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In the year 1580, the wealthy family of the Stroganoffs, tempted by stories of the wealth to be gained from the fur-bearing animals of Siberia, turned their thoughts to Jermak and his robber band as the readiest tools for the conquest of those plains. The enterprise appealed to Jermak and the hardy Cossacks with whom he had to do.
Long-boats were laden with munitions of war and food, light artillery and long arquebuses. He procured guides, interpreters, priests, had prayers said, and received the final instructions of the Stroganoffs. The latter were conceived in the following terms: "Go in peace to scour the country of Siberia and put to flight the impious Kutchum."
This expedition was even made without the knowledge of the Czar, for the Stroganoffs, who had obtained the grant of the countries situated on the other side of the chain of rocky mountains, thought themselves able to dispense with soliciting of the Czar a new sanction for their important enterprise. We shall see that Ivan did not share this opinion.
The crime of these depredations was laid to the Stroganoffs. Upon a report of Basile Pilepitsin, Governor of Tcherdin, Ivan wrote him that he was either unable on unwilling to look after the frontiers. "You have taken upon yourself," he added, "to recall proscribed Cossacks, true bandits, whom you have sent to make war upon Siberia.
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?
In fine, after having made provisions of arms and of food, the Stroganoffs openly announced an expedition, which, under the orders of Iermak, should have Siberia for its objective point. The number of fighting men amounted to eight hundred forty, all animated with zeal and transported with joy. Some dreamed of honor, others thought of the spoils.
He destroyed the Russian colonies near Tcherdin, Ussolie, as well as many other new fortresses of the Stroganoffs, and put to death or dragged into captivity a great number of Christians who were deprived of defenders. But at the news of the march of the Cossacks against Siberia he left our frontiers to fly to the defence of his own states.
Later on, when Alexei Mikhailovitch, the father of Peter the Great, established a new code, grading punishments and fines by classes, the highest money tax assessed for insult and injury was fifty rubles; but the Stroganoffs were empowered to exact one hundred rubles.
It was a mere handful of their Kazaks, led by Yermak Timofeevitch, who conquered Siberia, in 1581, under Ivan the Terrible, while engaged in repelling the incursions of the Tatars and wild Siberian tribes on the fortified towns which the Stroganoffs had been authorized to erect on the vast territory at the western foot of the Ural Mountains, conveyed to them by the ancient Tzars.
This success was the forerunner of more considerable advantages. The Stroganoffs had in view not merely the defence of their cities, in calling the Cossacks to their service.
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