One word from two envoys cost Novgorod its centuries of independence
In 1477 two envoys from the merchant republic of Novgorod addressed Ivan III of Moscow as gosudar, sovereign, rather than the customary gospodin, sir. Ivan treated the slip as formal submission. When Novgorod disowned the envoys, he marched on the city, and by January 1478 it had accepted his direct rule.
Ivan was born on 22 January 1440, son of Grand Prince Vasily II, and served as co-ruler for his blind father before taking the throne in 1462. His 43-year reign became the second longest in Russian history, surpassed only by his grandson Ivan IV. Unlike his father, who divided his realm among his sons, Ivan refused to share. He seized his brothers' lands when they died, fought them when they resisted and decreed in his will that relatives' domains would pass to the reigning grand prince rather than their heirs.
Rivalry with Novgorod had long simmered over the northern fur trade. When the city invited a prince backed by Lithuania in 1470, Ivan defeated its army at the Shelon River in July 1471 and imposed an indemnity of 15,500 rubles. After the final takeover he stripped Novgorod of more than four-fifths of its land, abolished its popular assembly and resettled its oldest and richest families elsewhere. That single acquisition nearly doubled his realm, and Yaroslavl, Rostov, Tver and Vyatka followed through conquest, purchase or marriage deals.
His victory over the Great Horde in 1480 formally ended Tatar domination. He also rebuilt the Moscow Kremlin and introduced a new legal code, laying the foundations of a centralised state.
Ivan cultivated imperial ambitions. After Constantinople fell, Orthodox churchmen began casting Moscow's rulers as heirs to the Byzantine emperors, an idea Ivan welcomed. Marrying Sophia Palaiologina gave him the double-headed eagle, which became Russia's coat of arms, and the notion of Moscow as a third Rome. In letters to foreign monarchs he styled himself tsar, from caesar, though at home he was content to remain grand prince. The Habsburgs eventually recognised the title. He died on 27 October 1505.
Source: Ivan III of Russia
