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Updated: May 14, 2025
Two men, however, in concert with Hélène, soon took the reins of government into their own hands. One of these was a sturdy, ambitious old noble, Michel Glinsky, an uncle of Hélène; the other was a young and handsome prince, Ivan Telennef, who was suspected of tender liaisons with his royal mistress.
Sigismond, King of Poland, taking advantage of the general discontent of the Russians under the sway of Hélène, formed an alliance with the horde upon the lower waters of the Don, and invaded Russia, burning and destroying with mercilessness which demons could not have surpassed. Prince Telennef headed an army to repel them. The pen wearies in describing the horrors of these scenes.
The audacious noble, though president of the council, was immediately arrested under an accusation of treason, and was thrown into a dungeon, where, soon after, he was assassinated. A reign of terror now commenced, and imprisonment and death awaited all those who undertook in any way to thwart the plans of Hélène and Telennef.
A week passed away, during which time parties were forming and conspiracies ripening, while Telennef was desperately endeavoring to retain that power which he had so despotically wielded in conjunction with his royal mistress. The prince Vassili Schouisky, who had occupied the first place in the councils of Vassili, opened the drama.
Michel Glinsky, indignant at the shameful intimacy evidently existing between Hélène and Telennef, ventured to remonstrate with the regent boldly and earnestly, assuring her that the eyes of the court were scrutinizing her conduct, and that such vice, disgraceful anywhere, was peculiarly hideous upon a throne, where all looked for examples of virtue.
Being dead, she had no favors to confer and no terrors to execute; and her festering remains were the same day hurried ignominiously to the grave. Her paramour, Telennef, alone wept over her death. Russia rejoiced, and yet with trembling. Whose strong arm would now seize the helm of the tempest-torn ship of State, no one could tell.
He was nominally the tutor of his nephew, the young emperor, Ivan IV., and though a prominent member of the council which Vassili had established, he had no influence in the government which had been grasped so energetically and despotically by Hélène and her paramour Telennef.
Having secured the coöperation of a large number of nobles, he declared himself the head of the government, arrested all the favorites of Hélène, and threw Telennef, bound with chains, into a dungeon. There he was left to die of starvation barbarity, which, though in accordance with that brutal age, even all the similar excesses of Telennef could not justify.
The beautiful sister of Telennef, Agrippene by name, was torn from the saloons her loveliness had embellished, and was imprisoned for life in a convent. The victims of the cruelty of Hélène, who were still languishing in prison, were set at liberty. Schouisky was a widower, and in the fiftieth year of his age.
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