And now domestic griefs came to darken the palace of Ivan.  For thirteen years he had enjoyed all the happiness which conjugal love can confer.  Anastasia was still in the brilliance of youth and beauty, when she was attacked by dangerous sickness.  As she was lying upon her couch, helpless and burning with fever, the cry of fire was heard.  The day was excessively hot; the windows of the palace all open, and a drouth of several weeks made every thing dry as tinder.  The conflagration commenced in an adjoining street, and, in a moment, volumes of flame and smoke were swept by the wind, enveloping the Kremlin, and showering upon it and into it, innumerable flakes of fire.  The queen was thrown into a paroxysm of terror; the attendants hastily placed her upon a litter and bore her, almost suffocated, through the blazing streets out of the city, to the village of Kolomensk.  The emperor then returned to assist in arresting the conflagration.  He exposed himself like a common laborer, inspiring others with intrepidity by mounting ladders, carrying water and opposing the flames in the most dangerous positions.  The conflagration proved awful in its ravages, many of the inhabitants perishing in the flames.

This calamitous event was more than the feeble frame of Anastasia could endure.  She rapidly failed, and on the 7th of August, 1560, she expired.  The grief of Ivan was heartrending, and never was national affliction manifested in a more sincere and touching manner.  Not only the whole court, but almost the entire city of Moscow, followed the remains of Anastasia to their interment.  Many, in the bitterness of their grief, sobbed aloud.  The most inconsolable were the poor and friendless, calling Anastasia by the name of mother.  The anguish of Ivan for a time quite unmanned him, and he wept like a child.  The loss of Anastasia did indeed prove to Ivan the greatest of earthly calamities.  She had been his guardian angel, his guide to virtue.  Having lost his guide, he fell into many errors from which Anastasia would have preserved him.

In the course of a few months, either the tears of Ivan were dried up, or political considerations seemed to render it necessary for him to seek another wife.  Notwithstanding the long hereditary hostility which had existed between Russia and Poland, perhaps in consequence of it, Ivan made proposals for a Polish princess, Catharine, sister of Sigismond Augustus, the king.  The Poles demanded, as an essential item in the marriage contract, that the children of Catharine should take the precedence of those of Anastasia as heirs to the throne.  This iniquitous demand the tzar rejected with the scorn it merited.  The revenge in which the Poles indulged was characteristic of the rudeness of the times.  The court of Augustus sent a white mare, beautifully caparisoned, to Ivan, with the message, that such a wife he would find to be in accordance with his character and wants.  The outrageous insult incensed Ivan to the highest degree, and he vowed that the Poles should feel the weight of his displeasure.  Catharine, in the meantime, was married to the Duke of Finland, who was brother to the King of Sweden, and whose sister was married to the King of Denmark.  Thus the three kingdoms of Poland, Sweden and Denmark, and the Duchy of Finland were strongly allied by matrimonial ties, and were ready to combine against the Russian emperor.