Unfortunately for the history of the man, at this time his character seems to have undergone a second sudden change. His wife Anastasia died and the Tsar seems to have been seized with a crazy madness which led him to all sorts of atrocities. He banished the priests under whose good influence he had been for several years, and thought only of vengeance upon his enemies and the prosecution of wars abroad and suppression at home.
All his subjects were afraid of him and the treason of one of the princes, Andrew Kurbski, who seems to have been literally frightened into desertion to the Poles, led to the writing of a letter by Ivan which has been preserved and which is interesting as showing the tyrant's own estimate of his own acts. He dwells upon the degrading subjection in which he had been kept by his early advisers and attempts to justify his cruelty by saying that the people whom he had killed were only his slaves over whom God had given him the power of life and death. How like a czar!
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
