At the same time he wrote to the Czar that his poor Cossacks,
proscribed, troubled in conscience and given up to repentance, had
braved death to reunite a vast state to Russia, in the name of Christ
and of their great monarch, for ages upon ages and for as long a time as
it might please God to prolong the existence of the universe. "They
awaited," he added, "the orders of the Russian waywodes, to whom they
were ready to deliver over the kingdom of Siberia, without any sort of
condition, disposed to die for glory or upon a scaffold, according as it
should please God and their master." Charged with this missive, the
second of the leaders, John Koltzo, first companion of Iermak in the
combats and in the councils, departed for Moscow, where he had been
condemned to severe punishment as a state criminal, without fearing the
solemn decree which threatened his life.
Here we anticipate a question which seems natural enough. In announcing
so late his successes to the Stroganoffs, did not Iermak, influenced by
the easy conquest of Siberia, think, as some historians suppose, of
reigning independently over that country? Although conqueror, his forces
were diminishing every day, and was not the need of aid the only and
true motive for his bearing toward Ivan? But how can it be imagined that
this prudent leader should not have foreseen, at the beginning of his
expedition, that a handful of rash men, abandoned by Russia, would in
three or four years have been annihilated by battles or diseases; that
in a rigorous climate they would succumb amid deserts and thick forests,
impenetrable refuges of a savage and fierce population, whom fire-arms
only could force to pay tribute to strangers? It is more probable that,
not having been an eye-witness of the facts, the annalist established
upon hypothesis the order in which they succeeded each other.
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