kan, and on the Crimean steppes, still lay along the frontiers of Muscovy. The Mongol tide, as it drew back to the high Asiatic plateaus, had left little pools on which waves were still rough and eddies threatening, but their onset was steadily weakening. Not an inch of Russian soil was now covered by the flood, which in these countries, as I have said, had never reached the proportions of an ocean. Russian conquest and Russian colonists had taken the offensive, were marching in the track of the old invaders, and penetrating further every year, almost every day, into the huge Finn-Tartar continent. Slowly but surely the Sovereigns of Moscow were widening their borders, and adding more and more vast spheres of influence to their possessions. Vassals once, they had now made themselves the suzerains of the nearest Khans, and Safa Ghireï, Khan of Kazan, paid them tribute.
In the Crimea, however, a new centre of Tartar domination had been established. This power, thanks to a political and military organization, modelled, on much stronger lines, after the old ones, had succeeded in recovering the fealty of the neighbouring khanates, and breaking the bonds which bound them in vassalage to Moscow. This began by being an annoyance, but it soon became a danger. In 1539, Khan Saïp-Ghireï, who had succeeded in getting a footing at Kazan, and had even garrisoned the place, attracted or welcomed Simon Biélski, then a fugitive, to his Court, and sent a message to Moscow which sounded like an echo of the imperious summons of the old days: 'I am going to march, and I do not march in secret. … I shall take thy lands, and if thou followest me, thou wilt not reach mine!' And an undertaking not to lay a finger on Kazan did not suffice the insolent aggressor; he demanded a promise of annual tribute—a return to the shame of the past. From 1539 to 1552, then, there was a struggle, the anguish of which tinctured the boyhood and youth of Ivan, and the details of which my readers will thank me for sparing them. At Kazan the partisans of Safa, and, later, of his son Outémich, a minor, strove with the Muscovite party, which, helped by the most famous warrior of that country, Boulat, succeeded in replacing Saïp's protégé by one of Ivan's, Schah-Ali, or Schig-Aleï. But Saïp, dragging Biélski in his train, and strengthening his forces with a Turkish contingent, and with muskets and heavy ordnance sent him by the Porte, ended by threatening Moscow itself. At that moment the question as to whether the young Tsar was to stay in his capital and bear his share in defending it, or not, was seriously discussed, and it was only thanks to the interference of the Metropolitan Jehosaphat that manly counsels prevailed. On such occasions Ivan's ancestors, even when they had reached a fighting age,
