Ivan listened with much apparent indifference to this pathetic address, and either really felt, or affected, great reluctance again to resume the cares of royalty.  He requested a day’s time to consider their proposal.  The next morning the nobles were again convened, and Ivan acquainted them with his decision.  Rebuking them with severity for their ingratitude, reproaching them with the danger to which his life had been exposed through their conspiracy, he declared that he could not again assume the cares and the perils of the crown.  Still his refusal was not so decisive as to exclude all room for further entreaties.  They renewed their supplications with tears, for Russia was, indeed, exposed to all the horrors of civil war, should Ivan persist in his resolve, and it was certain that the empire, thus distracted, would at once be invaded by both Poles and Turks.

Thus importuned, Ivan at last consented to return to the Kremlin.  He resolved, however, to make an example of those who had conspired against him, which should warn loudly against the renewal of similar attempts.  The principal movers in the plot were executed.  Ivan then surrounded himself with a body guard of two hundred men carefully selected from the distant provinces, and who were in no way under the influence of any of the lords.  This body guard, composed of low-born, uneducated men, incapable of being roused to any high enthusiasm, subsequently proved quite a nuisance.

Ivan IV. had but just resumed his seat upon the throne when couriers from the southern provinces brought the alarming intelligence that an immense army of combined Tartars and Turks had invaded the empire and were on the rapid march, burning and destroying all before them.  Selim, the son and successor of Solyman the Magnificent, entered into an alliance with several oriental princes, who were to send him succors by the way of the Caspian Sea, and raised an army of three hundred thousand men.  These troops were embarked at Constantinople, and, crossing the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof, entered Tauride.  Here they were joined by a reinforcement of Crimean Tartars, consisting of forty thousand well-armed and veteran fighters.  With this force the sultan marched directly across the country to the Russian city and province of Astrachan, at the mouth of the Volga.

But a heroic man, Zerebrinow, was in command of the fortresses in this remote province of the Russian empire.  He immediately assembled all his available troops, and, advancing to meet the foe, selected his own ground for the battle in a narrow defile where the vast masses of the enemy would only encumber each other.  Falling upon the invaders unexpectedly from ambuscades, he routed the Turks with great carnage.  They were compelled to retreat, having lost nearly all their baggage and heavy artillery.  The triumphant Russians pursued them all the way back to the city of Azof, cannonading them with the artillery and the ammunition they had wrested from their foes.  Here the Turks attempted to make a final stand, but a chance shot from one of the guns penetrated the immense powder magazine, and an explosion so terrific ensued that two thirds of the city were entirely demolished.