The first tsar of Russia
In 1223, the Mongols attacked the Rus' principalities, the predecessors of Tsarist Russia, killing 6 Rus' princes in the war and promising the Rus' to surrender and avoid death.
When the Rus' surrendered, the Mongol army reneged on its promise and killed all the princes and soldiers who surrendered. Since then, the Rus' principalities have been placed under the rule of the Mongol Empire. After the Mongol Empire was divided into four khanates, the Golden Horde continued to rule the Rus' Principality.
In the 14th century, with the fall of the Yuan Dynasty and the decline of the Mongol Empire, the Rus' principalities gradually began to take ownership.
In the 200 years between the 13th and 15th centuries, the Golden Horde and the Rus' Principalities each underwent a fundamental change, not first and foremost in strength but in faith.
When the Ottoman Empire attacked Constantinople in 1453, the Eastern Roman Pope, who had been left with an isolated city, married Princess Sophia, the daughter of the last Byzantine Emperor, to Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow. The Russians were simply not able to confront the Ottoman Empire and watched the fall of Eastern Rome.
However, Ivan III believed that by marrying a Byzantine princess, he would inherit the Eastern Roman Empire and be considered orthodoxy of Orthodoxy. Thus he called himself "the only Tsar of Christianity", and the Tsar came from the Greek word for "TSAR", or Caesar.
At this time, the Tsar was nothing more than the title of the Grand Duke of Moscow for his own amusement, no one took him seriously, and Russia did not exist.
In 1480, the Golden Horde reached an agreement with Lithuania, the most powerful state in Eastern Europe at the time, to attack Mosros, but Lithuania was not involved in many considerations, so the Golden Horde withdrew its troops, and the Rus' states became independent from then on.
When Ivan III fell ill in 1500, Vasily, the son of Princess Sophia, usurped the throne, he continued to attack Lithuania, and the former power of Lithuania lost a third of its territory and began to decline.
The Golden Horde collapsed in 1502. The strong enemies around Ross disappeared.
After vasily III's death, he was succeeded by his 3-year-old son Ivan III' grandson, Ivan IV. Ivan IV has many nicknames in Russian history, such as "Ivan the Terrible", the most famous of which is "Ivan the Terrible", and the most powerful bomb in human history is also named "Ivan Bomb" because of people's fear of it.
Horror Ivan
In 1533, ivan IV, 3, succeeded to the throne with his mother, a descendant of the Golden Horde, which is also important evidence that Ukrainians and Belarusians believe that Russians are descendants of Mongols;
In 1543, Ivan IV, five years after his mother's death, had his protector, Shuysky, bite the dog to death;
In 1546, Ivan IV was proclaimed Tsar, unlike his grandfather Ivan III, who became the true Tsar of Russia with his father and mother's war against the Rus' states;
Between 1565 and 1572, at the height of Ivan IV's internal integration of the state, about 4,000 great nobles were killed;
In the process of unifying the Rus' states, the means were extremely brutal, and the Duchy of Novgorod was slaughtered because of its republican tendencies, and the kazan Khanate was slaughtered as a whole;
He even strangled an Orthodox bishop and personally beat the prince to death, his own son; there were so many people around the pillow that he executed most of them.
Ivan the Terrible did a series of unhurried things, and the world's nobles, the people, the enemy countries, and even his relatives felt fear, so he got such a name.
But on the other hand, the Russian historical record records that after killing his son Prince Ivan by mistake, he completely stopped killing and spent his sad old age in loneliness.
If Ivan IV had really been cold and murderous by nature, he would not have regretted what he had done.
So why would he want to be such a brutal monarch if he had infinite remorse for his cruelty?
Behind the loneliness and coldness:
In the winter of 1564, Ivan IV abruptly left Moss pediatrica with his family and went to live in a village near the capital, and had a letter returning: "Because I cannot tolerate the betrayal around me, I no longer govern the country, but follow the path god has shown." This was the last year before Ivan IV began "mode of terror", and after he left, Moscow was in a panic, and the archbishop had to grant him the power to "execute anyone", and then he returned to Moscow.
He then embarked on radical reforms of Russia, forming a special army that was absolutely loyal to the Tsar and ruthless and arbitrary to his subjects. But in the process, the great feudal lords fell one after another, and while the opponents were defeated one by one, Russia finally achieved unification and began to truly exist as a decent state.
Ivan the Terrible was not obsessed with power, paradoxically, he gave the condition that he would either renounce his power himself or want to establish a strong Tsarist imperial power.
Speaking of this, many people may think of Qin Shi Huang. The First Emperor used to sweep through the Six Kingdoms, with mountains of bones and books burning. Because of his various deeds, the scolding of this great emperor by future generations has never stopped.
Ivan IV faced a problem somewhat similar to that faced by Qin Shi Huang, who would wage endless wars if the power of the Russian principalities could not be weakened, if the nobles could not be driven away from their fiefdoms. At that time, even if it is a war, there will probably be more than 4,000 casualties. Ivan IV, with the lives of 4,000 nobles, stopped the power struggle within Russia.
Family reasons also affect his inner world
The "Chronicle of History" records that Qin Shi Huang's mother and Concubine Yi were in league, and Qin Shi Huang killed two babies and exiled his mother Zhao Ji. Someone persuaded with the love of mother and son that Qin Shi Huang killed 27 people in a row.
The massacre that occurred in the Palace of the Qin King more than 2,000 years ago was essentially produced by Qin Shi Huang in order to eliminate the two major power groups of Lü Buwei and the Empress Dowager. If the two major forces are allowed to compete, the Qin state may collapse from within sooner or later.
Ivan IV's new journey is also similar to that of Qin Shi Huang, and the special circumstances of his family have pushed him to become "Ivan the Terrible".
He lost his father at the age of 3 and integrated the great cause; his mother was ostracized by the nobility when she was regent; he lost his mother at the age of 8, and the forces of all parties took great harm to him for their own interests.
In this case, Ivan IV did not trust anyone around him, and his methods were more cruel. Even the son he admired the most could be ruthless, just like Qin Shi Huang expelled Fu Su.