History of the Russian State, Vol. 9

A.D. 1560 — 1561.

— the latter in the guise of justice, claiming that all its martyrs were traitors, sorcerers, and enemies of Christ and Russia; then he would humbly confess before God and men, calling himself a vile murderer of the innocent, ordering prayers for them in holy churches, yet comforting himself with the hope that sincere repentance would be his salvation and that he, having laid aside his earthly greatness, would in time become an exemplary monk in the peaceful Abbey of St. Cyril of Beloozero original: "(38)"! So wrote Ivan to Prince Andrey Kurbsky and to the heads of his favorite monasteries, as testimony that the voice of an inexorable conscience troubled the murky sleep of his soul, preparing it for a sudden, terrible awakening in the grave!

Let us leave the horrors of tyranny for a time, in order to follow the course of state affairs, in which Ivan’s natural intelligence was still visible like a ray of light amidst dark clouds.

Livonian War.

Our successes in the Livonian War concluded with a strong, decisive blow. The Sovereign (in the year 1560) sent yet another army to Dorpat, 60,000 cavalry and infantry, 40 siege guns and 50 field guns, with the most notable Voivodes, Princes Ivan Mstislavsky and Pyotr Shuisky, in order to take Fellin without fail, the main defense of Livonia, where the former Master Fürstenberg had taken refuge.