The following year, 1481, Ivan had sufficiently recovered to show the courage he possessed. There was a disturbance in Novgorod, where the people did not appreciate the nobility of his character. He ordered some of the boyards to be tortured and put to death, and _eight thousand_ citizens were forcibly packed off to Souzdal.
In fear of his doughty enemy Akhmet, Ivan made friends with the Khan of the Crimea, calculating that if the former should attack him again, he would have to look out for his rear. Akhmet, however, seemed to have had enough of it, and Ivan, who was on bad terms with Lithuania and Poland, suggested to his friend that a raid into those territories might pay. The Khan of the Crimea took the hint; he penetrated as far as Kief which he captured and pillaged. (1482.) The famous monastery of the Catacombs was almost destroyed; but Ivan had the (p. 103) satisfaction of knowing that his two enemies had other things to think of, instead of annoying him.
In 1487 war broke out with Kazan. A Russian army marched against it, but Ivan did not take command. As a result, the city was taken and the khan, who had assumed the title of czar, was brought a prisoner to Moscow. Fearing that he would unite the other Tartars against him if he annexed the territory at once, he appointed a nephew of his friend, the Khan of the Crimea, but placed Russian soldiers in the fortress, while he added the title of Prince of Bulgaria to his own. Other Tartar princes sent envoys to protest against the arrest. Ivan did not receive them in person, and refused to release the prisoner, but he ordered the envoys to be treated with great honor and gave them so many presents, that they returned in great good humor.
In 1492, the King of Poland died, leaving that kingdom to his eldest son Albert, and Lithuania to his second son Alexander. Ivan was justly indignant that he had not been remembered in the will. He sent envoys to Bajazet II, Sultan of Turkey, to the Kings of Hungary and Moldavia, and to his old friend the Khan of the Crimea, to secure their assistance or at least their kind neutrality. Of the services of the Khan of the Crimea he felt assured.
He began by discovering a Polish plot against his life at Moscow, and appealed to the religious prejudices of the Lithuanian nobles belonging to the Greek Church, omitting to mention his little arrangement with the infidel sultan. When Alexander sent envoys to negotiate terms of peace, Ivan's deputies said to them: "Lithuania (p. 104) has profited by the misfortunes of Russia to take our territory, but to-day things are changed." They were right. When peace was concluded in 1494, Ivan's frontier in the west was extended.