Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 2, 1851).djvu/93

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NOTES UPON RUSSIA.
65

discharged the guns which had been ranged in order against the Tartars and Lithuanians, and so terrified them that they all left the fortress and fled. The king sent Eustace, the contriver of the above plan, to remonstrate with the governor on account of the injury thus inflicted; but the latter declared that the bombardier had fired the guns without his consent or knowledge, and laid all the blame of the offence upon him; upon which the king demanded that the bombardier should be delivered up to him, and, as often occurs in desperate cases, the greatest number decided that the man by whom they had been delivered from the fear of their enemies should be given up. The governor, Ivan Kovar, alone refused, and by his extreme goodness that German was on that occasion saved; for it so happened that the king, either from impatience of further delay, or because he considered his soldiers already sufficiently encumbered with booty, and that his own interests required it, raised his camp, and departed for Taurida, leaving behind him in the fortress those letters of the Prince of Moscow by which he had bound himself to pay him a perpetual tribute. But he took with him from Moscow so great a multitude of prisoners as would scarcely be considered credible; they say that the number exceeded eight hundred thousand, part of whom he sold in Kaffa to the Turks, and part he slew.

The old and infirm men, who will not fetch much at a sale, are given up to the Tartar youths (much as hares are given to whelps by way of their first lesson in hunting), either to be stoned, or to be thrown into the sea, or to be killed by any sort of death they might please. Those who are sold are compelled to serve for full six years; after that they are set free, but dare not leave the province. Sapgirei, king of Kazan, sold all the captives which he took from Moscow to the Tartars in the mercantile city of Astrachan, which is situated not far from the mouths of the Volga.

After the departure of the Tartar kings from Moscow, the

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