Decided by Yermak's persuasions to turn aside from their journey in order to undertake this pious adventure, the conquest proved an easy one for the Cossacks. But the added weight of their spoil nearly proved the undoing of these strange crusaders. Again, in reading the story of Yermak's exploits we are reminded of the conquistador es Pizarro and Alvarado in the bleak Andean highlands, who although starving, clung to the golden spoils of the Peruvian Incas until they fell exhausted by the way. But the courage of the Cossack army was now strengthened by tangible proofs that this bleak wilderness actually concealed riches and booty — a tithe at least of that promised them by the Stroganovs.
In their retreat the Tartars had dihgently swept the entire countryside bare of provisions, but Yermak meets each new danger with another ruse: the solemn Fast of the Assumption being at hand, instead of the fourteen days of fasting prescribed by the Russian ritual, the resourceful Cossack leader declares a "fast of repentance" lasting forty days. Thus even the cruel hunger tearing at their vitals renewed — through their mystical faith — the strength of his little army. No less sustaining, perhaps, was the hope of yet richer spoils through the sack of the Tartar cities which they knew layjust beyond.
Ever true to the unities of a great epic the crisis of our chronicle now approaches. The Kalmouck Prince Koutzuni, of the imperial Tartar house of Timour Mangou Khan, at this time ruled over all the country between the river Ob and the Urals. To his exalted leadership even the rebellious Samoyeds, Voguls and Ostiaks now submitted in the face of the common danger. His woodland capital, protected by staked palisades and surrounded by a deep moat, was established at a place called Ishir, which, as the ballad-chronicle states, "the Europeans called Sibir." The site of this forest metropohs (which may have given its name to the whole vast territory of Siberia) was not far from the present city of Tobolsk. Here was to occur the inevitable meeting of those whom the bylines call the "lords of the future and of the past."
The battle, long expected and apparently equally dreaded by both sides, was decided in favour of the Cossacks by a curious incident. A Russian cannon which during some foray with the Tartars had fallen into the hands of the forest tribesmen, had for generations been revered as a redoubtable fetish hy the Voguls. Dragging this silent weapon with them to the battle field, the savages confidently turned it upon the attack of Yermak's little army — which was advancing upon them in a dense mass, the thunderbolts of the dreaded firearms playing like lightning along its front. But heedless of the incantations of the shamans the weapon in which the Voguls had placed their hopes remained obstinately silent. Their fatuous belief in its magical powers had led them to expect their ordinance to vomit destruction of its own accord upon their enemies! Thus betrayed in their dearest hopes they turned and fled into their impenetrable forests — leaving their Tartar allies to bear the brunt of the Cossack charge.
Terribly reduced in numbers, the Cossack forces probably consisted at this time of but little more than three hundred men, while aside from the undependable woodlanders, the Tartar-trained warriors among the enemy were hardly more numerous. It would thus appear that the fate of the great Siberian empire hung on the fortunes of what was little more than a woodland skirmish I
This decisive victory, won over the acknowledged chief of the Trans-Ural, and the valuable spoil gained in the encounter, encouraged Yermak to take a momentous step. He now decided to enter into negotiations with the distant court of Ivan the Terrible, and to secure a pardon from his sovereign if possible for all past misdeeds. That Yermak (who had now advanced into an imknown country beyond the reach of the Tsar's justice, and occupied a position comparable to that of an independent prince) should thus trembling d seek to make his peace with the distant ruler in Moscow, is a sign of the great progress towards national unity which Russia had made under the stem rule of the Tsar Vasili and his successor. The spectacle of a Spanish hidalgo^ all powerful in his colonial realm, ordering himself home to execution or to await the pleasure of his king, had already been noted on more than one occasion in the chronicles of Spanish-America. In Russia, however, such conduct is the mark of a new era.