IVAN GROZNIE
The lapse of 500 years found the principles of settled hereditary
government in much the same condition in Russia as they had been
when the infant Sviatoslav succeeded to the throne of Kiev under
the guardianship of his mother. Despite the fact that two of the
late Sovereign’s brothers were yet living, Elena Glinski assumed the
regency on behalf of her three-year-old son, supported by a knot
of boyarin-princes, whom the circumstances of the time suddenly
threw into prominence. The over-shadowing figures of the last two
Moskovite monarchs had almost obliterated the fact that there were
persons of importance in the land besides the members of the princely
family. Now a whole crop of nobles emerges from the background, like
a ready-made second chamber from the brain of an Abbé Sieyés. Ivan
Oblenski, an offshoot of the House of Tchernigov, the Bielskis, the
Glinskis, and the Shouyskies, form the aristocratic nucleus round
which revolve the intrigues and faction vicissitudes which seem the
natural accompaniments of queen-mothers and minorities. Necessarily the
Princess Regent had a lover, in the person of Oblenski, and equally
as a matter of course, the latter had personal enemies. Of these he
proceeded to dispose with all expediency; Urii Ivanovitch, uncle of
the Grand Prince, suspected of plotting against the Existing Order of
Things, was lodged in a state dungeon, where he died of hunger some two
and a half years later.[133] A more celebrated, if less august victim
was the kniaz Mikhail Glinski, who had expostulated with his niece
anent her unseemly intimacy with Oblenski, and was thrown into prison,
where he “died unhappily.” [Sidenote: 1534] From which it would appear
that the old saying concerning the unwisdom of intervening between
husband and wife might be applied with equal truth to a less recognised
connection. Andrei Ivanovitch, Vasili’s remaining brother, took fright
at the irreverent procedure of the Regent and her favourite (who caged
Princes of the Blood as unconcernedly as though they were linnets
or human beings), and stole off one day, with all his household and
retainers, towards Novgorod. [Sidenote: 1537] The farther he got from
Moskva the more his courage rose, and ere long he had drifted into open
rebellion against the boyarin-wielded authority. Numbers of disaffected
landowners sped to his support, but the gates of Novgorod remained
shut and the Oblenskie were hard upon his track with the best-mounted
Moskovite cavalry. Andrei surrendered without striking a blow, and was
escorted back to the city of his deep dislike, leaving behind him at
intervals along the Novgorodskie road the swinging corpses of thirty of
his adherents. His remaining followers died by torture or in prisons,
and the latter fate disposed of the last surviving son of the great
Ivan.
Meanwhile the success of Elena’s regency had justified the means taken
to retain it. Vasili’s death had encouraged the King of Poland to
renew with threatening insistency his demands for the restitution of
the territories conquered by the late Prince and his father; refusal
on the part of Moskva led to hostilities in which the Lit’uanian
forces were unable to obtain any advantages, and a prolongation of
the truce, on the terms “as you were,” ensued (1537). A skilful
balancing of the conflicting interests which agitated the Krim and
Kazan Hordes maintained the Moskovite peace in those directions,
and a renewal was also effected of the truces with Sweden and the
Livlander knights. Nor was the inner administration of the regency
wanting in beneficial activity. The Kitai-gorod of Moskva (after the
Kreml the most important quarter of the city, containing the houses
of the boyarins and the principal bazaars and trading stores) was
surrounded by walls and towers which added greatly to the security
of the capital.[134] Vladimir, Tver, Novgorod, and other provincial
towns were newly fortified and in some cases rebuilt; the state
coinage was also put upon a more satisfactory footing. Under these
circumstances the severities and loose morals of Elena Glinski might
well be overlooked by her subjects. Her greatest offence was yet to
come. She died. [Sidenote: Ap. 1538] Of poison, said many-tongued
rumour, on which the only rational comment must be the useful Scotch
verdict, “not proven.” Her untimely death left Oblenski in precarious
possession of the supreme authority, which his enemies were already
preparing to wrest from him. Foremost among these was the veteran
Vasili Shouyskie, nick-named “the Silent,” the head of an important
Souzdalian family. For seven days lasted Oblenski’s regency, and then
himself and his sister were seized and thrown into prison, where the
fashionable death-by-starvation awaited them. The silent Shouyskie
assumed the regency, which he held till his decease in the October
of the same year, when it passed to his brother, Ivan Shouyskie, who
displayed his newly-acquired power by packing the Metropolitan Daniel
off to the cloister, and installing in his place Ioasaf, _hegumen_
(abbot) of the Troitza monastery. Hard and brutal was the rule of the
Shouyskies; “fierce as lions,” bemoaned the Pskovskie chronicle, “were
the voevodas, and as wild beasts their people against the peasants.”
The only check on the absolute supremacy of the dominant family was
the ever-present apparition of the kniaz, Ivan Bielski--Ivan and
Vasili were fashionable names among the Moskovite aristocracy of that
period--who was a formidable competitor for the possession of the
regency. Bielski justified the nervous apprehensions of the Shouyskies
(who had kept him in prison for several years and only released him
at the intercession of the new Metropolitan), by taking advantage of
the disaffection bred by their arrogance to oust them from the head
of affairs. As Regent his rule was milder and less overbearing than
that of the kniaz he had supplanted, and a firmer front was shown
against the Tartars of Kazan and the Krim Horde, who were continually
devastating the frontiers. Possibly the increased activity was rather
forced by their side, for in the year 1541 both Hordes set themselves
in motion against Moskva. The Krim Tartars brought a formidable force
into the field, augmented by cannon, musketeers, and some squadrons
of Ottoman cavalry--the first warriors of that nation who had fought
against the Russians. The double danger stifled for the moment the
bickerings of the Shouyskie and Bielski factions, and the Moskovites
found themselves strong enough, when thus united, to repel the
incursion of both Hordes. Safa-Girei and the Kazanese were chased
out of the neighbourhood of Mourom, which town they had fruitlessly
attacked; Saip-Girei, confronted by a powerful army on the yonder
bank of the Oka, dared not attempt to force the passage, and retired
to the Don. The jealousy which existed between the leading boyarins
made it impossible for the Russians to follow up their advantage by
a campaign in Tartar territory, and Ivan Shouyskie turned instead
to his own advantage the employment of the troops which the war had
placed at his disposal. Secretly supported by many of the notables
of Moskva, and openly by those of Novgorod, he resolved upon a bold
bid for the recovery of his ascendency. [Sidenote: 1542] On a dark
night in January Petr Ivanovitch Shouyskie rode into Moskva with a
picked body of soldiers from Vladimir, and before morning the Kreml
was in his hands. Bielski was seized in his bed, and the Metropolitan
was disagreeably awakened by showers of stones hurtling through his
windows and weapons hammering against his door. The chief of the
Church barely escaped with his life to the shelter of the Troitza, an
unpleasant exercise for an early morning in mid-winter. At daybreak
Ivan Shouyskie entered the city and resumed his old position of
authority. Bielski and the Metropolitan were sent off to safe keeping
at Bielozero, the lonely stronghold on the waters of the lake of
that name, where the Grand Princes’ treasures and prisoners were
securely stored away.[135] This time Shouyskie took good care that
his rival should not emerge from prison to trouble him, and the soul
of Bielski put on immortality.[136] A new Metropolitan, the second
who had been nominated by the Shouyskies, was elected to fill the
place of the shifty Ioasaf, who had leisure, in the seclusion of the
Kirillov monastery at Bielozero, to reflect on the unwisdom of being
all things to all men in sixteenth-century Moskva. The Novgorodskie
had supported the _coup d’etat_, and their Archbishop Makarie was
rewarded with the vacant post. In the meantime, while these various
Ivans were ruling the State and crushing one another in turn, how
fared it with the other Ivan in the background? The much-prayed-for
princeling had not, since the death of his mother, spent a very happy
or altogether comfortable childhood. The chief boyarins and their
followers appear to have treated their Sovereign with a curious mixture
of neglect, disrespect, and superstitious awe. Surrounded exclusively
by the partisans of whichever faction happened to be uppermost, the
friendless orphan could only brood in silent resentment over the wrongs
he sustained at the hands of his temporary masters. The rude-mannered,
tyrannical, gold-greedy Ivan Shouyskie was an especial object of his
dislike. A letter written by the monarch in after days to Prince
Andrei Kourbski, comments bitterly on the fact that though, in the
lifetime of the Princess Elena, Shouyskie had possessed only one cloak,
green silk trimmed with marten fur, “and that a very old one,” during
his regency he was able to have cups of gold and silver fashioned
him, with his initials graved thereon.[137] The despotic jealousy
of Shouyskie and of his supporters in the State Council robbed the
young Ivan of friends as well as treasure. For one of their number, a
boyarin named Vorontzov, the Prince had betrayed a marked partiality,
a dangerous compliment, which brought down on the recipient’s person
the practically-expressed dislike of his fellow-councillors. In solemn
conclave, and in the presence of Prince and Metropolitan, the angry
men of State fell murderously upon the courtier whom the Sovereign
had delighted to honour, and Ivan’s entreaties, backed up by those of
Makarie, could scarcely obtain a mitigation of his fate to one of exile
and imprisonment. The amusements of the boy Prince, besides religious
devotions, at which he was an adept, and the more legitimate forms of
hunting, consisted in chasing dogs and cats over the battlements of
the Kreml, and in wild gallops with his allotted companions through
the streets of Moskva, in which the old and unwary were ruthlessly
trampled underfoot.[138] The days of his repression were, however,
drawing to a close. The fearsome Regent Ivan died in 1543, and left
a commission of his sons and relatives to replace him. But the reign
of the Shouyskies was doomed. The manly exercise of the chase is a
valuable school for inculcating self-reliance and a will to overcome
the obstacles of life. It was straight from a day’s sport in the woods
of Vincennes that the grand young Louis, whip in hand, strode in upon
the Parliament of Paris and quenched it with an epigram; it was after
the autumn hunting at Voloko-Lamsk that Ivan Vasilievitch first showed
his teeth and gave evidence of that cold-blooded severity which was
to gain for him the distinctive adjective “Groznie” (Terrible). At
Moskva, where the Court had assembled for the festival of Noel, the
Prince suddenly accused the ruling boyarins of misgovernment and abuse
of their powers; many had been guilty, but he would content himself
with one example. Calling to his kennel-men he bade them seize Andrei
Shouyskie and throw him to the dogs. Out into the street they dragged
the unhappy man, and there, before the mute, disconcerted boyarins and
the long-time Shouyskie-ridden citizens, the Prince’s hounds worried
the offending kniaz to pieces in the reddening snow. “The little tin
gods” had missed “the hour when great Jove wakes”; Andrei Shouyskie
paid dearly for the oversight. The youth of Ivan still necessitated
a regency, and his mother’s relatives, the Glinskies, next came into
power; but from the day of the red Noel no liberties were taken with
the young monarch. His new counsellors, indeed, encouraged him in his
savage inclinations, and the chronicles give instances of callous
brutalities inflicted upon Russian subjects by both Ivan and the
Glinskies. A party of Novgorodskie arquebusers, who had interrupted one
of the Prince’s hunting expeditions with importunities respecting their
pay, were punished for their presumption by being tortured to death,
and a similar ghastly fate awaited some petitioners from Pskov, upon
whom was poured blazing spirits, which ignited their hair, beards, and
clothes.[139]
When Ivan was in his eighteenth year he celebrated with much pomp and
circumstance the double event of his coronation and his marriage with
Anastasia, daughter of Roman Zakharin-Koshkin, member of a family which
had migrated from Prussia to Moskva in the fourteenth century.[140]
[Sidenote: Jan. 16, 1547] In the hallowed Ouspienskie Cathedral the
Metropolitan crowned him with the title of Tzar, which was here used
for the first time at the coronation of a Russian ruler. The old style
of Velikie-kniaz dies out from this moment, and as the customary chant,
“_In plurimos annos_,” swells through those dim frescoed arches, the
old order seems to pass away with the wafted incense fumes. A new
figure is borne into Russian history amid the striking of bells and
shouting of a myriad throated multitude. The Tzar comes!
The fact of Ivan’s coronation caused no immediate change in the
government of Russia, which continued to be directed by the
“Vremenszhiki,” or men-of-the-season, that is to say, by the Glinskies.
That their administration was iniquitous to an insupportable degree
may be gathered, not only from the possibly exaggerated accounts
of the chroniclers, but from the fact that long-suffering Moskva
was goaded to the brink of revolution. Ivan amused himself with his
religious hobbies and other less respectable diversions, and only
assumed the part of Sovereign when he wished to “make an example”
of some offending subject. The purging of Moskva from the vampire
brood that afflicted it, and the simultaneous “reformation” of the
young Tzar, form a curious episode in the history of this time.
The summer of 1547 was signalised by disastrous conflagrations in
the capital, the first of which broke out on the 12th April; the
last and most serious occurred in June. The flames on this occasion
reduced to ashes a large portion of the Kreml, the Kitai-gorod, and
the outer town, and destroyed 1700 of the adult inhabitants, besides
children, “who were not counted.” Amid blazing streets and rolling
smoke-clouds, falling roofs and crashing cupolas, panic and anarchy
reigned supreme. The populace, rendered unreasonable by terror and
hatred, loudly denounced the Glinskies as the authors of the calamity;
in particular, Anna Glinski, Ivan’s maternal grandmother, was accused
of sprinkling the streets of Moskva with a decoction of boiled human
hearts, which apparently possessed inflammable qualities unknown to
science. Urii Glinski, the Tzar’s uncle, was seized by the enemies of
his party and slain in the sanctuary of a sacred building, and the
infuriated townsfolk penetrated into the country palace at Vorobiev,
whither Ivan had retreated, with a demand for more Glinskies. At this
moment a thing happened which, in the accounts of the earlier Russian
historians, recalls Edinburgh before the battle of Flodden. A “holy man
of Novgorod,” one Silvestr, appeared on the scene and quietly annexed
the soul of the Tzar. The people had attributed the conflagrations
to the Glinskies; more critical and dispassionate examiners have
been inclined to suspect the Shouyskie faction of complicity in the
matter. Silvestr, however, put a different complexion on the affair
and announced that the partial destruction of the town and burning of
the 1700 inhabitants and unenumerated children was the work of God.
As he supported this theory by producing “visions,” there could be
no further doubt on the matter--none, at least, with Ivan, who saw
the visions.[141] The conscience-stricken young man, convinced that
the Glinski administration was as unpopular with heaven as it was
with the Moskvitchi, since such heroic measures had been taken to
displace it, surrendered himself, body and soul, into the hands of
Silvestr, who, needless to say, made a clean sweep of the Vremenszhiki
and replaced them with his own friends. Without ruthlessly disturbing
the halo of romance and sanctity which has been fastened upon the man
of Novgorod, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that the monk was
an old acquaintance of Ivan--who was a frequent visitor to all the
religious establishments within his reach--and took advantage of the
popular excitement and general disorder to upset the palace intrigues
of both the Glinski and Shouyskie factions. That Silvestr, and the
equally nebulous layman, Adashev, whom he associated with him in the
new government, exercised a restraining and beneficent influence on the
young Prince may well be believed; with an opposition of watchful and
resentful nobles in the background, circumspection was essential, and
Ivan, who had seen a consuming fire, an angry populace, and a frowning
Providence threatening him on all sides, was likely to be a docile
pupil. For the time. The austere and monkish repression of the latest
Vremenszhiki was the finishing touch necessary to perfect the education
of the Terrible Tzar.
The early part of Ivan’s reign, and the whole of the preceding
one, are characterised by the recurrence at irregular periods of a
deliberate campaign against Kazan. The Russians seem to have borrowed
the tactics of the wolves which inhabited their steppes and forests,
and to have leisurely and persistently wearied their quarry down,
without caring to rush in and dispatch it. Again and again did the
Tzar summon from the far corners of his dominions an enormous army,
trail forth his ponderous siege-pieces and sacred banners, take an
affecting farewell of his capital, and march upon the Tartar city. The
wooden walls were relentlessly battered down, the garrison reduced to
the last extremity, and then the Moskovite hosts would return home
in good order. The walls were easily rebuilt and the Kazanese would
pursue the even tenor of their way. It would almost appear as though
the Russians were loth to irrevocably destroy the only enemy against
whom they warred with any comfort. A more feasible explanation is
that the Kazanese supplemented their feeble defences by a judicious
outlay of the metal which corrupts, and that some of the Moskovite
voevodas did not return empty-handed from these abortive expeditions.
In 1552 Ivan determined to set once more in motion the huge army which
had been left quartered on the frontiers of Kazan, a locality which
had had a demoralising effect on the troops, many of whom had shaved
off their beards to please the Tartar maidens who for the time being
under-studied their wives, “to prove,” remarked a scandalised messenger
from the Metropolitan, “by the indecent nudity of your faces, that
you have shame to be men.” Familiarity had bred contempt, and the
dwellers in the city by the Volga’s shore scornfully refused to open
their gates at the approach of the 150,000 footmen and the 150 cannon
which the Tzar brought against them. The Moskovites prepared for a
long and obstinate resistance, and by way of a beginning erected and
dedicated three pavilion churches in their camp. Events justified their
expectations; the Kazanese held out stoutly against both the assaults
of the besiegers and the offers of the Tzar. August and September
passed in continual sorties and battles without the walls, skirmishing
attacks by the Kozaks in the tzarskie army, and mining operations by
the German engineers. The overwhelming forces and superior artillery
which Ivan was able to bring against the city at length beat down the
heroic defence, and the triumphant Moskovites put their stubborn and
still resisting enemies to the sword. The Tzar is said to have been
moved to tears at the sight of so many Tartar corpses; “they are
not Christians,” he observed, “but yet they are men.” The reduction
of Kazan was an event of the first importance in Russian annals. It
marked an epoch. “The victory of Ivan the Terrible is the first great
revenge of the vanquished over the vanquishers ... the first stage
reached by European civilisation in taking the offensive towards
Asia.”[142] Prudence suggested that Ivan should remain on the scene
of his conquest until his authority over the neighbouring districts
was assured; a desire to return to his capital in the full flush of
triumph prompted him to disregard more solid considerations. He was
still very young. The newly-acquired territory was therefore left
under the united protection of the Christ, the Virgin, the Russian
intercessory saints, and Aleksandr Shouyskie. Ivan, on his homeward
way, received the welcome intelligence that his wife had given birth
to a son, the Tzarevitch Dimitri, first of a series of Ivanovitches so
named. The prolonged rejoicings, banquetings, and thanksgivings which
ensued at Moskva were followed by a disagreeable sequel; Kazan, despite
the august protection under which it had been left, rose in revolt,
and the Russian ascendency was seriously imperilled. [Sidenote: 1553]
The Tzar’s health at the same time broke alarmingly down, and another
long minority seemed to threaten the State. The boyarins and princes,
summoned to take an oath of allegiance to the infant Dimitri, showed
a strong reluctance to bind themselves down in the manner required;
the succession of Ivan’s child to the Tzardom would mean a Romanov
regency and a repetition of the faction intrigues which had attended
the early years of the present reign. Urii, the Tzar’s brother, appears
to have been a weakling in mind and body, too feeble even to decorate
with the divine attributes of monarch; in Vladimir Andreievitch, the
Tzar’s first cousin, however, there existed a possible candidate for
the throne, and even Silvestr and Adashev hesitated between the claims
of the hereditary and collateral succession. The oath, whatever its
value might be, was exacted from the unwilling courtiers, but Ivan’s
recovery prevented the necessity of testing it. The convalescent Tzar,
in spite of the remonstrances of his advisers, set off on a course of
shrine visiting, taking with him his unfortunate offspring, who was
scarcely of an age to stand such energetic piety. In fact he died on
the journey. The pilgrimage of Ivan was, if the chroniclers and some
of the later historians are to be believed, disastrous in another
fashion. Among the religious establishments visited was the Piesnoshkie
monastery, wherein was caged an interesting prisoner. Vassian, Bishop
of Kolumna in the reign of Vasili, had been deprived of his episcopal
office during the time of the regencies on account of his evil life;
now, in the decrepitude of age, he is represented as harbouring with
unquenched passion the unholy frettings of a sin-warped mind. Ivan
desired an interview with the hoary reprobate; perhaps after a course
of devotions among a community of irreproachable saints, living and
departed, he was attracted by the rare personality of a sometime
bishop who was no better than he should be. The monk-with-a-past
seized the grand opportunity to poison the monarch’s mind against his
boyarins, his relations, and his subjects, and Ivan drank in with
greedy ears the vicious counsels of the unhallowed recluse. It is a
fascinating picture, the aged priest who had eaten his heart out in
helpless bitterness these many years, and chafed against the restraint
of his prison-cell, given at last one deadly moment of revenge in
which to work a superb evil against the society that had mishandled
him. And as the Tzar went out from his presence a changed man, might
not the ex-prelate have flung a crowning blasphemy at his heaven and
chanted exultingly _nunc dimittis_? Ivan, indeed, in the hands of the
chroniclers, is a creature easily swayed; a monk from Novgorod tells
him to be good, and he straightway abandons the wrong-headed sins of
his wayward youth and becomes an exemplary monarch, till a monk of
Piesnoshkie gives him dark and evil counsel, and sends him forth upon
the world with a cankered, blood-lusting soul.
The Tzar’s return to health was accompanied by a return of Moskovite
prosperity. Another Tzarevitch, Ivan, replaced the dead Dimitri; Kazan
was gradually Kozaked into submission, and received a bishop as a mark
of special favour. Another conquest equally important was achieved
without bloodshed. The Astrakhanese having insulted the envoys of
Moskovy, a small but well-equipped army was sent against them, with
the result that this khanate, once the head-country of the redoubtable
Golden Horde, acknowledged Ivan’s sovereignty and yielded equal rights
in the Volga fishery to his Great Russian subjects. [Sidenote: 1554]The
Nogai Tartars, occupying the intermediate steppes, submitted at the
same time to the Moskovite dominion, and the Russian state, still cut
off from the Black Sea, to which in the tenth century it had given its
name,[143] wriggled its way down to the Kaspian.
The acquisition of the two Tartar sovereignties, while giving increased
importance and security to Ivan’s dominions, and opening up a valuable
trade with Persia and other eastern countries, did not tend to make
Moskovy less Asiatic, or bring her closer into the European family.
The Tzar’s political ambitions turned naturally towards the west.
With a sagacity equal to that of his most celebrated successor, and
in opposition to the advice of his counsellors, he wished to find a
free outlet for communication with the great Empire-Republic (which,
though decaying in organisation, was at this moment so instinct with
life), and with Europe generally. The death of Sigismund of Poland
(1548) and the accession of his son, Sigismund-August, had scarcely
affected the grudgingly pacific relations between the two countries,
though their common grievance against the Krim Tartars seemed to
warrant the hope of a more cordial understanding. With Sweden the
Moskovites waged one of those short inconclusive wars, in which
neither party seemed to have any definite object in view, beyond the
fact that they “lived unhappily” as neighbours. [Sidenote: 1557] A
forty years’ truce concluded the hostilities between these ancient
enemies. It was about this time that some adventurous merchant-seamen
of the city of London “discovered” Moskovy, by way of the White Sea,
and opened up a commercial and diplomatic intercourse between the
two isolated nations who were one day to come face to face with each
other on the roof of the world. The country, however, towards which
Ivan’s thoughts were chiefly turned was the uniquely governed Baltic
land, comprising Estland, Livland, and Kourland, and the adjacent
islands of Dago and Oesel. The extinction of the Prussian section of
the Order had necessarily weakened the Livlandish branch, and the
spread of Lutheran ideas had further added to the confusion which
reigned throughout the Baltic burghs. Nowhere, perhaps, in Europe
did bishops wield such extensive temporal powers, and the fact that
local opinion ran strongly in the direction of the reformed principles
and of secularisation made the immediate future of these districts a
very open question. Ivan had a solution of the difficulty which he
was not loth to put into practice. A grievance he undoubtedly had
against the Livlanders, who had hindered his intercourse with the Hansa
League and prevented free immigration of artificers and craftsmen
from the Empire into Russia. Consequently he suddenly bethought him
of the clause in the original truce with von Plettenberg, whereby
an annual tribute from the town of Dorpat had been agreed to, and
promptly lost sight of. The Tzar reminded the Livlandish envoys of
this unremembered pledge, and refused to renew the truce until the
arrears had been paid in full. [Sidenote: 1557] The representatives
of the Land-Master and the sovereign bishops argued and promised, but
they did not pay, and Ivan prepared for war. Von Fürstenberg vainly
endeavoured to rouse his subordinates and coadjutors to a sense of
the coming danger. The Bishop of Dorpat hastily declined the offer of
a few companies of lanzknechts, whose loosely disciplined habits he
well remembered; he had forgotten the Russians. [Sidenote: 1558] In
January three divisions of Moskovite, Tartar, and Tcherkess troops,
under the command of a Glinski, a Romanov, and an erstwhile Khan of
Kazan, rode into the Order territory and wasted Livland and Estland to
within four miles of Revel.[144] The outskirts of Dorpat were burnt,
and the invaders returned from this preliminary winter campaign with
a heavy spoil of cannons, church bells, treasure, and captives. A
contemporary account accuses the Tartars of fiendish cruelties upon
the hapless inhabitants who fell into their clutches; among other
fantastically devised tortures, men were fastened on to the ground,
holes punctured into their sides, and gunpowder poured therein, which
being ignited, sent the victims into shreds.[145] Ivan’s object in
sending war and desolation careering through the land was to bring the
various factors which composed its government into subjection to his
authority, as the Prussian State had been brought under the sovereignty
of Poland. The Livlanders still imagined that peace might be bought,
and at a Landtag held at Wolmar in March it was resolved to send
envoys to the Tzar with an offer of 60,000 thalers. Ivan refused to
receive the ambassadors, and the chances of reconciliation were still
further lessened by an outbreak of hostilities between the opposing
fortresses of Narva and Ivangorod, the former of which was captured by
the Russians. The war recommenced with renewed vigour on the part of
the invaders; the defending forces were too hopelessly disorganised
to offer an effective resistance to the Moskovite attack. Churchmen
and Ordermen, nobles and burghers, blamed each other mutually, and
the luckless peasantry (who since their conversion to Christianity
by the Sword Brethren had scarcely been surfeited with the peace and
goodwill which had been officially promised them) suffered at the
hands of all. Dorpat, Neuhausen, Ringen, and many other strongholds
fell before the assaults of the Moskovites, and Ivan’s troops extended
their ravages into Kourland. But meanwhile significant events had been
taking place at the headquarters of the Order. Von Fürstenberg had
resigned his office to a younger man, Gotthard Kettler, and this new
chief had inaugurated vigorous measures whereby to save, if possible,
some fragment from the ruin of the rapidly dissolving anachronism
which had held together for over 300 years. The Kings of Poland,
Sweden, and Denmark were appealed to for assistance, and a more
spirited opposition was shown to the Tzar’s voevodas. A half-hearted
irruption of the Krim Khan, Devlet Girei, into Moskovite territory
towards the close of the year did not materially weaken Ivan’s grip
upon the struggling provinces, but in the following May, through the
mediation of the new King of Denmark (Frederick II.), an armistice of
six months was granted to the distressed Livlanders. [Sidenote: 1559]
Kettler, the Archbishop of Riga (Wilhelm Hohenzollern), and the various
representatives of the Order, the cathedral lands, and the cities
sought to turn this respite to good account. Like vultures swooping
down from an empty sky, the agents of the neighbouring northern powers
appeared suddenly on the scene now that they understood that the
Baltic Bund really meant dying. The Empire, torn and exhausted by the
religious warfare which had attended the progress of the Reformation,
was unable to take effective part in the obsequies of its detached
colony. Other interested waiters upon Providence, however, there were
in plenty. Magnus of Holstein, brother of the King of Denmark, was
elected successor to Johann Munchausen, Bishop of Oesel and Wiek, who
was willing, for a substantial recompense, to evacuate a bishopric
which had become neither Catholic nor safe. Revel and the Estlandish
barons turned their eyes Swedenward, while in September an alliance was
formed between Poland and the expiring Order, which showed in which
direction Kourland and Livland were likely to fall. The truce came
abruptly to an end in the midst of all these schemings, and the Order
knights fought their last campaign amid depressing circumstances. The
strongly fortified town of Fellin, in which ex-Master von Fürstenberg
had entrenched himself, was captured--or bought--by the Moskovite
voevoda Kourbski, and another disaster overtook the Cross warriors
at Ermes, where a whole detachment was surrounded by an overpowering
force of the enemy and all who were not slain taken as prisoners
to Moskva. The Tzar who had wept over the dead Kazanese did not on
this occasion permit his triumph to soften his feelings towards the
wretched captives, who were flogged through the streets of the capital
with whips of wire and then beheaded.[146] Hatred and fear of the
Tartar-tinged and autocratic Moskovite sovereignty, heightened by acts
such as this, drove the Baltic folk more speedily into the arms of the
various foreign powers who were able and willing to absorb them. Oesel
had already come under Danish influence; in June 1561 Erik XIV. of
Sweden (who had succeeded Gustavus Vasa the preceding September) took
Estland formally under his protection. Sigismund-August completed the
partition by taking over from the Order Kourland and as much of Livland
as was not in the hands of the Russians. [Sidenote: Mar. 1562] The
former province was erected into a hereditary duchy dependent on the
Polish crown, and bestowed upon the ci-devant Master, Gotthard Kettler,
who was transformed into Duke of Kourland; the ecclesiastical lands of
the Kourlandish bishopric of Pilten, however, “went with” the territory
of Oesel, which also comprised the church-lands of Wiek in Estland.
Riga remained for the present a free city, depending more or less upon
Poland, and the archbishopric was extinguished on the death of its
last prelate, Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in 1563.[147] Thus passed away in
violent dissolution the strange anomalous time-honoured Baltic Bund,
that missionary outpost of western Christianity and civilisation, which
had crammed its commerce and its Christ swordwise down the throats of
the Liv tribes, had led an existence of intermittent strife with its
neighbours and within itself, and dying, left a legacy of two hundred
years’ warfare behind it.
Ivan, in killing the Order, had not reaped unmixed benefits from
his destructive efforts; he had advanced the Russian frontier in a
direction in which expansion was most needed, but he had seen a large
accession of territory fall to his hereditary enemy, Poland, and his
other hereditary enemy, Sweden, had obtained a foothold south of the
Finnish gulf--two circumstances which did not bode peace on his
north-west frontier. At Moskva meanwhile troubles were brewing. The
Tzar had probably never forgotten or forgiven the part Adashev and
Silvestr had played when their sovereign seemed little better than a
dead dog, and his consort had since that affair nourished open enmity
against the two advisers. Their opposition to the war with Livland,
in place of which they would have preferred a crusade against the
Krim khanate, still further nettled Ivan, and the Vremenszhiki might
plainly perceive that their “season,” which had set in amid the glowing
ashes of a burnt Moskva, was drawing to a close in the winter of the
Tzar’s displeasure. [Sidenote: (Aug. 1560)] The death of Anastasia
(who had erewhile presented her husband with another son, Thedor, and
a daughter, Eudokiya) did not improve the monarch’s temper, and the
fallen favourites were glad to leave the unhealthy neighbourhood of
the Court. Adashev was sent in the capacity of voevoda to the newly
acquired fortress of Fellin, and the man of Novgorod relapsed into the
obscurity of the cloister. Their rule had been ambitious, austere,
and paternal to the point of irritation, and they left behind them a
circle of disparaging courtiers who helped the Tzar to remember how
arrogant his disgraced counsellors had been in the past, and to realise
how dangerous they might be in the future. It was darkly hinted at the
Kreml that Anastasia Romanov had died in the prime of life and health,
and that she had been the enemy of the Vremenszhiki. Ivan himself raked
up real or imagined grievances against these restrainers of his violent
youth, and before long the frown of the Tzar was followed by a stroke
of his far-reaching arm. Adashev was removed to a prison at Dorpat,
where he died six months later--by his own hand, said his enemies;
Silvestr was sent to contemplate the abstract to the music of “the
ice-fields which grind against the Solovetsky Monastery on its savage
islet” in the White Sea--a favourite storing-place for inconvenient
churchmen, as Bielozero was for lay offenders.
A new circle of favourites and boon companions sprang fungus-like
around the stern-grown Tzar, but for the future they ceased to try and
control his goings; if they could avoid being trampled on they counted
themselves lucky. The Basmanovs--Thedor, the son, “with the face of
an angel and the heart of a devil”--were among this sinister throng,
which also included Maluta Skouratov, “readiest of all to minister to
his depraved inclinations and shameful lusts.”[148] Ivan, after the
punishment of Silvestr and Adashev, was seized with remorse--for wasted
opportunities. He might have been so much more savagely exemplary than
he had been. It was not yet too late to remedy the omission; Adashev
had been disposed of, and the recluse could not well be dragged forth
again and re-sentenced; but there were others. The gravest political
fault that must be laid to Ivan’s account is that his cruelties were
occasionally stupid. In the instance of his first experiment at a reign
of terror he selected as principal victim of his unappeased wrath
Daniel Adashev, brother certainly of the late minister, but one of
the few reliable voevodas with the army in Livland. The exact ground
on which he received the death-sentence--beyond the fundamental one
of blood-relationship with a fallen idol--does not transpire, but
the fault was apparently a comprehensive one, as with him perished
his youthful son, his wife’s father, his brother’s wife’s brothers,
and his relative Ivan Shiskin, with wife and child.[149] At the same
time was put to death, on the double charge of sorcery and affection
towards the Adashevs, a woman of Livland, a convert to Orthodoxy, who
had come to Moskva with her family, the interesting name of Magdalin,
and a reputation for piety. The first perished with her. Other victims
of the Tzar’s dislike or distrust were sent either to their graves
or to Bielozero, and then the “young man’s fancy” lightly turned to
“thoughts of love.” Envoys were sent to the King of Poland suggesting
the marriage of Ivan with one of Sigismund-August’s sisters as a basis
of peace between the two countries, but the negotiations fell through.
The question of Livland had added another item to the many vexed points
which made a durable reconciliation impossible. [Sidenote: Aug. 1561]
The offended wooer haughtily turned his back upon possible western
brides and allied himself with a beautiful Tcherkess maiden, of a
princely house, whom he caused to be Christianised and baptized at
Moskva under the name of Mariya. Towards the close of the following
year Ivan assembled an immense army with which to give practical effect
to his resentment against Poland, and in January 1563 led his troops
in person against Polotzk. Probably no previous Russian prince or
voevoda had ever been at the head of so imposing a host; its fighting
strength was computed at 280,000 men, another 80,000 accompanied the
huge baggage train, and 200 cannon bumped in their sledges over the
frozen snow. How such a multitude of men and horses was maintained
in the frost-bound and much ravaged border province of Polotzk it is
difficult to surmise. Fortunately the siege was not of long duration;
the old capital of the House of Isiaslav surrendered to the mighty
host which encompassed it, and Ivan was able to add the title of Grand
Prince of Polotzk to his already fatiguingly imposing designations.
His return journey to Moskva was a repetition of his earlier triumph
after the fall of Kazan. As on that occasion, he was met with the
pleasing intelligence that his consort had presented him with a son
(Vasili).[150] The infant continued the parallel by dying when a few
weeks old. Another death happened in the tzarskie family towards the
end of the year, Urii, the weakling brother, dropping quietly out of
existence at this time. Makarie, the Shouyskie-elevated Metropolitan,
died on the last day of the year, “leaving behind him the blessed
memory of a prudent pastor.”[151] As he had lived in peace with the
various Vremenszhiki and with Ivan himself, the prudence cannot be
gainsaid. [Sidenote: 1564] Athanasie, the Tzar’s confessor, was elected
to the vacant post, which he probably found less onerous than that of
keeper of his Majesty’s conscience.
A truce of six months had been accorded to Sigismund-August,
notwithstanding which both Moskovites and Poles (the latter with the
assistance of the Dniepr Kozaks) mutually harried each other’s lands.
The Polish ambassadors who came to Moskva in December 1563 put forward
the usual inflated demands for Pskov, Novgorod, and other integral
Russian possessions; scarcely likely to be yielded to a country which
had just lost a valuable province. Ivan’s diplomatists countered these
extravagant proposals by equally unreasonable claims, and the futile
negotiations--which more resembled a Dutch auction--were broken off in
January. [Sidenote: 1564] The renewal of active hostilities brought
disaster upon the Moskovite arms; in the ill-fated neighbourhood of
Orsha Petr Ivanovitch Shouyskie, in command of a large Russian force,
was surprised by the hetman Nikolai Radzivil and completely defeated.
Among the many conflicting accounts of this battle it is impossible to
estimate what was the proportionate loss of victors and vanquished,
but it is fairly evident that the Moskovites abandoned their cannon
and baggage train to the enemy, that they were pursued by moonlight
through brakes and swamps, and that Shouyskie lost his life in the
battle or the flight. According to some writers his body was found in
a well. The consequences of this defeat were not weighty, but Ivan
was at the same time confronted with the defection of one of his most
important voevodas, Aleksandr Mikhailovitch Kourbski. This boyarin, who
held command of the troops in Livland, had been a companion-in-arms
of Daniel Adashev, and was well disposed towards the Vremenszhiki
who had had so grim a downfall. As Moskovite generals went, he had
been energetic and fairly successful, though at a battle at Nevl he
had been worsted by a much inferior Polish force. The cruelty and
tyranny which were making the Tzar daily more breathlessly interesting
to his courtiers roused apprehensions in the mind of Kourbski, who
suddenly took the resolution to transfer his services to the cause of
Sigismund-August. The letter or declaration in which he informed the
Tzar of the reasons which had driven him to take this step was couched
in terms of Biblical reproach, and upbraided the tyrant with having
shed the blood of innocent men and slain the mighty ones of Israel.
Kourbski was pleased with this composition and expressed his intention
of having a copy of it buried with him. Ivan, who was not so pleased
with it, drove his iron-tipped staff through the foot of the messenger
who had brought it, and kept it there while he read it; and it was a
long letter. An extraordinary correspondence ensued; Ivan hurled at his
departed boyarin reproaches, scriptural texts, sarcasms, and fragments
of classical history. Why to save his miserable body had Kourbski
stained his immortal soul with treachery? What, he wished to know,
would happen to Kourbski’s soul “on the day of awful judgment”? How had
he dared to say that the throne of God was surrounded by his (Ivan’s)
victims, against the authority of the Apostle, who said that no man
could see God? Heretic! “You tell me that I shall never again see your
Ethiopian face. O Heaven! what misfortune for me!” And let him place
his letter in his coffin, thereby proving that he was no Christian,
since Christians loved to die in forgiveness and not hate. “Written in
our residence of Moskva, in Great Russia, the 5th of the month of July,
the year of the world 7,072.”[152]
The passing over of Kourbski infused new vigour into Sigismund-August’s
war measures. Devlet-Girei, who had been on the point of concluding
an alliance with Moskva, was suddenly induced by Polish gold to make
an inroad upon Riazan; Kourbski and Radzivil led a large army against
Polotzk, and hostilities were actively prosecuted in Livland. Nothing,
however, resulted from this triple attack; Riazan was heroically
defended by the Basmanovs, father and son, until reinforcements arrived
to drive the Tartars back into the steppes. Polotzk equally defied the
Polish arms, and the Moskovites on their part captured the Lit’uanian
fortress of Ozeriszh. In Livland neither side could claim a decided
advantage.
Had Ivan at this crucial moment gathered together the formidable
resources at his command and led his army against his old hereditary
enemy, enfeebled by the rule of a weak and aristocracy-fettered
king, and involved, moreover, in a quarrel with Sweden, he might have
achieved a conquest more splendid and important than those of Kazan
and Polotzk, and have wreaked on foreign foes his consuming lust for
blood. But suspicion, the Nemesis of tyrants, had already commenced
to haunt the dark mind of the Tzar, and he cared not to risk his
sacred person in the hands of possibly traitorous boyarins. His warped
imagination peopled Moskva with treason-mongers and conspirators,
secret adherents of Kourbski and of the disgraced Vremenszhiki.
Promiscuous arrests and judicial murders had not increased the gaiety
of the capital, and Ivan glowered round upon gloomy and anxious
faces with a sense of injured and threatened majesty. One morning in
December boyarins and citizens saw with a feeling of uneasy alarm
the Kreml square crowded with sledges, in which were piled crosses,
ikons, church and domestic furniture, State treasures, and the various
paraphernalia necessary to a peregrinating Tzar. The Terrible was
about to desert his capital on the eve of the festivities of Noel.
Escorted by a troop of horsemen, and accompanied by his family and
favourite courtiers, Ivan Vasilievitch Groznie swept out of Moskva
before the eyes of his silent and wondering subjects. This portentous
_Hegira_ halted at the Aleksandrovskie sloboda, a village some 107
verstas (86 miles) from the capital, where the Tzar set up his Court
afresh. The unknown is proverbially the dreaded. All Moskva shivered
at this mysterious departure. Clergy, boyarins, and townsfolk asked
themselves what boded the winter flitting of their sovereign; they
had not long to wait for an explanation. [Sidenote: 1565] On the 3rd
January came a New Year’s message from Aleksandrov to the Metropolitan,
and another to the merchants and people of Moskva. The burden of
both these epistles was, that during Ivan’s minority and under the
administration of Silvestr and Adashev the interests of the State
had been neglected and its coffers plundered; that Moskva still
swarmed with a brood of disaffected and rebellious boyarins, and that
whenever the long-suffering sovereign wished to mete out justice to
the guilty, the Metropolitan and clergy interfered to screen them
from their well-deserved doom. Hence the sorrowing Tzar had resolved
to shake the dust of an ungrateful capital off his feet, or in other
words, to leave the white-built but black-hearted city to simmer in
its own iniquities. The effect of this announcement was general panic
and consternation, as Ivan had probably intended it should be; a
deputation of clergy, boyarins, merchants, and townsfolk, headed by
Pimen, Archbishop of Novgorod, waited upon the Tzar in his retreat at
Aleksandrov and humbly implored him to return to his desolate capital
and to deal with the evil-doers as seemed best to him. Ivan graciously
relented and made a solemn entry into the city on the 2nd February.
If the chronicles are to be credited, the change of air and scene had
done him little good as far as bodily health was concerned, and the
people were appalled to behold the ravages which two months’ absence
had wrought on the person of their sovereign, who now appeared before
them “a gaunt, bent man, with dull eyes, matted, unkempt hair, and a
gloomy fierceness stamped upon every feature.”[153] Certainly this
Tzar gave his subjects plenty of excitement. As a conqueror he had
retaken possession of Moskva, and a new batch of regulations marked
his return to the head of affairs; most notable of these enactments
was the institution of a personal body-guard, chosen from the ranks of
the courtier boyarins, and originally fixed at 1000 strong (afterwards
raised to 6000), to whom was given the name of Opritchnina, or select
legion. These satellites and creatures of the Tzar fulfilled the duties
of guards, police, and special messengers, and became the agents for
such cruelties and extortions as Ivan could not superintend in person.
They carried at their saddle-bow a broom and a dog’s head, to signify
that they swept treason out of the land and devoured the Tzar’s
enemies; the terror they inspired among the unfortunate people upon
whom they were let loose earned for them the name of “Kromieshniki,”
“of the outer darkness,” or literally “outers.” Another new departure
was the commencement of a palace outside the walls of the Kreml; an
unaccountable whim, unless Ivan feared to be shut up like a rat in a
trap among a people whose patience might one day give out, and who
might hunt for a Vasilievitch as on a memorable occasion they had
hunted for Glinskies. For the present the Moskvitchi were huddled
like sheep in the corner of a pen, watching with nervous interest the
movements of the personage who might be said to embrace the double
part of shepherd and wolf. No time was lost in getting to business; in
the month of February a batch of victims was selected to inaugurate
the new days of personal rule--a dark festival, in sombre, gloomy, and
terrible setting, and not as yet common enough to have lost the thrill
of expectancy. A list of names stalk spectre-wise across this ugly
page of Moskva’s history, as the bearers of them walked to their doom
under the gaze of a blood-frozen multitude. Aleksandr Gorbati, who at
least had fought for the Tzar “from Kazan to the field of Arske,” and
his son Petr, who at the age of seventeen could not have been steeped
very deeply in treason, died together under the executioner’s axe.
Four other enemies of the Tzar’s repose suffered by the block; for a
fifth was reserved a more ghastly punishment. Kniaz Dimitri Shaferov
expiated his real or imputed crimes by a slow death by impalement. All
day long, it was said, he lingered, bearing his pain heroically; and
Church and Tzar looked on impassively at a deed more meanly cruel than
that monk-taught tragedy, the memory of which they bewailed every Good
Friday. To the credit of the Metropolitan, be it said, that having not
the courage to thwart his sovereign’s sacrificial bent, he retired
from an office whose merciful functions he might no longer wield, and
withdrew into the Novo Spasskie monastery. Germanus, Archbishop of
Kazan, was pitched upon to fill the vacant post, but Ivan quarrelled
with him before the ceremony of consecration had time to take place,
and the old man escaped thankfully back to his former diocese. The
Tzar then nominated Filipp, hegumen of the Solovetski Lavra, who
unwillingly assumed an office which could not fail to bring him into
disastrous contact with the Terrible and his unbearable Opritchniki.
Ivan divided his time between the capital and the Aleksandrovskie
sloboda, which latter place he transformed into a peculiar hybrid
settlement, half fortress, half monastery, in which he led an equally
peculiar life. A whim or a superstitious fancy caused him to garb
himself and his boon companions with the titles and even the robes of
monks, but the religious routine of this strange establishment was no
make-believe. Matins and masses and vigils were here observed, perhaps
more regularly than in most Russian monasteries of that day, and by
none more punctiliously than by the Tzar-abbot; a fearful and wonderful
being, if contemporary reports have not grossly lied, grovelling in
abject fervent worship before the chapel altar at one moment, and
gliding out to superintend the fiendish torture of some wretched
captive at another, returning “radiant” and comforted--grotesque and
scarcely credible, yet supported by the facts that are available. While
the baboon-hearted sovereign passed his days in a blended medley of
piety and savagery, buffoonery and State affairs, his familiar sprites,
the Six Thousand, infested Moskva and a large portion of the country
districts like a devouring pest or an army of occupation. Princes,
boyarins, burghers, all who were not connected with the Elect Legion,
were liable at any moment to be insulted, plundered, or maltreated by
the light-hearted and light-fingered Opritchniki, and redress from the
Tzar there was none. Houses and lands were ruthlessly filched from
unoffending subjects in order to provide for the wants and luxuries of
the favoured legionaries.[154]
The new Metropolitan, a man of firmer fibre than his immediate
predecessors, inevitably clashed against the drifting forces of
oppression and State anarchy which bore athwart him, and incurred the
disfavour alike of Tzar and Opritchniki. Previous to his consecration
he had made a half-hearted attempt to procure the suppression of the
latter, and in return they hated him with a thoroughness which boded
his ultimate destruction. Throughout his ministrations in the gloomy
and splendid temples of Moskva the grinning dog’s head must have
been ever before his eyes, and the renewed cruelties and executions
with which the Tzar terrorised the capital made a rupture daily more
imminent.
During these inward developments of Ivan’s reign a curious languor
had crept into the foreign relations of the country. It seemed as if
the three north-eastern powers were gorged and torpid after having
assimilated within their maws the decayed carcase of the Baltic Bund.
The Swedish raven and the Slav eagles sat inertly blinking at each
other, or indulged in desultory sparring over the remains of their
banquet. Perennial embassades, solemnly and sumptuously upholstered,
trailed to and fro between Moskva and the Lit’uanian capital, and
concurrently Kozaks and razboyniks (moss-troopers) kept alive the
smouldering embers of war. As a matter of fact neither of the three
neighbour nations was in a position to engage in a vigorous foreign
campaign. In Sweden Erik, second monarch of the House of Vasa, was
undoing the good work of his father and sowing the whirlwind which was
shortly to sweep him from his throne. In Poland the line of Yagiello
seemed likely to come to an end with the childless Sigismund-August,
and men looked anxiously or selfishly forward to the prospective
troubles of an open succession; for the most part selfishly. In Russia
Ivan, who might have reaped splendid profit from the embarrassments
of his rivals, seemed bent rather on warring upon his own subjects.
His hatred of the boyarins may legitimately be explained by the
recollections of his dreary and friendless youth, and of the torturing
anxiety of his sick-bed, when loyalty ran cold and men turned their
backs upon the seemingly setting sun. And yet the prime mover in that
incipient treason appeared for long to have escaped the jealous fury
that bore so strong a sway in the Tzar’s breast. Vladimir Andreivitch,
who had put himself forward as his cousin’s under-study, was for many
years the object of caresses rather than openly shown resentment.
Fiefs, palaces, commands, and other compliments were showered upon
him, as though to remove the possibility of further disaffection. But
there are more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with cream.
Ivan one day summoned his relative to visit him at Aleksandrovskie,
and rode forth to meet him with a band of ever-useful Opritchniki--and
some poison. [Sidenote: 1569] Vladimir, accompanied by his wife and two
children, was intercepted at a little village on the road, where all
four were forced to drink of the Tzar’s hospitality--a beverage which
needed no digestion.
Whatever object Ivan may have had in selecting a man of Filipp’s
disposition for the office of Metropolitan, he soon laboured to
displace him therefrom; “there is no law to say such things as
may disgust the ear of kings,” and Filipp had been, for a Russian
churchman, tolerably outspoken. [Sidenote: (1568)] The uncompromising
Vladuika was arrested, arraigned on some raked-up charge relating to
his monastic life, deposed from his office, and immured in a cell of
the Otrotch monastery near Tver. Here in the following year Maluta
Skouratov helped him to die; Ivan has the credit of having added a
martyr to the Orthodox calendar. Kirill, hegumen of the Novinski
monastery (Moskva) replaced Filipp in the Russian primacy.
Despite the passive and unresisting temper with which the Moskovites
seem to have endured the tyranny of their sovereign and his satellites,
Ivan was never free from apprehension on the score of treason. The
carefully-guarded seclusion of his life both at Aleksandrov and at
the capital betray his nervous fears in this respect, and even more
unmistakable is the drift of the correspondence he had with Elizabeth
of England on the subject of a possible asylum in that country. In the
last years of Edward VI. the English navigator Richard Chancellor,
of “the Mystery Companie and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for
the Discoverie of unknown lands,” had stumbled upon Moskovy while
searching for a northern passage to India and China, and diplomatic and
commercial relations had been opened up between the two countries.
The Queen responded graciously to “the deare most mightie and puissant
Prince, our brother, great lord Emperor and greate Duke Ivan Basily
of all Russia,” promising a sanctuary for “the free and quiet leeding
of your highnes lief ... and that it maie be laufull for you to use
your Christian relligion in such sorte, as it shall be best like
you.” Besides, the letter went on, a place should be appointed for
the prospective fugitive and his Court “as long as you shall like to
remaine with us,” adding, however, “upon your owen charge.” The Tudors
were not given to quixotic extravagance.
Russia it has well been said is the country of contrasts, and the reign
of Ivan furnishes some curious anomalies of administration. Of all the
strange fruit to be borne under the circumstances of time and place--in
the Moskovy of the sixteenth century--a States-General was about the
last to be looked for. And yet this was indeed the apparition which the
violent control-impatient Tzar called up to advise him on the purely
administrative question of continuation or termination of the Polish
war. In the summer of 1566 came to Moskva an unwonted assemblage of
boyarins, higher clergy, small proprietors, merchants, and townsfolk,
339 in all, to deliberate on the matter which had been submitted to
their decision. Sigismund-August had abandoned his demands for the
restitution of Smolensk and Polotzk, and was willing to unite with Ivan
in a scheme for driving the Swedes out of Estland and partitioning
that province and Livland amicably between the two Slav powers. The
East-Russian monarch did not jump at these favourable proposals, but
insisted that Riga, Wenden, Wolmar, Ronneburg, and Kokenhausen should
be added to his share of Livland. Possibly his object was to harass
Lit’uania by a prolongation of the war, in the hope that, on the death
of Sigismund-August, the electors of the grand duchy might be driven to
put a term to their country’s sufferings by bestowing their suffrages
on their most formidable neighbour; as the Poles had done in the case
of Yagiello. The King refused to make the required concessions, hence
the deadlock which the Russian Diet was called together to discuss.
The assembly unanimously concurred in refusing to abate the Tzar’s
demands upon Livland, which appeared to them extremely reasonable.
Thus the old Slavonic custom of violently disposing of a minority was
not called into requisition; had the unanimity been the wrong way Ivan
would probably not have shrunk from a heroic treatment of the case.
Whatever hopes the Tzar may have entertained of detaching Lit’uania
from the Polish crown were dispelled by the political stroke which
Sigismund-August effected a few years later; by the Union of Lublin,
signed, after many a stormy sitting, on the 1st July 1569, Poland and
Lit’uania were definitely bound together in a dual but indivisible
realm. The question of the succession to the double throne still
remained open, but it was scarcely likely that the turbulent and almost
independent nobles of the Polish provinces would turn their thoughts
towards the grim despot of Moskva, charm he never so wisely. Ivan,
however, in obstinately refusing to conclude peace on any but the most
exorbitant terms, and confining his military operations for the most
part to unimportant border skirmishes, was pursuing the time-honoured
Moskovite wolf-borrowed policy of wearing down an adversary by
persistent untiring attack. Even more hoary and respectable with the
sanction of age, dating indeed from the days of Sviatoslav Igorovitch,
was the happy-go-lucky neglect of the southern and eastern possessions
of the gosoudarstvo, which were generally left with no better
protection than those with which nature had surrounded them. South of
Moskva nothing matters, might have expressed the indifference with
which the Russian statecraft permitted its outlying districts in this
direction to be continually overrun by marauding armies. [Sidenote:
1569] In the year of the Lublinskie Union a Turko-Tartar invasion,
having for its nucleus 17,000 troops under the command of an Ottoman
pasha, entered the steppe-lands of the Azov basin to prosecute what
might be considered a holy war against the Infidel conquerors of Kazan
and Astrakhan. With the idea of bringing the Mussulman lands watered by
the Volga into closer touch with Azov, and thereby with the water-way
to Constantinople, the Turkish plan of campaign included the gigantic
project of uniting that river with the Don by means of a canal. Neither
this undertaking nor the meditated swoop upon Astrakhan was seriously
prosecuted, and the invaders seem to have gathered alarm from the awful
stillness of the solitudes into which they had penetrated, and to have
seen Moskovite armies stealing upon them where only the foxes and the
steppe-eagles sought their prey amid the waving grasses. The Tartar
auxiliaries gradually dispersed and the famine-wasted troops of the
Sultan re-embarked at Azov without having encountered human enemies
other than the skirmishing bands of Tcherkess warriors who had harassed
their retreat.