There was work for the executioner and. his scaffold. He was not to enjoy many idle hours in future. Feodor Vorontsov and one of his cousins lost their heads. Other presumed accomplices took their way into exile.
Zakharov may not have been the sole author of this catastrophe. In the Sovereign's intimate surroundings a man had already appeared, whose character and career a whole school of history has delighted to idealize, associating therewith a brilliant period in the new reign, which, thanks to his influence, according to its view, was freed from bloody excess, and stuffed with noble effort and glorious exploits. Alexis Adachev, a man of humble origin, who had been in the Sovereign's household since the year 1543, was borne on the Court registers as one of the officers of the bedchamber, 'makers of the bed.' I shall endeavour, later, to define this man's character and the part he played.
Towards the end of this same year, 1546, Ivan was to affirm his emancipation in yet more decisive fashion. On December 17 the news ran through Moscow that the Grand Duke had resolved to marry, and to marry a daughter of the soil.
III.—Marriage and Coronation.
This resolution was probably not so sudden as it has generally been taken to have been. As early as 1543 an embassy had been sent into Poland; Feodor Ivanovitch Soukine and Istoma Stoianov, the envoys, were desired to let it be understood that the Prince was old enough to look about for a wife (Bantich-Kamiénski, Correspondance Diplomatique, Lectures de la Société d'Histoire, 1860, p. 72). Other attempts of the same nature would appear to have been made, and it was only after many failures that Ivan’s pride bowed to the necessity of an alliance that would not revive the tradition of Jaroslav. He was resolved, at all events, to make up for his discomfiture to some extent. The day after that on which his decision had been announced, a Te Deum was sung in the Cathedrai of the Assumption, and after it, Ivan, calling his boïars together, announced that he intended to be crowned likewise, and this, not like his predecessors, as Grand Duke, but under the title of Tsar, to which they had hitherto made no formal claim.
Tsar, Emperor—the two titles were synonymous in the language of the country, though the first, indeed, had lost caste owing to the discredit brought on it, amidst the dismemberment of the Mongol power, by the crowd of Tartar princelets—some of them tributaries to Moscow, or mere heads of provinces in her pay—who had assumed it. Yet the lords of ancient
