Czar Ivan IV, the TerribleCzar Ivan IV, the Terrible, emerged from a serious illness when he was twenty-three years old. He was given to bouts of random and spectacular brutality and to tearing clumps of his hair out until his scalp bled. He also specialized in ingenious deaths for his enemies; when the archbishop of Novgorod was suspected of organizing an uprising against him, Ivan had the entire population, about 50,000 people, massacred by tossing them into a freezing river. He then had the archbishop sewn into a bearskin and hunted to death by a pack of hounds. When he later conquered Withenstein he had the defeated Finish leader roasted live on a spit. He died, however, playing chess.
From The Giant Bathroom Reader
3 comments:
The history of the Tzars is amazing. You would think that they would not have lasted so long. I highly recommend a little study of these rulers.
The Tzars were definitely interesting people full of quirks and often extreme violence.
But best not to be their subject (serf!)
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