Morris, Charles
Stories
1
Chapters
39
Words
84.5 K
Comments
0
Reading
7 h, 2 m
Among the romantic characters of history none have attained higher celebrity than the hero of our present tale, whose remarkable adventure, often told in story, has been made immortal in Lord Byron's famous poem of "Mazeppa." Those who wish to read it in all its dramatic intensity must apply to the poem. Here it can only be given in plain prose. Mazeppa was a scion of a poor but noble Polish family, and became, while quite young, a page at the court of John Casimir, King of Poland. There he remained…- 84.5 K • Completed
- The return of Peter the Great from his European journey was marked by other events than his cruel revenge upon the rebellious Strelitz. That had affected only a few thousand people; the reforms he sought to introduce affected the nation at large. The Russians were then more Oriental than European in style, wearing the long caftan or robe of Persia and Turkey, which descended to their heels, while their beards were like those of the patriarchs, the man deeming himself most in honor who had the longest and…
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- History presents us with four instances of an imperial soldiery who took the power into their own hands and for a time ruled as the tyrants of a nation. These were the Pretorian Guards of Rome, the Mamelukes of Egypt, the Janissaries of Turkey, and the Strelitz of Russia. Of these, the Pretorian Guards remained pre-eminent, and made emperors at their will. The other three came to a terrible end. History elsewhere records the tragic fate of the Mamelukes and the Janissaries: we are here concerned only with…
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- On the banks of the river Zaan, about five miles from Amsterdam, lies the picturesque little town of Zaandam, with its cottages of blue, green, and pink, half hidden among the trees, while a multitude of windmills surround the town like so many monuments to thrift and enterprise. Here, two centuries ago, ship-building was conducted on a great scale, the timber being sawed by windmill power, while the workmen were so numerous that a vessel was often on the sea in five weeks after the keel had been…
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- Peter the Great, grandson of the first emperor of the Romanof line, was a man of such extraordinary power of body and mind, such a remarkable combination of common sense, mental activity, advanced ideas, and determination to lift Russia to a high place among the nations, with cruelty, grossness, and infirmities of vice and passion, that his reign of forty-three years fills as large a place in Russian history as do the annals of all the preceding centuries, and the progress of Russia during this short…
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- The noble families of Russia, for the most part descendants of the Scandinavian adventurers who had come in with Rurik, were as proud in their way as the descendants of the vikings who came to England under William of Normandy. Their books of pedigree were kept with the most scrupulous care, and in these were set down not only the genealogies of the families, but every office that had been held by any ancestor, at court, in the army, or in the administration. With this there is no special fault to be…
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- We have told how the ashes of Dmitri were loaded into a cannon and fired from the gate of Moscow. They fell like seeds of war on the soil of Russia, and for years that unhappy land was torn by faction and harried by invasion. From those ashes new Dmitris seemed to spring, other impostors rose to claim the crown, and until all these shades were laid peace fled from the land. Vassili Shuiski, the leader in the insurrection against Dmitri, had himself proclaimed czar. He was destined to learn the truth of…
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- On the 15th of May, 1591, five boys were playing in the court-yard of the Russian palace at Uglitch. With them were the governess and nurse of the principal child—a boy ten years of age—and a servant-woman. The child had a knife in his hand, with which he was amusing himself by thrusting it into the ground or cutting a piece of wood. Unluckily, the attention of the women for a brief interval was drawn aside. When the nurse looked at her charge again, to her horror she found him writhing on the…
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- In the year 1558 a family of wealthy merchants, Stroganof by name, began to barter with the Tartar tribes dwelling east of the Ural Mountains. Ivan IV. had granted to this family the desert districts of the Kama, with great privileges in trade, and the power to levy troops and build forts—at their own expense—as a security against the robbers who crossed the Urals to prey upon their settled neighbors to the west. In return the Stroganofs were privileged to follow their example in a more legal manner,…
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- In seeking examples of the excesses to which absolute power may lead, we usually name the wicked emperors of Rome, among whom Nero stands most notorious as a monster of cruelty. Modern history has but one Nero in its long lines of kings and emperors, and him we find in Ivan IV. of Russia, surnamed the Terrible. This cruel czar succeeded to the throne when but three years of age. In his early years he lived in a state of terror, being insulted and despised by the powerful nobles who controlled the power…
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