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The Imperial Orgy - An Account of the Tsars from the First to the Last
The Imperial Orgy - An Account of the Tsars from the First to the Last
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An excerpt from the beginning of:
THE IMPERIAL ORGY
IVAN THE TERRIBLE
TIMUR and Attila dwarf Ivan but not very much. In the fury with which Attila pounced on civilisation there is the impersonality of a cyclone. Timur was a homicidal maniac with unlimited power and a limitless area in which to be homicidal. Where he passed he left pyramids of human heads and towers made of prisoners mixed with mortar. Where Attila passed he left nothing.
Ivan turned cities into shambles and provinces into cemeteries. A cholera, corpses mounted about him. But death was the least of his gifts. He discovered Siberia. That was for later comers. For his immediate subjects he discovered something acuter. To them he was not cholera, he was providence.
From some he had the epidermis removed, after which they were flayed. Others he carved, a leg or an arm at a time, which he fed to hounds but seeing to it that the amputated were sustained with drink, that their vital organs were protected, seeing to it that they were tended, nursed, upheld, enabled as long as possible to look on at the feast of which their limbs were the courses. Others, tied in sacks, were trampled by maddened horses. But some danced to his piping. Put in cages they were burned alive.
The red quadrilles were invented not by him but by the dancing masters whom history called conquerors and who developed into kings. These beings were divine. They had the right to slay and crucify and they did crucify and slay those that wished to be free and those also that had disrespectful thoughts. To wish to be free was sacrilege. To be disrespectful was contrary to every law. In either case the penalty was death preceded by torture and what could be more reasonable? All men are mortal. To them all a divine providence dispensed the greatest possible variety of ills. Kings who were themselves divine imitated it all they could. It was in this manner that Ivan became a providence to his people.
Born in the early part of the sixteenth century and crowned when a lad, for nearly fifty years his sceptre was an axe. He killed, as hæmatomaniacs do kill, for the joy of it. Before killing he tortured. That also was a joy. It was not only a joy, it was his right. He possessed, in fee-simple, a sovereign monopoly of evil.
To-day it seems incredible. There is something that exceeds it. To his quivering people he was a god, a god to be feared as divinity should be, but also to be adored. In life a mythological monster and in death a satyr, he was beloved. That is the incredible. It is also irrefutable. Karamsin, the historian of the early tsars, states it with pride. His statement annalists of the day confirm. When Ivan died, the nation in its entirety, not excepting the children of his victims, put on sackcloth and ashes. The horrors of his reign had fascinated Muscovy to the point of insanity.
In the history of Western Europe there is no parallel for his atrocities, nor is there any for the servility with which they were endured. In considering that abjection one cannot but conjecture that his subjects were insane. Perhaps they were. The acceptance of atrociousness is as insane as its perpetration. None the less and assuming the insanity of all concerned, Ivan had a purpose. That purpose he achieved. He put a seal on Russia, the seal imperial which was blood-red.
Russia then was Cimmerian. Ages earlier, to poets who had not been there, it was a land where gnomes fought for gold with griffons in the dark. The poetry tempted adventure. Triremes entered the Euxine, beyond whose hither coast the gold was rumoured to be. It must have gone, the goblins with it. Instead were whelps of demons that clothed themselves in human skins and who, through gaps of time, vanished utterly. It was forgotten that they had been. They were but brooding. In septentrional fens they lurked, separating and segregating into clans affiliated and yet distinct.
Ultimately, from the White Sea to the Black, a horde descended. They called themselves Slav, a word that means glory. The territory that they occupied was outside of Europe, outside of the world. Unknown, it had no name. It was not until the ninth century that it got one. The Slavs, meanwhile, might have been content to continue to be, had not the scenario of events prevented. Unknown, they were unmolested, consequently they fought among themselves, fought in fights internecine and therefore the fiercer, from which the victors emerged masters and the vanquished slaves. Masters are not necessarily amiable. These also fought and for the very human reason that each wanted to lead....
THE IMPERIAL ORGY
IVAN THE TERRIBLE
TIMUR and Attila dwarf Ivan but not very much. In the fury with which Attila pounced on civilisation there is the impersonality of a cyclone. Timur was a homicidal maniac with unlimited power and a limitless area in which to be homicidal. Where he passed he left pyramids of human heads and towers made of prisoners mixed with mortar. Where Attila passed he left nothing.
Ivan turned cities into shambles and provinces into cemeteries. A cholera, corpses mounted about him. But death was the least of his gifts. He discovered Siberia. That was for later comers. For his immediate subjects he discovered something acuter. To them he was not cholera, he was providence.
From some he had the epidermis removed, after which they were flayed. Others he carved, a leg or an arm at a time, which he fed to hounds but seeing to it that the amputated were sustained with drink, that their vital organs were protected, seeing to it that they were tended, nursed, upheld, enabled as long as possible to look on at the feast of which their limbs were the courses. Others, tied in sacks, were trampled by maddened horses. But some danced to his piping. Put in cages they were burned alive.
The red quadrilles were invented not by him but by the dancing masters whom history called conquerors and who developed into kings. These beings were divine. They had the right to slay and crucify and they did crucify and slay those that wished to be free and those also that had disrespectful thoughts. To wish to be free was sacrilege. To be disrespectful was contrary to every law. In either case the penalty was death preceded by torture and what could be more reasonable? All men are mortal. To them all a divine providence dispensed the greatest possible variety of ills. Kings who were themselves divine imitated it all they could. It was in this manner that Ivan became a providence to his people.
Born in the early part of the sixteenth century and crowned when a lad, for nearly fifty years his sceptre was an axe. He killed, as hæmatomaniacs do kill, for the joy of it. Before killing he tortured. That also was a joy. It was not only a joy, it was his right. He possessed, in fee-simple, a sovereign monopoly of evil.
To-day it seems incredible. There is something that exceeds it. To his quivering people he was a god, a god to be feared as divinity should be, but also to be adored. In life a mythological monster and in death a satyr, he was beloved. That is the incredible. It is also irrefutable. Karamsin, the historian of the early tsars, states it with pride. His statement annalists of the day confirm. When Ivan died, the nation in its entirety, not excepting the children of his victims, put on sackcloth and ashes. The horrors of his reign had fascinated Muscovy to the point of insanity.
In the history of Western Europe there is no parallel for his atrocities, nor is there any for the servility with which they were endured. In considering that abjection one cannot but conjecture that his subjects were insane. Perhaps they were. The acceptance of atrociousness is as insane as its perpetration. None the less and assuming the insanity of all concerned, Ivan had a purpose. That purpose he achieved. He put a seal on Russia, the seal imperial which was blood-red.
Russia then was Cimmerian. Ages earlier, to poets who had not been there, it was a land where gnomes fought for gold with griffons in the dark. The poetry tempted adventure. Triremes entered the Euxine, beyond whose hither coast the gold was rumoured to be. It must have gone, the goblins with it. Instead were whelps of demons that clothed themselves in human skins and who, through gaps of time, vanished utterly. It was forgotten that they had been. They were but brooding. In septentrional fens they lurked, separating and segregating into clans affiliated and yet distinct.
Ultimately, from the White Sea to the Black, a horde descended. They called themselves Slav, a word that means glory. The territory that they occupied was outside of Europe, outside of the world. Unknown, it had no name. It was not until the ninth century that it got one. The Slavs, meanwhile, might have been content to continue to be, had not the scenario of events prevented. Unknown, they were unmolested, consequently they fought among themselves, fought in fights internecine and therefore the fiercer, from which the victors emerged masters and the vanquished slaves. Masters are not necessarily amiable. These also fought and for the very human reason that each wanted to lead....
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