Blake Hall
The private military arsenal of the infamous Ivan the Terrible was discovered underground in a town west of Moscow. The arsenal is chock full with incredibly preserved weaponry and armor dating back to the 1500’s, filling a valuable hole in military history.
The archaeologists who discovered the stash believe it belonged to Ivan IV Vasilyevich, better known as Ivan the Terrible. The czar was infamous for maintaining a deadly army of handpicked soldiers and aggressive expansion of Russian borders. His title ‘the Terrible’ is a reference to his random bouts of rage and immense cruelty to the aristocracy, whom he forced to pay for all military expenses and supplies.
The underground cache of weapons, which included spiked helmets, sabres, belts, arrows and chain mail fragments, supports the theory that Ivan had nobles stockpile supplies in their homes just in case the Russian military had to deploy at a moment’s notice. The storehouse was once part of a mansion’s basement, but redevelopment during the 17th century caused the cache to be buried and forgotten.
Had archaeologists not performed an emergency dig in the area, the storehouse would have been bulldozed during the construction of a new highway.
Alexei Alexeyev, a scientist involved in the excavation, said that this discovery was key to understanding how the military worked during Ivan the Terrible’s reign.
“Now we can better understand how the boyars prepared for military expeditions – everyone was in the basement of his arsenal,” he said. “Thanks to these excavations, we can see for the first time the military life of a Russian nobleman, which was the basis of the Russian army.”