It does not appear that Ivan was yet prepared, even with this great armament, to risk his future objects by any hostile collision, so long as such an extremity could be averted by intrigue; for in the following year, when the anticipated march against Kazan was at last commenced, he suddenly paused in the midst of his course, although the result was almost certain.  Were it of much consequence, it would not be easy to decide the cause of this strange and abrupt proceeding; but it was evident that the soldiery were resolved not to return home without spoils.  They rushed onward to the city; and even the general, who was instructed by Ivan to countermand the attack, in vain attempted to restrain them.  With a leader of their own choosing, they fell upon Kazan, and utterly routed the inhabitants.  The Grand Prince, perceiving that the enemy was powerless, now no longer hesitated; but, engaging all the princes in his service, and throwing his own guards into the ranks, he despatched his colossal forces to reduce the already dismembered hold of the Tartars of Kazan.  The event was a complete victory, but Ivan remained safe at Moscow, to watch the issue of an undertaking which he could not reasonably have feared.

The subjugation of Kazan left the field clear for his designs upon the three domestic republics.  Vyatka, insolent in its own strength, declared itself neutral between Moscow and Kazan; and on the fall of the latter city, Novgorod, apprehensive that Ivan would turn his arms immediately against her, called upon the people of Pskof for aid, expressing her determination to march at once against the Grand Prince, in order to anticipate and avert his intentions.  The Novgorodians were the more determined upon this bold measure by the personal pusillanimity which Ivan betrayed in a war where the advantages lay entirely at his own side.  They calculated upon the terror they should inspire; and judged that if they could not succeed in vanquishing the Grand Prince, they should, at all events, be enabled to secure their own terms.  Marpha, a rich and influential woman, the widow of a posadnik, and who was enamoured of a Lithuanian chief, conceiving the romantic design of bestowing her country as a marriage dower upon her lover, exerted all her power to kindle the enthusiasm and assist the project of the citizens.  Her hospitality was unbounded.  She threw open her palace to the people; lavished her wealth among them in sumptuous entertainments and exhibitions, and caused the vetchooi kolokol ("assembling-bell"), which summoned the popular meetings to the market-place, to be rung as the signal of these orgies of licentiousness.  The great bell in Novgorod was the type of the republican independence of the citizens, and represented the excesses into which they were not unwilling to plunge whenever it was necessary to testify their sense of that wild liberty which they had established among themselves.  It was tolled on all occasions of a public nature, and the