He was succeeded by his son Theodore, or Feodor, as the Russians call him, who held the reigns of power for fourteen years, up to 1598. He was a weak prince, controlled by a council of nobles, the head of which was his brother-in-law, Boris Gudunof. He was old enough to reign as an autocrat as his father had done before him, but he was a harmless imbecile whose greatest pleasure from early childhood had been to hide in church towers and ring the bells at inopportune hours. His kinsman, Boris, began immediately to plot his ruin, but was deterred from doing away with him by the fact that should Feodor die, another son of Ivan IV named Dimitri, a son of his seventh wife, would still be in line.
One day in May, 1591, this lad was found with his throat cut in the courtyard of the royal palace. The imbecility of Feodor offering no obstacle to the actual rule by Boris, he was allowed to live until seven years after, when he died, probably, a natural death. He was the last of the line of Rurik, a house which for eight hundred years had reigned and had given fifty-two sovereigns to the empire.
Previous article Next article
From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
