The poetic annalist says: "Alas! glorious city of Pskof--why this weeping and lamentation ?" Pskof replies: "How can I but weep and lament?
An eagle with claws like a lion has swooped down upon me.

He has captured my beauty, my riches, my children.

Our land is a desert! our city ruined.
Our brothers have been carried away to a place where our fathers never dwelt--nor our grandfathers--nor our great-grandfathers!" In the whole tragic story of Russia nothing is more pathetic and picturesque than the destruction of the two republics--Novgorod and Pskof.
By 1523 the last state had yielded, and the Muscovite absorption was complete.

There was but one Russia; and the head of the consolidated empire called himself not "Grand Prince of all the Russias," but _Tsar_.

When it is remembered that Tsar is only the Slavonic form for _Caesar_, it will be seen that the dream of the Varangian Princes had been in an unexpected way realized.