War with Poland seems to have been the chronic state of Russia.  Whenever either party could get a chance to strike the other a blow, the blow was sure to be given; and they were alike unscrupulous whether it were a saber blow in the face or a dagger thrust in the back.  In the year 1571, a Russian army pursued a discomfited band of Livonian insurgents across the frontier into Poland.  The Poles eagerly joined the insurgents, and sent envoys to invite the Crimean Tartars to invade Russia from Tauride, while Poland and Livonia should assail the empire from the west.  The Tartars were always ready for war at a moment’s notice.  Seventy thousand men were immediately on the march.  They rapidly traversed the southern provinces, trampling down all opposition until they reached the Oka.  Here they encountered a few Russian troops who attempted to dispute the passage of the stream.  They were, however, speedily overpowered by the Tartars and were compelled to retreat.  Pressing on, they arrived within sixty miles of the city, when they found the Russians again concentered, but now in large numbers, to oppose their progress.  A fierce battle was fought.  Again the Russians were overpowered, and the Tartars, trampling them beneath their horses’ hoofs, with yells of triumph, pressed on towards the metropolis.  The whole city was in consternation, for it had no means of effectual resistance.  Ivan IV. in his terror packed up his most valuable effects, and, with the royal family, fled to a strong fortress far away in the North.

From the battlements of the city, the banners of these terrible barbarians were soon seen on the approach.  With bugle blasts and savage shouts they rushed in at the gates, swept the streets with their sabers, pillaged houses and churches, and set the city on fire in all directions.  The city was at that time, according to the testimony of the cotemporary annalists, forty miles in circumference.  The weltering flames rose and fell as in the crater of a volcano, and in six hours the city was in ashes.  Thousands perished in the flames.  The fire, communicating with a powder magazine, produced an explosion which uphove the buildings like an earthquake, and prostrated more than a third of a mile of the city walls.  According to the most reliable testimony, there perished in Moscow, by fire and sword, from this one raid of the Tartars, more than one hundred and fifty thousand of its inhabitants.

The Tartars, tottering beneath the burden of their spoil, and dragging after them many thousand prisoners of distinction, slowly, proudly, defiantly retired.  With barbaric genius they sent to the tzar a naked cimiter, accompanied by the following message: 

“This is a token left to your majesty by an enemy, whose revenge is still unsatiated, and who will soon return again to complete the work which he has but just begun.”

Such is war.  It is but a succession of miseries.  A hundred and fifty thousand Tartars perished but a few months before in the waves of the Euxine.  Now, a hundred and fifty thousand Russians perish, in their turn, amidst the flames of Moscow.  When we contemplate the wars which have incessantly ravaged this globe, the history of man seems to be but the record of the strifes of demons, with occasional gleams of angel magnanimity.