text:  Then the frequent contests and varying fortunes of the principalities into which the country was divided--the invasions of the Tartar hordes under the successors of Chenjez Khan destroying every living thing and deliberately making a desert of every populous place that grass might more abound for their horses and their flocks--the long and weary domination of these desolating masters; the gradual relaxation of the iron gripe with which they crushed the country; the pomp and power of the Russian church even in the worst times of Tartar oppression; the first gathering together of the nation's strength as its spirit revived; the first great effort to cast off the load under which its loins had been breaking for more than two centuries and the desperate valour with which the Russians fought their first great battle for freedom and their faith and shook the Tartar supremacy under the brave and skilful Dimitri on the banks of the Don--the cautious wisdom and foresight with which he created an aristocracy to support the sovereignty he had made hereditary--the pertinacity with which in every change of fortune his successors worked out slowly and more by superior intelligence than by prowess the deliverance of their country--the final triumph of this wary policy under the warlike but consummately able and dexterous management of Ivan the Great--the rapidity and force with which the Muscovite power expanded when it had worn out and cast off the Tartar fetters that had bound it--the cautious and successful attempts of Ivan to take from the first a high place amongst the sovereigns of Europe--the progress in the arts of civilized life which was made in his reign--the accession of weight and authority which the sovereign power received from the prudent and dignified demeanour of his son and successor--the sanguinary tyranny with which Ivan IV