If its tongue should speak, if its clarion call should ring out once more, perhaps there might come from the shades a countless host of her martyred dead--"Whose names, Almighty, thou knowest." Ivan then proceeded to wreck the prosperity of the richest commercial city in his empire.

Its trade was enormous with the East and the West.

It had joined the Hanseatic League, and its wealth was largely due to the German merchants who had flocked there.

With singular lack of wisdom, the Tsar had confiscated the property of these men, and now the ruin of the city was complete.
While Germany, and Poland, and Sweden,--resolved to shut up Russia in her barbaric isolation,--were locking the front door on the Baltic and the Gulf, England had found a side door by which to enter.

With great satisfaction Ivan saw English traders coming in by way of the White Sea, and he extended the rough hand of his friendship to Queen Elizabeth, who made with him a commercial treaty, which was countersigned by Francis Bacon.