At an audience to which he admitted an envoy, that officer, either wilfully or by accident, addressed him by the name of sovereign; and Ivan, instantly seizing upon the inadvertency, claimed all the privileges of an absolute master.  He required that the republic should surrender its expiring rights into his hands, and take a solemn oath of allegiance; that his boyars should be received within its gates, with full authority to exercise their almost irresponsible control over the city; that the palace of Yaroslaff, the temple of Novgorodian liberty, should be given up to his viceroy; that the forum should be abolished; and that the popular assemblies, and all the corresponding immunities of the people, should be abrogated forever.

The veil was dropped too suddenly.  The citizens were not prepared for so abrupt and uncompromising an assertion of authority.  Hitherto they had admitted the innovations of the Grand Prince, but it was of their own free will.  They did not expect that he would ground any right of sovereignty upon their voluntary acquiescence in his character of arbitrator and ally; and the news of his despotic claim filled them with despair and indignation.  The great bell, which had formerly been the emblem of their citizenship, now tolled for the last time.  They assembled in the market-place in tumultuous crowds, and summoning the treacherous or imprudent envoy before them, they tried him by a clamorous and summary process, and, before the sentence was completed, tore him limb from limb.  Believing that some of the nobles were accessory to the surrender of their freedom, they fell upon those they suspected, and murdered them in the streets, thus hastening, and confirming by their intemperance, the final alienation of the wealthy classes from their cause; and having by these acts of unbridled desperation given the last demonstrations of their independence, they once more threw themselves into the arms of Lithuania, which were open to receive them.

But Ivan was prepared for this demonstration of passion.  His measures were too deeply taken to suffer surprise by any course which the Novgorodians, in their righteous hatred of oppression, might think fit to adopt.  When he learned the reception they gave to his mandate, he affected the most painful astonishment.  He declared that he alone was the party aggrieved, that he alone was deceived; that they had laid snares for his counsel and countenance; and that even when, yielding to their universal requisition, he had consented to take upon him the toils of government, they had the audacity to confront him with an imposition in the face of Russia, to shed the blood of their fellow-men, and to insult heaven and the empire by calling into the sacred limits the soldiers of an adverse religion and a foreign power.  These ingenious remonstrances were addressed to the priests, the nobles, and the people, and had the desired effect.  The bishops embarked zealously in the crusade, and the people