the enemy was cut off from all assistance from his ally of Lithuania; and one word of encouragement would have set all these advantages into action.  The troops only awaited the signal to rush upon the invaders; but Ivan, amid these flattering and animated circumstances, was dispirited.  Even the voice of the Church addressed him in vain.  He was utterly paralyzed; and cowardice had so completely taken possession of his mind that when the early winter had set in and frozen the river, so as to obliterate the obstacle that separated him from the troops of the Khan, he was seized with consternation, and fled in the wildest disorder from his position.  He was so alarmed that he could not even preserve any regularity on the retreat, and all was confusion and panic.

So disgraceful an abandonment of his duty, which in other times must have cost him his throne, if not his life, was not visited with that rigor by the Russians which so glaring a defection deserved.  The sovereign Prince was removed to too great a distance from the people to be judged of with precision or promptitude.  The motives of his acts were not accessible to the multitude, who, accustomed to despotism, had not yet learned to question the wisdom of their rulers.  The rapid advances that had been made toward the concentration of the governing power in the autocratical form, limited still more the means of popular observation and the vigor of the popular check upon the supreme authority.