The Imperial Orgy-An Account of the Tsars from the First to the Last - Edgar Saltus - Bog

Timur and Attila the Hun dwarf Ivan the Terrible but not very much. In the fury with which Attila pounced on civilisation there is the impersonality of a cyclone. Timur was a homicidal maniac with unlimited power and a limitless area in which to be homicidal. Where he passed he left pyramids of human heads and towers made of prisoners mixed with mortar. Where Attila passed he left nothing. Ivan turned cities into shambles and provinces into cemeteries. A cholera, corpses mounted about him. But death was the least of his gifts. He discovered Siberia. That was for later comers. For his immediate subjects he discovered something acuter. To them he was not cholera, he was providence.