The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

NOVGOROD. 333not all equal before the law, and while the " Whites," or privileged classes, wereat constant feud with each other, the "Blacks," or common herd, continued totoil for all. In the middle of the fifteenth century, when she had to defendherself against the growing Muscovite power, Novgorod rapidly lost her northeasternpossessions, too remote to be succoured, and at that time brought intorelationship with Muscovy through Ust-Yug and the course of the Vichegda.Then she fell herself, and henceforth her history became a long series ofcalamities. In 1471 her armies were overthrown by the Russians and Tatars ofMuscovy, aided by the jealous Pskov ; in 1478 the reche, or popular assembly, wasabolished, and the citizens forced to tender their allegiance to the MuscoviteFig. 177.Church near Novgorod, built under Ivan the Terrible.autocrat. Espionage now becomes an oig-anized institution, the suspected aremassacred, and a thousand families exiled in 1479 ;the murders are renewed, andover a thousand families again banished in 1497 ; and so it goes on till the nationis nearly exterminated and partly replaced by Muscovite colonists in the sixteenthcentury. But the place is still suspected by Ivan IV., who nowhere better thanhere earned for himself the title of " Terrible." If the annalist can be trusted," the most pious Czar " destroyed 60,000 persons in Novgorod ;for several weeksfrom 500 to 1,000 citizens were daily cast into the Volkhov ; the river wasdammed up by the corpses ; and, according to the tradition, the water never freezeson the site of these wholesale drownings.