[Contents]CHAPTER XVIIISINGLE RULE ESTABLISHEDFoti, the metropolitan, died in 1431. His successor was Iona, who was born at Soli-Galitch, a place north of the Volga. The late metropolitan had favored Iona, and foretold his elevation. On Foti’s death the Grand Prince wished to make Iona metropolitan. He was appointed, and needed only ordination by the Patriarch, but civil war in Moscow delayed this. In view of Moscow disorders, another metropolitan was chosen in Western Russia and Lithuania. The Smolensk bishop Gerásim was ordained to the office in Tsargrad. But in 1435 Gerásim met a tragic death, because of his negotiations with Sigismund of Poland,—Vitold’s successor, Svidrigello, seized the metropolitan and burned him at the stake. Then Vassili of Moscow, in agreement with the Lithuanian Grand Prince, sent Iona to Tsargrad, but before he arrived there the Emperor and Patriarch had made Isidor, a Greek, metropolitan of Russia.The Emperor Ioann was well known for his discussions with Rome touching union of the Churches. Surrounded by the Osmanli on every side, he sought safety in church union, trusting that the Pope would bring aid to him from all Europe. Church union had been a question at Basle, to which council Ioann had sent three envoys, who agreed on conditions for union. One of these three, the most zealous for union, was Isidor. Wishing to involve Russia in the union, the Patriarch made Isidor metropolitan of Kief and all Russia. He came to Moscow with Iona. The Grand Prince was dissatisfied; still he received the new metropolitan, not knowing the plans of the Emperor and Patriarch. Isidor was barely in office when he asked to make a journey to Italy to be present at the Eighth Oecumenical Council, assembled in Ferrara at that time, 1437, to unite the two Churches. The Grand Prince was very[428]unwilling to grant the metropolitan leave of absence, and demanded from him a promise to preserve Orthodox purity in church belief.At Ferrara were the Byzantine Emperor, with his brother Dmitri and the Patriarch Iosif. The Council was opened 1438. Pope Eugene IV presided. Some months later the plague appeared at Ferrara and the Council was taken to Florence. Two parties were acting among the Greek members; one favored union with Rome, hoping thus to get aid against Islam, while the other would not sacrifice religion to politics for any cause. This party refused to recognize papal supremacy, procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as the Father, and some other articles of faith. The soul of the party was Mark, metropolitan of Ephesus. At the head of the other, and more numerous party, stood the Emperor and the Patriarch. Its most eloquent representative was Vissarion, metropolitan of Nicaea. Isidor, the metropolitan of Russia, was attached to this man through long friendship; he was bound heart and soul to his project of union, and did much for its temporary triumph.In July, 1439, in the Cathedral of Florence, was proclaimed the union of Churches. One of the cardinals read the Latin text of the bull containing the decision of the Council, and Vissarion read the Greek version. Among the names of the twenty metropolitans who signed the bull is that of Isidor. The Greek minority, headed by Mark of Ephesus, refused every signature. Eugene IV appointed Isidor papal legate for Livonia, and Eastern and Western Russia; with this title he left Florence in October. In Western Russia his first act was to publish the decision of the Council. On his return to Moscow a Latin crucifix was borne in front of him. This confused people greatly. In his first mass he prayed for the Pope before others, and at the end of the service the bull was read announcing Church union. In this bull those doctrines were proclaimed which, according to Russian ideas, form the main errors of Latinism. This reading produced immense scandal among both the clergy and laity. The Grand Prince denounced Isidor as a wolf, not a pastor and teacher. He commanded that he should be removed from office at once, and conveyed to the Chudoff monastery. Then he assembled bishops to judge the recreant.This was in 1440. Isidor did not await a decision; he fled from[429]the monastery, and, going through Tver and Lithuania, halted not till he reached the Pope’s palace. The Grand Prince did not pursue him, being satisfied, it seemed, with ending the matter in that way.In Tsargrad the union of Florence met firm resistance. The Emperor and Patriarch dared not proclaim it in the Sophia Cathedral. The new Patriarch, Gregory Mana, a determined advocate of the union, was forced from his office, and withdrew to Rome. Events showed very soon that the plans made in Rome were fruitless. The Turk was not driven from Europe. The Pope roused Yagello’s son, Vladislav, to attack the Osmanli, but Vladislav fell in battle. In 1444 the Christian army was thoroughly defeated by Murad II at Varna. The remnant of the Byzantine Empire received no aid from Western nations.Isidor was welcomed by the Pope with open arms, and made cardinal. He continued, however, to call himself metropolitan of Russia. The next Pope, Nicholas V, favored Isidor also, who was perhaps the chief agent between Rome and Byzantium. After the death of Gregory, who had been driven from his office by adhering to the union, the Pope appointed Isidor Patriarch. Of course the position was titular only.There was no obstacle now to the installation of Iona. The Grand Prince sent an envoy to the Patriarch to explain Isidor’s heresy, and ask him to install a new metropolitan. But while the envoy was on the road tidings met him from Mount Athos that the Patriarch and Emperor had joined the church union, hence he returned to Moscow, and for eight years there was no metropolitan in Russia.In the autumn of 1438 Ulu Mohammed (Big Mohammed) was expelled from the Horde by his rival, Kutchuk Mohammed (Little Mohammed). Ulu Mohammed seized the town of Bailoff on the boundary of Lithuania, and thought, as it seems, that he could win back his throne with the aid of Vassili, to whom he had given the Grand Principality. But Vassili, either wishing to be rid of Mongol robbery, or not desiring to quarrel with the Khan then occupying the throne, sent against Ulu voevodas with whom Dmitri Shemyaká and Dmitri Krasni, his two cousins, joined their forces. This army besieged the Mongols in Bailoff. In vain did Ulu beg for peace, promising to defend Russia from other Mongols, and never[430]again to ask for tribute. The Russian commanders would listen to nothing. But with them at Bailoff was the voevoda Gregori Protasieff, sent, as it seems, by the Lithuanian Grand Prince to help Moscow. This man betrayed his allies. He joined the Khan’s forces and made it possible for him to inflict a defeat upon Moscow. After this victory Ulu withdrew and halted near Nizni. At that point many Mongols came to him, and thus strengthened he was able to make raids against Russia, and even to hold Moscow besieged for several days in succession.In the spring of 1445 the Grand Prince received news that Mongols under Mohmutek and Yagup had been sent against Moscow. Vassili summoned a number of smaller princes and marched out in person to drive back those forces. July 6 he halted near Suzdal, and an encounter with the enemy took place. The Russians attacked the Mongols with vigor, and dispersed them after a short and sharp conflict. But, while hunting the enemy, Vassili’s men scattered, and some fell to stripping the dead. The Mongols now employed their usual tactics. They turned suddenly and attacking on all sides, defeated the Russians. A number of important boyars and princes were captured, among others the Grand Prince Vassili.The Mongol commander took the cross, which Vassili wore next his body, and sent it to Moscow to his wife and his mother, but Vassili they led away with them to Nizni. Before going, however, they plundered many places in Vladimir and Murom.There was weeping and wailing when news came to Moscow that the Grand Prince was a captive among Mongols; all looked for great woe, and a speedy attack on the capital. But the Mongols did not come, and the excitement gradually died away.Vassili’s captivity was not of long duration. From Nizni, the Khan with his forces went eastward to the edge of Moscow regions; thence he sent Baigitch, his murza, to Dmitri Shemyaká, who heard of Vassili’s misfortune with gladness, and straightway sent an envoy to work against liberating the prisoner. The envoy, however, was delayed for a long time; hence the Khan thought Shemyaká an enemy, and liberated the Grand Prince, who took an oath to give a large price for his freedom.Vassili returned to Moscow in the autumn of 1445. With him went Horde magnates, and a crowd of attendants to receive the[431]promised ransom. Some of these men, pleased with Moscow, remained in Russia as subjects. It must be noted that Vassili, in those days of Horde quarrels, had attracted princes and murzas to his capital. He had taken these men to his service, and given land to support them. Many Russians, not understanding his policy, were displeased to see Mongols treated as if they were people of Moscow.Hence, when the Grand Prince had to find his large ransom, dissatisfaction rose straightway on all sides. Shemyaká took advantage of this and brought over to his plans Vassili’s cousin, Ivan, son of Andrei, and grandson of Vladimir the Brave. This Ivan had fought nobly at Suzdal, where Vassili was captured. Wounded and thrown from his horse, he had succeeded with great difficulty in mounting another, and escaping. Discontented with a slender inheritance, as he thought it, he hoped to divide the lands of the Grand Prince with Shemyaká, the new claimant. He and Shemyaká now arranged with the malcontents of Moscow, and going to a place near the city, held communication daily with those conspirators.Vassili, not knowing the plot which his enemies were weaving, went on a pilgrimage to the Troitski monastery, with Ivan and Yuri, his two little sons. His attendants were a few intimate boyars, and a small number of servants. Shemyaká and Ivan rushed with all haste to Moscow and took possession of the city at night, through the help of confederates, who opened the gates to them. The Grand Prince’s mother, Sophia, and his wife were both captured; the treasury was pillaged; boyars faithful to Vassili were made prisoners and their property taken; wealthy citizens were robbed without ceremony.That same night, February 12–13, 1446, Shemyaká sent Ivan to the monastery to capture the Grand Prince. Vassili was at mass when a man named Bunko rushed in and declared that an enemy was approaching. Bunko had served the Grand Prince somewhat earlier, but had left him for Shemyaká’s service. Vassili, therefore, suspected the man of plotting, and commanded to expel him, but at the same time he sent guards out to learn what was happening. Ivan’s men saw those guards and reported. The conspirator had sent in a long line of sleighs, each carrying two armed men hidden under mats and other covering. Behind each sleigh walked a[432]third man, who seemed to be a peasant following his load. Vassili’s guards let a number of these sleighs pass unchallenged. All at once the line halted, and armed men sprang out and seized the guards. As there was deep snow at each side of the road, no man could escape to give warning to Vassili. Ivan’s men were seen only when near the monastery. The prince rushed to the stable, but no horse was ready. The old monks were helpless; among the younger monks some were opposed to Vassili. The prince hastened to the stone Church of the Trinity. He entered and the sexton closed and barred the heavy door.The attackers stormed like wolves in winter; they burst into the monastery, and ran to the Church of the Trinity. “Where is the Grand Prince?” shouted Ivan. Hearing Ivan’s voice, Vassili opened the door, and implored for his eyesight. Ivan commanded to seize him. Nikita, a boyar, obeyed his command. “Thou art taken,” said he, “by Dmitri, son of Yuri, Grand Prince of Moscow.” “God’s will be done,” replied Vassili.They placed him in a rough country sleigh and conducted him to Moscow. His attendant boyars were seized also, but in their haste the attackers forgot the two young princes, Ivan and Yuri, who had hidden, and when Ivan and his men had left the monastery the boys and those who were with them found refuge with Prince Ryapolovski in his village, Boyar Kovo. Later Ryapolovski and his brothers took the princes to Murom, and shut themselves up in the city, where a large force of warriors soon assembled.February 14, Prince Ivan reached Moscow and lodged Vassili at Shemyaká’s court, where three days later his enemies blinded him, accusing him thuswise: “Thou didst bring Mongols to Russia, and give them land. Thy love for those enemies and their speech is beyond measure; thou givest gold, lands, and silver to them; thy oppression of churches is unsparing. Also thou didst blind Prince Vassili, son of Yuri.” Then they sent him, with his princess, to Uglitch. Sophia, his mother, they sent to Chuhloma.Shemyaká began then to reign as Grand Prince in Moscow; his success was short-lived, however. Many princes would not recognize this new man. In Moscow not all the boyars took the oath, and soon complaints and indignation rose mightily against[433]him. His Galitch boyars and attendants seized the best places. People were not gratified when they saw that he was beginning to divide Moscow lands, consolidated with so much toil by preceding princes. Shemyaká soon felt his weakness, and determined to get Vassili’s sons into his power. At his request the nominated metropolitan, Iona, went to Murom and, by promising that Vassili should be liberated, persuaded the Ryapolovskis to surrender the little princes.Not merely was Vassili not liberated, but his sons were imprisoned with him in Uglitch. A great movement began then throughout Moscow regions in favor of the imprisoned and blinded prince. It was agreed by the Ryapolovskis, by Obolenski, and others to meet at Uglitch, storm the town, and free Vassili. Some reached the place, but others were waylaid by Shemyaká’s warriors. Thereupon they attacked and defeated those warriors, and brought in fresh assistants. Seeing that more and more men were leaving him, Shemyaká listened at last to Iona, who ceased not to complain that he had been used as a tool in taking the sons of Vassili from Murom. “What can a man without eyesight do?” asked Iona. “Besides, his sons are little children. Bind him to peace by an oath, and the bishops.”Shemyaká went to Uglitch with abbots, boyars, and bishops, freed Vassili from prison, and begged forgiveness. The blind man said that he had suffered for his sins; he showed great mildness, blaming only himself. Shemyaká, after taking an oath from Vassili that he would not seek power for himself or for his children, gave a great feast as evidence that they were reconciled. Vassili promised that he and his sons would live in distant Vologda. But barely was he free when the new oath was ignored, and the rôle changed completely. From Vologda Vassili went, as it were, on a pilgrimage to the Cyril Bailozero monastery. There many boyars and other men came to him, deserting his opponent. Trifon, the abbot of Bailozero, freed Vassili from the oath given his enemy, taking on himself the sin of breaking it. Then Vassili set out for Tver to obtain the co-operation of Prince Boris and make a league with him against Shemyaká. The alliance was made, and Boris betrothed his daughter to Ivan, Vassili’s eldest son.Meanwhile those attendants of Vassili who had fled to Lithuania gathered their warriors and marched to free the Grand Prince,[434]but on the way they learned that he was already free. They met Mongol troops and fell to fighting. “Who are ye?” inquired the Mongols. “We are men of Moscow hastening to free Prince Vassili, our sovereign.” “We too,” replied the Mongols, “are going with our two princes, Kasin and Yagup, to rescue Prince Vassili in return for kindness.” Both parties now advanced to aid Vassili.Shemyaká and Prince Ivan had despatched troops to block the Moscow road before the boyar Pleschyeff, sent by Vassili to Moscow. But Pleschyeff marched around Shemyaká’s troops very cleverly, and reached Moscow Christmas morning. The gates had just been thrown open for the Princess Julianna, a daughter-in-law of Vladimir the Brave. Vassili’s uncle, Pleschyeff, and his men rushed in behind her suite, and seized the Kremlin immediately. Learning that warriors were marching from Tver with Vassili, that other forces were hurrying from the west, and that the Kremlin was taken, Shemyaká and Ivan fled to Kargopol. At Vassili’s demand they now freed his mother, Sophia. They then begged for peace, and it was granted, but Shemyaká did not keep the conditions which he himself had put forward. He began at once to work against Vassili, who, when he had received undoubted proof of the perfidy, placed the question before the clergy.Then in the name of all spiritual persons a letter was written to Shemyaká. It began by reminding him of the offenses of Yuri, his father; it recounted his own crimes, comparing him to Cain, the first murderer, and to Sviatopolk the Accursed. It reproached him with treason, with robber attacks on the Grand Prince; with the blinding of Vassili, and other offenses. In conclusion, it asked him to observe his own treaty, otherwise he would be cursed and deprived of communion.Threatened not only with a curse, but with warriors of the Grand Prince, Shemyaká strengthened the treaty with a new oath. But soon he was false to this oath also, and renewed the civil war, which continued a number of years. At last Vassili’s troops, led by Obolenski, reached Galitch, now fortified strongly, and armed well with cannon. After a stubborn engagement Shemyaká was defeated and fled to Novgorod. Galitch yielded to Vassili, and in 1450 its citizens took the oath to him.The battle of Galitch was the last struggle of note between[435]Russian princes. After that Shemyaká made a number of efforts. He marched against Ustyug and Vologda, but his acts were mere senseless destruction of property. At last, in Moscow, it was thought best to bring his intimates, by rewards, to abandon him. It is stated that he died in Novgorod in 1453, after eating a chicken which his own cook had poisoned. Vassili Baida came galloping to Moscow with news of his death. For this news he received a good office.Thus ended a strife which had lasted two decades. It cost Moscow dearly, and delayed for a time the final ending of subjection to Mongols. But it had its own value also in developing single rule strongly in Russia. This struggle showed how firmly the new order was established. All classes stood on its side now, and favored its triumph. During Shemyaká’s warfare, Vassili the Dark (that is, blind), as men called him, spared all the other small princes lest they might join his rival, but when Shemyaká, that last champion of the old order of things, had vanished, Vassili was unsparingly stern to opposition, and seized the land of all warring princes.His cousin Ivan, grandson of Vladimir the Brave, who had aided Shemyaká, and betrayed the Grand Prince very often, even trying to bring the Polish king, Kazimir, to Moscow, was expelled from Mojaisk forever. He fled to Lithuania, and his portion was added to Moscow. Vassili of Serpukoff, who had formed a conspiracy against the Grand Prince, was seized and died later in prison. His son, Ivan, went to Lithuania, as did Shemyaká’s son, and Ivan of Majaisk; there the exiles spent their time in framing fruitless plots against Moscow. Toward the end of Vassili’s reign all minor places had been incorporated, save only Vereisk. The prince of that place had always been faithful, and Vassili did not disturb him.While assimilating the land of small princes, Vassili extended his influence over the Tver and Ryazan principalities. He undertook a campaign against Novgorod which ended in establishing Novgorod’s dependence on Moscow; he also subjected Vyatka, that disorderly nest of freebooters.Iona had aided Vassili more than many, and Vassili determined to make him metropolitan. He could not turn then to Tsargrad, for Isidor, who had fled from Moscow, not only continued to call[436]himself metropolitan of Russia, but was recognized as such by the Patriarch and Emperor. At the call of the Grand Prince, the bishops of Russia held a council in the Archangel Cathedral. Referring for authority to the rules of the Apostles and early churches, they ordained Iona December 5, 1448. Thus was created the first Russian metropolitan entirely independent of Tsargrad.The importance of this step was well understood in Russia. Its legality was proven. Iona wrote an epistle to his flock, a special one to Kief, and several to Western Russia. In those epistles he justified his installation, a work not superfluous in that time, for even in Moscow there were men who considered his elevation as contrary to Orthodox usage.When news came that the throne in Tsargrad was occupied by Constantine, instead of Ioann, the defender of the Florentine union, the Grand Prince sent a letter, in which he explained his whole course with Iona and Isidor, and asked final blessing from the Patriarch on the former. But communication with Tsargrad in those days had grown uncertain, through robber bands on the road, and disorders in the Empire itself.Then came the tidings that Tsargrad had fallen, and that Constantine had died while defending the city, May 29, 1453. This sad event in the Orthodox East aided the complete liberation of Russia from Tsargrad.The close connection between each metropolitan and Grand Prince, and the tendencies of Moscow to consolidate brought disagreement between the Moscow metropolitan and the Grand Princes of Lithuania, since the latter were rivals of the Moscow Grand Prince, especially after the Latinizing of Lithuania; hence the attempts to get a separate metropolitan for Western Russia. Finally, in Iona’s day, despite all his efforts, the separation of the Russian Church into two parts was effected. This was grievous to Iona. He wrote in vain to the Western Russian bishops, princes and boyars, to all the Western Russian people, advising them to stand firmly for the Orthodox religion.Three years later Iona died. His successor, Thedosi, Archbishop of Rostoff, was ordained by Russian bishops; thus this system was confirmed finally in Russia.The Grand Prince Vassili died in 1462, before he had reached his fiftieth year. In the second half of his reign, Vassili the Blind[437]was no longer the active, rather simple, and somewhat light-minded person that he had been in his youth. Not so much years as bitter suffering and experience, and especially the loss of his eyesight, developed adroitness and stern resolution. He brought into his own hands almost all the principalities near Moscow, and advanced very greatly the union effected by his immediate successor. At his death Russia included, besides the enlarged principality of Moscow, four independent lands, that is, Pskoff and Novgorod, with the Tver and Ryazan principalities.To give a brief picture of affairs in Lithuania and Russia is now indispensable for an understanding of Moscow. We must return to the beginning of Vassili’s reign.The death of Vitold of Lithuania, in 1430, without heirs raised the great question: Who shall succeed? The former Russo-Lithuanian Grand Prince, Yagello, at that time King of Poland, hesitated to put the two crowns on his own head, fearing opposition from the Russo-Lithuanian boyars, who struggled against merging their own state in Poland. Besides Yagello, there were two grandsons of Gedimin, Svidrigello, Yagello’s younger brother, and Sigismund, the youngest brother of Vitold. There were also grandsons of Olgerd, but being of the Orthodox faith they were unacceptable to the Poles, and to Catholics.Yagellogave the preference to his brother, who succeeded Vitold, and was crowned in the Vilna Cathedral. But Yagello was mistaken in thinking that he had found an obedient assistant. Though Svidrigello had gone over to the Latins through the influence of his brother, he was not a zealot, and was well inclined toward his former co-religionists. Having ruled in Russian principalities, he was Russian in language and sympathies; hence the Russians greeted his elevation, and expected aid from him against Latinism and absorption.Svidrigello had no wish to be a servant. He looked on the Grand Principality as his by right, and wished to preserve the integrity of his inheritance. In one word, his wish was to follow the policy of Vitold. Polish magnates were greatly displeased that the king had permitted this brother to be crowned without pledges, and had yielded Podolia and Volynia, which they claimed for themselves, and which, as they said, they had fought for.The taking of Galitch by Kazimir the Great was the first exploit[438]in distributing the lands of Russia among Polish nobles and the clergy, and also of taking lands from Russian owners, and giving them to Poles. This system had extended to Podolia from Galitch, a part of which had been joined to Poland. But in Vitold’s day Podolia had been given back to Russia almost entirely. In cities and castles were representatives of the Grand Prince supported by Russo-Lithuanian garrisons.No one supposed that Svidrigello would surrender Podolia and Volynia to Yagello, hence the Poles planned to capture them by stratagem. Kamenyets, the chief Podolian city, was commanded by Dovgerd, a noted Lithuanian. The local Polish nobles appeared at the castle of Kamenyets before the news of Vitold’s death had reached it. They came under protext of friendly consultation, and invited Dovgerd to meet them with his attendants. He did so. The Poles threw off the mask then, seized him with his attendants, and took possession of the castle. At the same time they surprised Smotritch, with a few other places, and thus won a part of Podolia. The voevodas of Volynia had heard of Vitold’s death and were prepared. There the Poles could obtain nothing.Svidrigello was indignant when he heard of what had happened at Kamenyets. Yagello was still in Lithuania, hunting; he had not returned since the funeral of Vitold. Svidrigello reproached the king bitterly, and declared that he would hold him a captive till Podolia was returned to its Grand Prince. Yagello met his brother’s outburst of anger and accusation with mild and insinuating speeches. But Svidrigello was unyielding. The king’s Polish suite proposed then a desperate measure: to kill Svidrigello, capture the Vilna castle, and defend themselves till aid came. The king would not consent to this murder, but to effect his escape he made an agreement by which he returned the castles in Podolia to his brother, and commanded Butchatski to yield Kamenyets to Prince Michael Baba, Svidrigello’s commander. Svidrigello was delighted. He rewarded Yagello’s messenger well, then he made rich presents to Yagello and his suite, and they departed for Poland. Despite his sixty years, Svidrigello had let himself be badly deceived.Polish magnates near the king, perhaps with his connivance, thought out a stratagem. They sent a private letter to Butchatski, forbidding him to obey Yagello’s order to yield Kamenyets, and[439]commanding him to arrest Prince Baba and the messenger. The letter was placed in a tube which was covered with wax and made to look like a candle. This counterfeit candle was taken to Butchatski by an attendant of the king’s messenger, who said, as he delivered it: “You will find in this candle all the light needed.” Real candles were burned before images, and were sent to chapels and churches, therefore this candle roused no suspicion. Butchatski cut the candle, found the letter, and followed its instructions.When he heard of the trick Svidrigello was enraged. He tried to recover the castles, but took only a few of them; Smotritch and Kamenyets remained with his opponents. The Poles now declared that Svidrigello must surrender not only Podolia, but Lutsk, and the south of Volynia. They demanded too that he should go to Poland and take an oath of obedience to Yagello. Svidrigello refused to do this. He made a treaty with the Germans, and with the Emperor. Sigismund opposed the growth of Poland, and desired the Order to assist Svidrigello, to whom he promised the same kind of crown that he had sent to Vitold.From the Polish king now came an envoy with reproaches. He condemned Svidrigello savagely for his alliance with the enemies of Poland. The envoy added also that Svidrigello was not a Grand Prince till so acknowledged by a Polish Diet. Svidrigello, borne away by furious anger, detained the Polish envoy, and had him imprisoned. After this insult there was no way to decide the dispute except by armed action.In 1431 the king led a large army into Volynia. The Poles were distinguished for their fury in that war; so irrepressible was it that the people were forced to hide in forests and swamps, and in inaccessible places. The king, to spare native regions, tried to curb the troops under him; he even warned people of his coming, and thus incurred the taunt that he was sparing his rebel brother. The Poles sacked Vladimir; Volynia was burned. Svidrigello, with Wallachians and Mongols, was preparing to meet the invasion, but discovering the great strength of the king’s forces, he withdrew and burned Lutsk to save it from the enemy. In the Lutsk castle he put Yursha, a Russian, who defended that stronghold so stubbornly that the Poles could not take it. Angered by this defeat, they accused the king of malevolent slackness, and of intentional blunders.[440]In the Polish camp disease attacked the men, and a distemper broke out among the horses. Food failed. German knights declared war, and invaded northern provinces. These calamities caused the king to offer peace. The Grand Prince accepted, and concluded a truce without consulting the Germans. Svidrigello retained what he had when the war broke out, that is Eastern Podolia, and Volynia entire. He had vindicated independence for the lands under him, but beyond that the result of the war was merely plunder and bloodshed.At the head of Polish affairs was Olesnitski, the chancellor, at that time cardinal. On meeting failure in the field he sought other means to subject Svidrigello. A rival was selected, Sigismund, Vitold’s youngest brother. Sigismund was to claim the Grand Principality; and in various ways a party was created to support him. A revolt was brought about and Svidrigello, being careless and improvident, was surprised and very nearly captured by his rival. He escaped by desperate speed, but his wife was seized. Vilna and Troki surrendered. Soon Lithuania acknowledged Sigismund, while Russia adhered to Svidrigello.Sigismund was crowned in Vilna, where a papal bull was read freeing Lithuania from its oath to Svidrigello. In Grodno, somewhat earlier, before senators and Olesnitski, Sigismund had surrendered the regions of Lutsk, and its lands, as well as Podolia and Goróden.Meanwhile Svidrigello had no intention of yielding to Sigismund broad regions which were still in his possession. Help was coming to him from the Tver prince. His Russian voevodas were successful. Alexander Nos defended Kief lands, and Prince Ostrogski, Volynia. Especially distinguished was Fedko, who, with help of Wallachians and Mongols, not only repulsed the Poles in Podolia, but seized Kamenyets, luring Butchatski from the fortress, and taking him captive.During this war Yagello died at the age of eighty-six. Thus ended a reign of fifty years, a reign memorable in Eastern Europe. The two great results of his life were the union of Lithuania and Poland, and the reduction of the royal power till it was a mere shadow. Now the nobles, with Olesnitski at the head of them, becameall-powerful. Instead of combining his provinces, and[441]organizing an army, Svidrigello sought alliances, treated with Sigismund, with the Germans, with the Khan, and with the Pope. All this proved his unfitness, and weakened the attachment of the Orthodox party. Besides he was passionate, given to anger, and cruel. He sometimes punished with death those adherents of Sigismund whom he captured. For example, he had one of the princes, Olshanski, sewn up in a bag and drowned in the Dvina. Worse than all of his evil deeds, he burned at the stake the metropolitan Gerásim, for an unknown reason, but presumably for communicating with Sigismund.A decisive battle was fought near Vilkomir, in which Sigismund was victor. Svidrigello fled to Kief, and found refuge there, while Smolensk, Polotsk andVitebskreceived lieutenants from Sigismund. Svidrigello had still a part of Podolia, much of Volynia and the whole of the Kief principality, in which Yursha, his brave voevoda, was commanding, but feeling that he had not sufficient power to continue the struggle, he went to Cracow and offered to become a feudatory of Poland.Sigismund was active against him, and spared nothing in bribery. He demanded for himself all that Svidrigello had held, and his side succeeded. Svidrigello, fearing to fall into Sigismund’s clutches, withdrew to Wallachia, and Kief and Volynia were given to Sigismund, on condition that after he died Lithuania and Russia should be given to Poland.So the war ended with victory for Sigismund, but he had little profit from his triumph. The humiliating position in which the new prince had put his own office roused opposition among Lithuanians and Russians. Especially active were Olgerd’s descendants in fighting against this son of Keistut, who had seized power unjustly, as it seemed to them. Their indignation was increased by the cruelty with which Sigismund hunted down every opponent. Men of the highest distinction were imprisoned and deprived of their property, while others were put to death without cause.When Sigismund summoned a Diet, the report went out quickly that that was only a trap to ruin princes and boyars. Unable to cast down the tyrant, for he was surrounded by Polish defenders, they formed a conspiracy, at the head of which stood a Russian, Prince Chartoriski, Dovgerd, voevoda of Vilna, and Lelyush,[442]who commanded in Troki. The conspirators used the hay tribute to carry out their stratagem.In the night before Palm Sunday, March, 1440, three hundred sleighs bringing hay were drawn into Troki. In each sleigh two or three armed men were secreted, and with each went a driver,—in all a thousand men or more. The following morning Sigismund’s son, Michael, went, accompanied by his father’s attendants, to early mass in the cathedral. During mass the men hidden in the hay came out, shut the gates of the fortress, and were led into the castle by Chartoriski. Sigismund, without leaving his bed, was hearing mass offered up by a priest in a chapel adjoining his chamber. He had a tame bear which served as a guard near his person; when the beast wished to enter he scratched at the door for admission. Chartoriski, seeing the bear in the courtyard, and knowing its habit, scratched on the door in imitation. The door was opened, and the conspirators entered. Skobeiko, equerry to Sigismund, but now false to him, seized an iron poker from the fireplace, and struck the prince on the head with such violence that his blood and brains stained the walls of the chamber. Slavko, a favorite and intimate of the Grand Prince, tried to shield his master; but he was hurled through the window and instantly killed. The body of the dead prince was conveyed in a sleigh to the lake, and left on the ice there; later it was buried, near Vitold’s grave, in the Cathedral of Vilna.When news of this terrible crime spread through Troki, there was a great outbreak. Michael and his attendants took refuge in a small castle on an island of the lake near Troki. Lelyush seized the main castle in the name of Svidrigello, and hung out his white banner above it. Dovgerd did the same in Vilna, but in Vilna the upper castle was taken by adherents of Michael. Meanwhile couriers raced off for Svidrigello. He hurried back from Moldavia, and appearing at Lutsk, was received with gladness by the people. Men imprisoned in strongholds of Lithuania and Russia were freed, but Svidrigello, instead of hastening to Vilna and Troki and securing the throne, which had come to him a second time, loitered in Lutsk till affairs changed again, and not to his profit.In Olshani a number of noted Lithuanians met and resolved to depose both Svidrigello and Michael, and make Yagello’s[443]youngest son, Kazimir, Grand Prince. It seemed to these magnates that they might rear this young boy in the ways of the country and manage it themselves during his minority. The Polish magnates insisted that the Lithuanian throne belonged to their actual king, Vladislav, who at ten years of age had been named as Yagello’s successor, but Vladislav, having been made king in Hungary, and being attracted by the war just beginning with Turkey, was willing to yield Lithuania to his brother. Still the Poles insisted that Kazimir, not being a sovereign, but only a viceroy, should be called prince, and not Grand Prince. This angered Lithuanians, who considered him sovereign, and they acted as follows:Young Kazimir came to Vilna with a large, brilliant suite, and attended by senators from Poland. The Lithuanian magnates prepared a great banquet to show him honor, and plied Polish senators with wine so generously that they were all fast asleep on the following morning. Very early in the day of July 3, 1440, the Lithuanians crowned Kazimir in the Vilna Cathedral, putting on his head the Grand Prince’s cap worn by Gedimin. They then gave him the sword, and placed on his shoulders the Grand Prince’s mantle. The Poles were roused from their slumbers by the thundering shouts of the people, who were greeting their new sovereign. Rich gifts were given to the senators, and they could do nothing but hide their mortification and displeasure, and reply with good wishes.Not slight was the task which confronted young Kazimir. The preceding wars with their manifold miseries, the frosts, untimely and terrible, the failure of harvests, famine, the pestilence, and other visitations are mentioned continually in the chronicle. Besides, many regions refused to accept him as Grand Prince. The king would not acknowledge him, and the Poles were ever ready to uphold his opponents, so as to break up the Grand Principality, and take in its fragments one after another more easily. Hence Svidrigello received Volynia and part of Podolia from the Polish king. Michael, son of that Sigismund murdered at Troki, joined with Mazovian princes, and gave them Berestei. Jmud, which rose against Kazimir, sided with Michael. Smolensk was rebellious in like manner, but Ivan Gashtold, the Grand Prince’s guardian and chief of his council of magnates, pacified all. Even[444]Michael came finally to Vilna, and made peace with Kazimir, receiving from him those same places which Sigismund, his father, had held till he was murdered.This peace, however, proved hollow, for Michael was raging against Kazimir in secret, and plotting to take the throne from him at any cost.Once, when the Grand Prince was learning to hunt, some hundreds of men well armed and mounted appeared in the forest. The moment notice was given of their coming, Andrei Gashtold, the son of Ivan, seized young Kazimir and galloped away with him to Troki. Gashtold, the father, sent warriors to hunt down the horsemen. Some were killed, others made captive; among the latter were five Russian princes, the brothers Volojinski, who were put to death straightway in Troki. Gasthold then hurried off toward Bryansk to meet Michael. But Michael had fled to Moscow, and his lands were confiscated straightway.With Svidrigello the action was simpler. He abandoned the king, and gave oath to Kazimir, who was his nephew. Kazimir left Svidrigello, his old, childless uncle, in Volynia, giving Kief with all its connections to Alexander, his cousin, a grandson of Olgerd and son of Vladimir. Smolensk was not managed so easily, but still it was managed, and kept for the Grand Principality.Barely had Kazimir, acting through Gashtold, brought peace to the princedom and saved its integrity, when new troubles and new dangers came from Poland. The Polish-Hungarian king, Vladislav, brother of Kazimir, attracted by his kingdom of Hungary and his struggle with Turkey, left Lithuania and Russia unmolested; but in 1444 that young king fell at Varna, and his death destroyed the new union between Hungary and Poland. The Poles had their election in 1445, and chose Kazimir. The union with Hungary being lost, they were all the more eager for the Russo-Lithuanian connection. If a king, not descended from Yagello, took the throne, every bond between Poland and the Grand Principality would be severed, but as the election of Kazimir gave the chance not only of preserving this bond, but of merging the Grand Principality in Poland, his election was favored by Poles without exception. This desire of the Poles to subject the principality and find in it lands, wealth and offices was irrepressible, and roused great indignation in Russia, for the nobles valued their[445]independence, and the Orthodox clergy feared Latin encroachment.Young Kazimir, grown accustomed to Russia, liked its ways and its language. Besides, the sovereign had power in Russia, while in Poland he had none. So when first his election was suggested, he answered evasively, saying that his brother’s death was still doubtful. At last the Poles used diplomacy to force him. They feigned to elect a Mazovian, Prince Boleslav, and to prepare for the coronation. This election meant war for the land claimed by Boleslav, and also a new war with Michael by Boleslav himself. The prospect of two wars, and the words of his mother brought conviction to Kazimir. In June, 1447, he was crowned with solemnity in Cracow.The time following Kazimir’s election was remarkable for boisterous Diets. The Poles sought to turn Lithuania and Russia into provinces of their kingdom. They claimed all Podolia and Volynia, with the Upper Bug region. Feodor Butchatski succeeded in seizing some castles, and placing Polish troops in them. The Russo-Lithuanian magnates were indignant. With burning words they defended the integrity of their country at the Diets, and demanded the return of Volynia and Podolia to their proper connection. They showed that historically those regions were theirs beyond question. The Poles referred to their own former conquests, as they called them. They referred to the Horodlo union, and treaties with various Lithuanian princes. The Lithuanians rejected those statements, and declared that from the Horodlo pact should be excluded certain words touching the union of Lithuania and Poland, words inserted without their knowledge, and in secret.The position of the king was unenviable. At first he was under the influence of Gashtold and others, and also of his own feelings, but as king he was powerless to counteract the demands of Polish nobles, who, besides the union of Russo-Lithuanian provinces, asked for confirmation of certain rights granted by Yagello, and demanded still others restricting royal action. There were two Polish parties at this time, those of Great and Little Poland. Great Poland formed what is now Poznan, Little Poland that part of the present Austrian Poland which has its center at Cracow. The men of Great Poland were mainly indifferent to questions[446]in the Grand Principality, because they were distant. Little Poland, on the contrary, turned every effort toward those questions. Immense lands, great careers, and much power were to be won through getting Lithuania and Russia. The head of the Little Poland party was Olesnitski, the chancellor. He held the first place in all councils; behind him stood the party in Cracow. The queen mother supported the chancellor. The young king yielded much to Olesnitski, who had made Sigismund Grand Prince, and was now working ardently for Michael, and urging the king to give him lands in Lithuania and be reconciled. The king would not listen to this; he did not forget that this same Michael had striven to kill him.Michael, after fleeing from Gashtold, had tarried in Moscow for some time, and, with help of the Mongols, had endeavored to seize lands from Lithuania. Vassili the Blind had supported him, while Kazimir had upheld the opponents of Vassili. Failing at last, Michael went to Moldavia, then to Silesia, and afterward back to Moscow. But by this time Vassili of Moscow had agreed with Lithuania, consequently he refused to help Michael further. At last Michael died, it is stated through poison given by some abbot,—poison of such power that the prince died immediately. Then the abbot, terrified by the thought of vengeance from Michael’s cousin, Sophia, the daughter of Vitold, also drank of the poison and died.That same year, 1450, died Svidrigello at Lutsk. Persecuted by the Poles all his life, he had hated them thoroughly, and had taken from his boyars an oath to give the land only to agents of the Grand Prince of Moscow. After his death all places were occupied by Russo-Lithuanian garrisons in the name of the Grand Prince. The Poles were incensed, and announced a campaign to recover those places. But the opposition of the king, and the unwillingness of Great Poland to take part in a struggle, cooled Cracow statesmen, who were forced to be satisfied for the moment with verbal attacks on the king, and hot quarrels with the Russo-Lithuanian contingent of the Commonwealth. The quarrels at last became so savage that all save Poles left the Diet, and went from the place secretly in the night-time.After that the king had great trouble in allaying the bitter hatred and rancor of parties, and in the next Diet, formed of Poles only, he yielded, confirming all the rights demanded, and taking an[447]oath never to alienate from Poland any lands which had ever belonged to it, among others the lands of Lithuania, Moldavia, and Russia. More important still, the king bound himself to keep near his person at all times a council made up of four Poles, and to remove the Lithuanians who were hostile to Poland.In 1455 Olesnitski, the cardinal, died, at a time when the Poles were beginning a war which proved most serious.In Prussia there had long been a dull and stubborn conflict between towns and lay landholders on one side, and the Order, composed of Knights of the Cross, on the other. The Order, retaining all authority, burdened the people with great dues and taxes, and hampered the Hanse towns in their traffic. Certain landholders had formed against the Order a league called the Brotherhood. To this Brotherhood almost all the large trading towns joined themselves. In the struggle which followed, the Pope and the Emperor inclined toward the Order. The league turned to Kazimir, and signed a pact making the Prussian lands subject to Poland, reserving for itself various privileges as to trade, taxes, and government.But now the need came to defend this position. The German Order, notwithstanding its fall, had much force still left, as well as the energy to resist for a long time, and even in 1454 it inflicted on Kazimir a notable defeat on the field of Choinitsi. After that the war lasted with changing results for twelve years. Then the Order, having exhausted its forces, sued for peace, and in 1466 received it at Thorn through the aid of the papal legate.By this peace the lands of Culm and Pomerania, with the cities Marienburg, Dantzig and Elbing, went to Poland, but Eastern Prussia, with Königsberg, its capital, remained with the Order, which assumed certain feudal relations to Poland. The main reason why the war was so long and ended without conquering the Order completely, is found in the quarrels and struggles between the Poles and the Russo-Lithuanians. The latter refrained almost entirely from taking part in the conflict, and the whole weight of it fell upon Poland. Though the same sovereign was both king and Grand Prince, he had so little authority in Poland, and was so hampered by parties that he had no power to make the three countries act as one body. Dlugosh, the Polish historian, declares that in the Grand Principality Russians and Lithuanians[448]opposed to the Poles had secret relations with the Order, against which the Poles were then warring.The first prince in Kief descended from Gedimin, and under a Grand Prince of that descent also, was Gedimin’s grandson, Vladimir, son of Olgerd. In his long rule of thirty years, from 1362 to 1392, the old city rested to a certain extent, and recovered considerably from the terrible destruction wrought by Batu and other Mongol khans.Orthodox in religion, and Russian externally, Vladimir cared for the Orthodox Church of Kief regions, and wished the metropolitan to reside in that ancient city; hence he supported Cyprian when Dmitri would not admit him to Moscow. When Vitold became Grand Prince of Lithuania, he drove out Vladimir, and put him in Kopyl, a small district. Kief he gave to Vladimir’s brother, Skirgello, in 1392. Vladimir tried hard to get the aid of Vassili of Moscow, but he met with no success, and spent the last years of his life in Kopyl. Skirgello, who in action was much like his brother, lived only four years. After his death Vitold, who wished to break up the old system, put no prince in Kief; he governed the city through agents, the first of whom was his confidant, Prince Olshanski.Svidrigello, at the beginning of his rule as Grand Prince, placed Yursha, his valiant assistant, in Kief. When expelled from northwestern regions by Sigismund, Svidrigello found refuge in Kief, and that city became the center of a large political division. Svidrigello, notwithstanding his official change from Orthodox faith to Latinity, was attached to his old Church. When the dignity of Grand Prince went to Yagello’s son, Kazimir, Svidrigello got Lutsk, and Ivan Gashtold, the guardian of Kazimir, thought it needful to yield to the boyars and the Russian party; hence he gave the Kief region to the son of Vladimir of Kopyl, that is, to Prince Alexander, whose surname was Olelko. Alexander, being a grandson of Olgerd, and married to the daughter of Vassili, the Grand Prince of Moscow, was a man of distinction, therefore Sigismund, the son of Keistut, thought him dangerous, and imprisoned him with his wife and two sons. He remained in prison till death removed Sigismund.Alexander governed fifteen years in the spirit of Vladimir, his father. He died at Kief in 1455, and was buried in the Catacomb[449]Monastery of that city. His two sons, Simeon and Michael, thought to divide the Kief region between them, but Kazimir forbade this, adding these words: “Vladimir, your grandfather, fled to Moscow and deserted his Kief rights.” Still Kazimir gave Kief to Simeon to govern, and to Michael the younger he left Slutsk and Kopyl as a property. Simeon ruled in Kief till he died in 1471. After his death, right to Kief went to Michael, his brother, and to his son Vassili.But the Polish king felt so strong now in Western Russia that he determined to give a blow to the system, and put an end to Kief’s separate existence. Kazimir, remembering that the Russo-Lithuanian boyars had demanded that he should live in Lithuania at all times, or send viceroys, indicating Simeon while they did so, not only refused to give Kief to any son of Alexander, but appointed a viceroy, Martin, son of Gashtold. The Kief people now refused to admit this man, but Martin brought with him an army, took Kief by assault, and seated himself in the so-called “Lithuanian castle.”Michael, the son of Alexander, was at this time in Novgorod, whither the Boretskis had called him as Kazimir’s lieutenant. Hearing that his brother Simeon was dead, he left Novgorod quickly and went to Kief, but finding that Martin was already master there, he was forced to take Slutsk and Kopyl. This loss of a princedom offended him deeply.Kazimir had adopted the method of Vitold, and was supplanting the princes by his own men. The princes, of course, did not yield without a struggle. A conspiracy was formed; at the head of it was Alexander’s son, Michael, and his cousin Feodor Bailski, also a grandson of Vladimir. The plans of the conspirators have not been made clear to us; according to some historians, they intended to seize Kazimir, dethrone, or kill him, and make Michael Grand Prince. According to others, they planned to take possession of certain eastern districts, and put them under the Grand Prince of Moscow.Feodor Bailski, who was marrying a daughter of Alexander Chartoriski, had invited the king to his wedding. The king went, but the plot was discovered, and Bailski’s servant, under torture, revealed the whole secret. Bailski, learning of this in the night, jumped out of bed, and when only half dressed sprang on horseback[450]and galloped away toward the boundary. He reached Moscow in safety, and entered the service of the Grand Prince. Kazimir kept Bailski’s young wife in Lithuania, and Bailski found a new wife in Moscow. His associates, Prince Olshanski, and Alexander’s son, Michael, were seized, brought to trial, and received a death sentence. Straightway Kazimir confirmed the sentence, which was carried out August, 1482, in front of the “Lithuanian castle” at Kief.Though the conspiracy is involved in deep mystery, both as to details and object, it is evident that the old order had been given a blow from which it could not recover. Some princes retained their lands, but those petty rulers, serving superior princes, were no longer dangerous to political unity. They took high offices willingly, and very gladly received the incomes going with them. The only danger was from princes whose lands bordered on Moscow, and who thus had the possibility of joining the capital. Therefore the Grand Prince of Lithuania tried to hold them by special treaties. Such treaties proved of small value, however, and toward the end of Kazimir’s reign some of those princes left Lithuania for Moscow.Smolensk was deprived of its old princely stock, and the city was held, through commanders, as a kind of corner-stone to the Lithuanian state in northeastern regions.In the reign of Kazimir IV took place the final separation of the Orthodox Church in Russia into two parts, the Eastern and Western. Isidor, now in Rome, but whilom metropolitan of Russia, played his part in this movement. At the wish of Callixtus III he surrendered to Gregory, his pupil and friend, his right to a part of the Russian Church, namely, nine bishoprics in Lithuania, Western Russia and Poland, and the former Patriarch, Gregory Mana, living also in Rome, ordained in 1458 this Gregory as metropolitan of Kief, Lithuania, and all Western Russia. King Kazimir protected Gregory; but the Orthodox bishops, and generally the Orthodox people, were so opposed to a metropolitan from Rome, that Gregory did not go to Kief; he lived mainly in Kazimir’s palace, and died in 1472 at Novgrodek.Two years later the Smolensk bishop, Misail, was made metropolitan. Being opposed to church union, he received confirmation from Tsargrad, and hence was accepted by all Western Russians.[451]With him began the unbroken succession of Kief metropolitans, independent of Moscow. Kief for a second time became the church center of Western Russia, and through the zeal of the clergy and the people the old city gradually rose again.In 1492 Kazimir IV fell ill while visiting Lithuania, and hastened toward Poland; but he died on the way, at Grodno. In his will he had designated his second son, Yan Albrecht, to the Polish throne, and Alexander, his third son, to the throne of Lithuania. The Poles and Lithuanians afterward confirmed each selection.During Kazimir’s time rose the Khanate of the Crimea. Information touching the origin of this Crimean dynasty is obscure and misleading. There is a tradition that the Black Sea Horde, crushed by civil war, after Edigai’s death chose as Khan a certain Azi, one of Jinghis Khan’s descendants. In childhood, Azi’s life had been saved in Lithuania, and he was reared by one Girei, whose name Azi and his family afterward assumed out of gratitude. Some chronicles describe the accession of the new Khan as happening in Vitold’s time, and under his auspices; according to others, it took place in the days of King Kazimir. One thing is clear, that this Azi lived really in Lithuania, and was descended from Tohtamish, who, as is known, found a refuge in that land.According to the second account, when Mongol raids increased against Russia, Kazimir was advised by his counselors to establish a Khan who might be devoted to Poland, and opposed to the Golden Horde rulers. So advantage was taken of the tendency to establish a Mongol state on the Black Sea.In 1446 the king sent Azi Girei to the Crimea with a convoy of his own men, commanded by Radzivill, and on his arrival, the murzas made him Khan. Besides the Crimean populations, Girei had under him the Nogai Horde, which lived between the Sea of Azoff and the Dnieper. In general he is considered the real founder of the Khanate. This separation of the lands along the Black Sea from the Golden Horde on the Volga was attended by a strife which was increased through inherited hatred between the descendants of Tohtamish and Kutlui.Kutchuk Mohammed was a grandson of Timur Kutlui, and under obligations to King Kazimir for his election. Azi, or Hadji Girei, remained faithful to the king all his life, and frequently punished other Mongols for attacking Russo-Lithuanian lands.[452]Especially distinguished for such robber expeditions at that time was Sedi Ahmed, apparently ruling in the steppes between the Don and the Dnieper. In 1451 Ahmed’s son, Mazovsha, was sent by him to collect tribute. He reached Moscow in July, and burned its outskirts, but at the walls of the town his men were defeated by the Russians, and withdrew in a panic, leaving everything behind them. The following year, while Sedi Ahmed’s men were making raids in Chernigoff, Girei attacked him suddenly and crushed his forces. In 1455 he was forced to seek refuge in Lithuania, but was later captured and imprisoned at Kovno, where he died in confinement.The Genoese colonies felt the weight of this Crimean Horde, which extended its lordship throughout the steppes on the north of the Tauric peninsula, and strove to possess the southeastern shores of it. They hampered greatly the Genoese, who were at last forced to declare themselves vassals. The Khan now transferred his residence to Bakche-Sarai in the Southern Crimea, a city existing to the present day. This first Khan died in 1467.The power of the Crimean Khan was limited to a few groups of people. Of these there were five chief groups: Shirym, Barym, Kuluk, Sulesh, and Mansur, which managed the destinies of the Khanate. Their influence was felt mainly in choosing each new Khan. Since the Khans had many sons, the indefiniteness of succession caused dreadful quarrels and bloodshed. Such struggles were frequent. Girei, who left several sons, was succeeded by his eldest son, Nordoulat, but Mengli Girei, one of the younger sons, got the throne later. This renowned Khan more than once experienced the vicissitudes of fortune. He mounted the throne many times, and was driven from it each time by rivals, but at last he fixed himself firmly, through the aid of the Osmanli.In 1453 the Byzantine Empire fell. The Genoese had given active assistance to the Empire in its agony, and hence they had suffered severely from Mohammed II, whose first work was to ravage Galata, the Genoese suburb. In 1475 a strong Turkish fleet attacked Kaffa (Theodosia). Internal dissensions, treason and the imbecility of the local power helped the Turks to get possession of the city. Among merchants robbed and slain were many Muscovites. After this the Turks subjected other Cumean colonies from Italy. We know not exactly what rôle Girei played in these[453]events; we know that he soon after recognized the Sultan as suzerain, and that Turkish garrisons were established in various towns on the Black Sea.The Crimean Khans, freed recently from subjection to Sarai, fell under the far stronger grasp of the Osmanli, but Mengli Girei, relying on the Sultan, established himself firmly, and continued the policy of his father. As to Sarai, he was its worst enemy, and was ever ready to aid its opponents. He did not, however, carry out his father’s projects with reference to Lithuania and Poland.Never had the Lithuanian state suffered such terrible blows as from Mengli Girei, in whose day the Crimean Horde received that robber character which for three hundred years made it famous. It tormented specially Russian regions connected with Poland, by seizing great numbers of captives, who, forced into slavery, were taken as living wares to the markets of the Osmanli.From the time of Girei, the boundaries of Russia were changed very sensibly. Olgerd had extended those boundaries into the steppes, and in Vitold’s day they touched the Euxine. Vitold had striven to guard southern lands from Mongol raids by strengthening old forts and building new ones. He had fortified Kaneff, and lower down on the Dnieper he had founded Kremnchug and Cherkasy. On the main crossing of the lower Dnieper he had fixed outposts. Near the seacoast he had built a strong place where Ochakoff flourished later, and had made a port near the site of the present Odessa. At the mouth of the Dniester, fronting Akkerman, he had erected a strong post, and higher up a second, known later as Bender; besides, there were other posts, in the steppe lands. But the Russo-Lithuanian state lost these boundaries in the time of the easy-going Kazimir, who was busied far more with quarreling Diets and the endless debates between Russians and Poles than with strengthening these boundaries. In his day the Black Sea was lost; Mengli Girei took possession of those forts built on the steppes and the sea. After that an immense empty space, known later on as the “Wild Fields,” lay between the settled Kief lands and the Horde at the Black Sea. These “Wild Fields” became the battle-ground between Kief colonists and Mongol cut-throats. Kazimir did an evil deed for his realms and for many men, when he set up Girei as a ruler.[454]
[Contents]CHAPTER XVIIISINGLE RULE ESTABLISHEDFoti, the metropolitan, died in 1431. His successor was Iona, who was born at Soli-Galitch, a place north of the Volga. The late metropolitan had favored Iona, and foretold his elevation. On Foti’s death the Grand Prince wished to make Iona metropolitan. He was appointed, and needed only ordination by the Patriarch, but civil war in Moscow delayed this. In view of Moscow disorders, another metropolitan was chosen in Western Russia and Lithuania. The Smolensk bishop Gerásim was ordained to the office in Tsargrad. But in 1435 Gerásim met a tragic death, because of his negotiations with Sigismund of Poland,—Vitold’s successor, Svidrigello, seized the metropolitan and burned him at the stake. Then Vassili of Moscow, in agreement with the Lithuanian Grand Prince, sent Iona to Tsargrad, but before he arrived there the Emperor and Patriarch had made Isidor, a Greek, metropolitan of Russia.The Emperor Ioann was well known for his discussions with Rome touching union of the Churches. Surrounded by the Osmanli on every side, he sought safety in church union, trusting that the Pope would bring aid to him from all Europe. Church union had been a question at Basle, to which council Ioann had sent three envoys, who agreed on conditions for union. One of these three, the most zealous for union, was Isidor. Wishing to involve Russia in the union, the Patriarch made Isidor metropolitan of Kief and all Russia. He came to Moscow with Iona. The Grand Prince was dissatisfied; still he received the new metropolitan, not knowing the plans of the Emperor and Patriarch. Isidor was barely in office when he asked to make a journey to Italy to be present at the Eighth Oecumenical Council, assembled in Ferrara at that time, 1437, to unite the two Churches. The Grand Prince was very[428]unwilling to grant the metropolitan leave of absence, and demanded from him a promise to preserve Orthodox purity in church belief.At Ferrara were the Byzantine Emperor, with his brother Dmitri and the Patriarch Iosif. The Council was opened 1438. Pope Eugene IV presided. Some months later the plague appeared at Ferrara and the Council was taken to Florence. Two parties were acting among the Greek members; one favored union with Rome, hoping thus to get aid against Islam, while the other would not sacrifice religion to politics for any cause. This party refused to recognize papal supremacy, procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as the Father, and some other articles of faith. The soul of the party was Mark, metropolitan of Ephesus. At the head of the other, and more numerous party, stood the Emperor and the Patriarch. Its most eloquent representative was Vissarion, metropolitan of Nicaea. Isidor, the metropolitan of Russia, was attached to this man through long friendship; he was bound heart and soul to his project of union, and did much for its temporary triumph.In July, 1439, in the Cathedral of Florence, was proclaimed the union of Churches. One of the cardinals read the Latin text of the bull containing the decision of the Council, and Vissarion read the Greek version. Among the names of the twenty metropolitans who signed the bull is that of Isidor. The Greek minority, headed by Mark of Ephesus, refused every signature. Eugene IV appointed Isidor papal legate for Livonia, and Eastern and Western Russia; with this title he left Florence in October. In Western Russia his first act was to publish the decision of the Council. On his return to Moscow a Latin crucifix was borne in front of him. This confused people greatly. In his first mass he prayed for the Pope before others, and at the end of the service the bull was read announcing Church union. In this bull those doctrines were proclaimed which, according to Russian ideas, form the main errors of Latinism. This reading produced immense scandal among both the clergy and laity. The Grand Prince denounced Isidor as a wolf, not a pastor and teacher. He commanded that he should be removed from office at once, and conveyed to the Chudoff monastery. Then he assembled bishops to judge the recreant.This was in 1440. Isidor did not await a decision; he fled from[429]the monastery, and, going through Tver and Lithuania, halted not till he reached the Pope’s palace. The Grand Prince did not pursue him, being satisfied, it seemed, with ending the matter in that way.In Tsargrad the union of Florence met firm resistance. The Emperor and Patriarch dared not proclaim it in the Sophia Cathedral. The new Patriarch, Gregory Mana, a determined advocate of the union, was forced from his office, and withdrew to Rome. Events showed very soon that the plans made in Rome were fruitless. The Turk was not driven from Europe. The Pope roused Yagello’s son, Vladislav, to attack the Osmanli, but Vladislav fell in battle. In 1444 the Christian army was thoroughly defeated by Murad II at Varna. The remnant of the Byzantine Empire received no aid from Western nations.Isidor was welcomed by the Pope with open arms, and made cardinal. He continued, however, to call himself metropolitan of Russia. The next Pope, Nicholas V, favored Isidor also, who was perhaps the chief agent between Rome and Byzantium. After the death of Gregory, who had been driven from his office by adhering to the union, the Pope appointed Isidor Patriarch. Of course the position was titular only.There was no obstacle now to the installation of Iona. The Grand Prince sent an envoy to the Patriarch to explain Isidor’s heresy, and ask him to install a new metropolitan. But while the envoy was on the road tidings met him from Mount Athos that the Patriarch and Emperor had joined the church union, hence he returned to Moscow, and for eight years there was no metropolitan in Russia.In the autumn of 1438 Ulu Mohammed (Big Mohammed) was expelled from the Horde by his rival, Kutchuk Mohammed (Little Mohammed). Ulu Mohammed seized the town of Bailoff on the boundary of Lithuania, and thought, as it seems, that he could win back his throne with the aid of Vassili, to whom he had given the Grand Principality. But Vassili, either wishing to be rid of Mongol robbery, or not desiring to quarrel with the Khan then occupying the throne, sent against Ulu voevodas with whom Dmitri Shemyaká and Dmitri Krasni, his two cousins, joined their forces. This army besieged the Mongols in Bailoff. In vain did Ulu beg for peace, promising to defend Russia from other Mongols, and never[430]again to ask for tribute. The Russian commanders would listen to nothing. But with them at Bailoff was the voevoda Gregori Protasieff, sent, as it seems, by the Lithuanian Grand Prince to help Moscow. This man betrayed his allies. He joined the Khan’s forces and made it possible for him to inflict a defeat upon Moscow. After this victory Ulu withdrew and halted near Nizni. At that point many Mongols came to him, and thus strengthened he was able to make raids against Russia, and even to hold Moscow besieged for several days in succession.In the spring of 1445 the Grand Prince received news that Mongols under Mohmutek and Yagup had been sent against Moscow. Vassili summoned a number of smaller princes and marched out in person to drive back those forces. July 6 he halted near Suzdal, and an encounter with the enemy took place. The Russians attacked the Mongols with vigor, and dispersed them after a short and sharp conflict. But, while hunting the enemy, Vassili’s men scattered, and some fell to stripping the dead. The Mongols now employed their usual tactics. They turned suddenly and attacking on all sides, defeated the Russians. A number of important boyars and princes were captured, among others the Grand Prince Vassili.The Mongol commander took the cross, which Vassili wore next his body, and sent it to Moscow to his wife and his mother, but Vassili they led away with them to Nizni. Before going, however, they plundered many places in Vladimir and Murom.There was weeping and wailing when news came to Moscow that the Grand Prince was a captive among Mongols; all looked for great woe, and a speedy attack on the capital. But the Mongols did not come, and the excitement gradually died away.Vassili’s captivity was not of long duration. From Nizni, the Khan with his forces went eastward to the edge of Moscow regions; thence he sent Baigitch, his murza, to Dmitri Shemyaká, who heard of Vassili’s misfortune with gladness, and straightway sent an envoy to work against liberating the prisoner. The envoy, however, was delayed for a long time; hence the Khan thought Shemyaká an enemy, and liberated the Grand Prince, who took an oath to give a large price for his freedom.Vassili returned to Moscow in the autumn of 1445. With him went Horde magnates, and a crowd of attendants to receive the[431]promised ransom. Some of these men, pleased with Moscow, remained in Russia as subjects. It must be noted that Vassili, in those days of Horde quarrels, had attracted princes and murzas to his capital. He had taken these men to his service, and given land to support them. Many Russians, not understanding his policy, were displeased to see Mongols treated as if they were people of Moscow.Hence, when the Grand Prince had to find his large ransom, dissatisfaction rose straightway on all sides. Shemyaká took advantage of this and brought over to his plans Vassili’s cousin, Ivan, son of Andrei, and grandson of Vladimir the Brave. This Ivan had fought nobly at Suzdal, where Vassili was captured. Wounded and thrown from his horse, he had succeeded with great difficulty in mounting another, and escaping. Discontented with a slender inheritance, as he thought it, he hoped to divide the lands of the Grand Prince with Shemyaká, the new claimant. He and Shemyaká now arranged with the malcontents of Moscow, and going to a place near the city, held communication daily with those conspirators.Vassili, not knowing the plot which his enemies were weaving, went on a pilgrimage to the Troitski monastery, with Ivan and Yuri, his two little sons. His attendants were a few intimate boyars, and a small number of servants. Shemyaká and Ivan rushed with all haste to Moscow and took possession of the city at night, through the help of confederates, who opened the gates to them. The Grand Prince’s mother, Sophia, and his wife were both captured; the treasury was pillaged; boyars faithful to Vassili were made prisoners and their property taken; wealthy citizens were robbed without ceremony.That same night, February 12–13, 1446, Shemyaká sent Ivan to the monastery to capture the Grand Prince. Vassili was at mass when a man named Bunko rushed in and declared that an enemy was approaching. Bunko had served the Grand Prince somewhat earlier, but had left him for Shemyaká’s service. Vassili, therefore, suspected the man of plotting, and commanded to expel him, but at the same time he sent guards out to learn what was happening. Ivan’s men saw those guards and reported. The conspirator had sent in a long line of sleighs, each carrying two armed men hidden under mats and other covering. Behind each sleigh walked a[432]third man, who seemed to be a peasant following his load. Vassili’s guards let a number of these sleighs pass unchallenged. All at once the line halted, and armed men sprang out and seized the guards. As there was deep snow at each side of the road, no man could escape to give warning to Vassili. Ivan’s men were seen only when near the monastery. The prince rushed to the stable, but no horse was ready. The old monks were helpless; among the younger monks some were opposed to Vassili. The prince hastened to the stone Church of the Trinity. He entered and the sexton closed and barred the heavy door.The attackers stormed like wolves in winter; they burst into the monastery, and ran to the Church of the Trinity. “Where is the Grand Prince?” shouted Ivan. Hearing Ivan’s voice, Vassili opened the door, and implored for his eyesight. Ivan commanded to seize him. Nikita, a boyar, obeyed his command. “Thou art taken,” said he, “by Dmitri, son of Yuri, Grand Prince of Moscow.” “God’s will be done,” replied Vassili.They placed him in a rough country sleigh and conducted him to Moscow. His attendant boyars were seized also, but in their haste the attackers forgot the two young princes, Ivan and Yuri, who had hidden, and when Ivan and his men had left the monastery the boys and those who were with them found refuge with Prince Ryapolovski in his village, Boyar Kovo. Later Ryapolovski and his brothers took the princes to Murom, and shut themselves up in the city, where a large force of warriors soon assembled.February 14, Prince Ivan reached Moscow and lodged Vassili at Shemyaká’s court, where three days later his enemies blinded him, accusing him thuswise: “Thou didst bring Mongols to Russia, and give them land. Thy love for those enemies and their speech is beyond measure; thou givest gold, lands, and silver to them; thy oppression of churches is unsparing. Also thou didst blind Prince Vassili, son of Yuri.” Then they sent him, with his princess, to Uglitch. Sophia, his mother, they sent to Chuhloma.Shemyaká began then to reign as Grand Prince in Moscow; his success was short-lived, however. Many princes would not recognize this new man. In Moscow not all the boyars took the oath, and soon complaints and indignation rose mightily against[433]him. His Galitch boyars and attendants seized the best places. People were not gratified when they saw that he was beginning to divide Moscow lands, consolidated with so much toil by preceding princes. Shemyaká soon felt his weakness, and determined to get Vassili’s sons into his power. At his request the nominated metropolitan, Iona, went to Murom and, by promising that Vassili should be liberated, persuaded the Ryapolovskis to surrender the little princes.Not merely was Vassili not liberated, but his sons were imprisoned with him in Uglitch. A great movement began then throughout Moscow regions in favor of the imprisoned and blinded prince. It was agreed by the Ryapolovskis, by Obolenski, and others to meet at Uglitch, storm the town, and free Vassili. Some reached the place, but others were waylaid by Shemyaká’s warriors. Thereupon they attacked and defeated those warriors, and brought in fresh assistants. Seeing that more and more men were leaving him, Shemyaká listened at last to Iona, who ceased not to complain that he had been used as a tool in taking the sons of Vassili from Murom. “What can a man without eyesight do?” asked Iona. “Besides, his sons are little children. Bind him to peace by an oath, and the bishops.”Shemyaká went to Uglitch with abbots, boyars, and bishops, freed Vassili from prison, and begged forgiveness. The blind man said that he had suffered for his sins; he showed great mildness, blaming only himself. Shemyaká, after taking an oath from Vassili that he would not seek power for himself or for his children, gave a great feast as evidence that they were reconciled. Vassili promised that he and his sons would live in distant Vologda. But barely was he free when the new oath was ignored, and the rôle changed completely. From Vologda Vassili went, as it were, on a pilgrimage to the Cyril Bailozero monastery. There many boyars and other men came to him, deserting his opponent. Trifon, the abbot of Bailozero, freed Vassili from the oath given his enemy, taking on himself the sin of breaking it. Then Vassili set out for Tver to obtain the co-operation of Prince Boris and make a league with him against Shemyaká. The alliance was made, and Boris betrothed his daughter to Ivan, Vassili’s eldest son.Meanwhile those attendants of Vassili who had fled to Lithuania gathered their warriors and marched to free the Grand Prince,[434]but on the way they learned that he was already free. They met Mongol troops and fell to fighting. “Who are ye?” inquired the Mongols. “We are men of Moscow hastening to free Prince Vassili, our sovereign.” “We too,” replied the Mongols, “are going with our two princes, Kasin and Yagup, to rescue Prince Vassili in return for kindness.” Both parties now advanced to aid Vassili.Shemyaká and Prince Ivan had despatched troops to block the Moscow road before the boyar Pleschyeff, sent by Vassili to Moscow. But Pleschyeff marched around Shemyaká’s troops very cleverly, and reached Moscow Christmas morning. The gates had just been thrown open for the Princess Julianna, a daughter-in-law of Vladimir the Brave. Vassili’s uncle, Pleschyeff, and his men rushed in behind her suite, and seized the Kremlin immediately. Learning that warriors were marching from Tver with Vassili, that other forces were hurrying from the west, and that the Kremlin was taken, Shemyaká and Ivan fled to Kargopol. At Vassili’s demand they now freed his mother, Sophia. They then begged for peace, and it was granted, but Shemyaká did not keep the conditions which he himself had put forward. He began at once to work against Vassili, who, when he had received undoubted proof of the perfidy, placed the question before the clergy.Then in the name of all spiritual persons a letter was written to Shemyaká. It began by reminding him of the offenses of Yuri, his father; it recounted his own crimes, comparing him to Cain, the first murderer, and to Sviatopolk the Accursed. It reproached him with treason, with robber attacks on the Grand Prince; with the blinding of Vassili, and other offenses. In conclusion, it asked him to observe his own treaty, otherwise he would be cursed and deprived of communion.Threatened not only with a curse, but with warriors of the Grand Prince, Shemyaká strengthened the treaty with a new oath. But soon he was false to this oath also, and renewed the civil war, which continued a number of years. At last Vassili’s troops, led by Obolenski, reached Galitch, now fortified strongly, and armed well with cannon. After a stubborn engagement Shemyaká was defeated and fled to Novgorod. Galitch yielded to Vassili, and in 1450 its citizens took the oath to him.The battle of Galitch was the last struggle of note between[435]Russian princes. After that Shemyaká made a number of efforts. He marched against Ustyug and Vologda, but his acts were mere senseless destruction of property. At last, in Moscow, it was thought best to bring his intimates, by rewards, to abandon him. It is stated that he died in Novgorod in 1453, after eating a chicken which his own cook had poisoned. Vassili Baida came galloping to Moscow with news of his death. For this news he received a good office.Thus ended a strife which had lasted two decades. It cost Moscow dearly, and delayed for a time the final ending of subjection to Mongols. But it had its own value also in developing single rule strongly in Russia. This struggle showed how firmly the new order was established. All classes stood on its side now, and favored its triumph. During Shemyaká’s warfare, Vassili the Dark (that is, blind), as men called him, spared all the other small princes lest they might join his rival, but when Shemyaká, that last champion of the old order of things, had vanished, Vassili was unsparingly stern to opposition, and seized the land of all warring princes.His cousin Ivan, grandson of Vladimir the Brave, who had aided Shemyaká, and betrayed the Grand Prince very often, even trying to bring the Polish king, Kazimir, to Moscow, was expelled from Mojaisk forever. He fled to Lithuania, and his portion was added to Moscow. Vassili of Serpukoff, who had formed a conspiracy against the Grand Prince, was seized and died later in prison. His son, Ivan, went to Lithuania, as did Shemyaká’s son, and Ivan of Majaisk; there the exiles spent their time in framing fruitless plots against Moscow. Toward the end of Vassili’s reign all minor places had been incorporated, save only Vereisk. The prince of that place had always been faithful, and Vassili did not disturb him.While assimilating the land of small princes, Vassili extended his influence over the Tver and Ryazan principalities. He undertook a campaign against Novgorod which ended in establishing Novgorod’s dependence on Moscow; he also subjected Vyatka, that disorderly nest of freebooters.Iona had aided Vassili more than many, and Vassili determined to make him metropolitan. He could not turn then to Tsargrad, for Isidor, who had fled from Moscow, not only continued to call[436]himself metropolitan of Russia, but was recognized as such by the Patriarch and Emperor. At the call of the Grand Prince, the bishops of Russia held a council in the Archangel Cathedral. Referring for authority to the rules of the Apostles and early churches, they ordained Iona December 5, 1448. Thus was created the first Russian metropolitan entirely independent of Tsargrad.The importance of this step was well understood in Russia. Its legality was proven. Iona wrote an epistle to his flock, a special one to Kief, and several to Western Russia. In those epistles he justified his installation, a work not superfluous in that time, for even in Moscow there were men who considered his elevation as contrary to Orthodox usage.When news came that the throne in Tsargrad was occupied by Constantine, instead of Ioann, the defender of the Florentine union, the Grand Prince sent a letter, in which he explained his whole course with Iona and Isidor, and asked final blessing from the Patriarch on the former. But communication with Tsargrad in those days had grown uncertain, through robber bands on the road, and disorders in the Empire itself.Then came the tidings that Tsargrad had fallen, and that Constantine had died while defending the city, May 29, 1453. This sad event in the Orthodox East aided the complete liberation of Russia from Tsargrad.The close connection between each metropolitan and Grand Prince, and the tendencies of Moscow to consolidate brought disagreement between the Moscow metropolitan and the Grand Princes of Lithuania, since the latter were rivals of the Moscow Grand Prince, especially after the Latinizing of Lithuania; hence the attempts to get a separate metropolitan for Western Russia. Finally, in Iona’s day, despite all his efforts, the separation of the Russian Church into two parts was effected. This was grievous to Iona. He wrote in vain to the Western Russian bishops, princes and boyars, to all the Western Russian people, advising them to stand firmly for the Orthodox religion.Three years later Iona died. His successor, Thedosi, Archbishop of Rostoff, was ordained by Russian bishops; thus this system was confirmed finally in Russia.The Grand Prince Vassili died in 1462, before he had reached his fiftieth year. In the second half of his reign, Vassili the Blind[437]was no longer the active, rather simple, and somewhat light-minded person that he had been in his youth. Not so much years as bitter suffering and experience, and especially the loss of his eyesight, developed adroitness and stern resolution. He brought into his own hands almost all the principalities near Moscow, and advanced very greatly the union effected by his immediate successor. At his death Russia included, besides the enlarged principality of Moscow, four independent lands, that is, Pskoff and Novgorod, with the Tver and Ryazan principalities.To give a brief picture of affairs in Lithuania and Russia is now indispensable for an understanding of Moscow. We must return to the beginning of Vassili’s reign.The death of Vitold of Lithuania, in 1430, without heirs raised the great question: Who shall succeed? The former Russo-Lithuanian Grand Prince, Yagello, at that time King of Poland, hesitated to put the two crowns on his own head, fearing opposition from the Russo-Lithuanian boyars, who struggled against merging their own state in Poland. Besides Yagello, there were two grandsons of Gedimin, Svidrigello, Yagello’s younger brother, and Sigismund, the youngest brother of Vitold. There were also grandsons of Olgerd, but being of the Orthodox faith they were unacceptable to the Poles, and to Catholics.Yagellogave the preference to his brother, who succeeded Vitold, and was crowned in the Vilna Cathedral. But Yagello was mistaken in thinking that he had found an obedient assistant. Though Svidrigello had gone over to the Latins through the influence of his brother, he was not a zealot, and was well inclined toward his former co-religionists. Having ruled in Russian principalities, he was Russian in language and sympathies; hence the Russians greeted his elevation, and expected aid from him against Latinism and absorption.Svidrigello had no wish to be a servant. He looked on the Grand Principality as his by right, and wished to preserve the integrity of his inheritance. In one word, his wish was to follow the policy of Vitold. Polish magnates were greatly displeased that the king had permitted this brother to be crowned without pledges, and had yielded Podolia and Volynia, which they claimed for themselves, and which, as they said, they had fought for.The taking of Galitch by Kazimir the Great was the first exploit[438]in distributing the lands of Russia among Polish nobles and the clergy, and also of taking lands from Russian owners, and giving them to Poles. This system had extended to Podolia from Galitch, a part of which had been joined to Poland. But in Vitold’s day Podolia had been given back to Russia almost entirely. In cities and castles were representatives of the Grand Prince supported by Russo-Lithuanian garrisons.No one supposed that Svidrigello would surrender Podolia and Volynia to Yagello, hence the Poles planned to capture them by stratagem. Kamenyets, the chief Podolian city, was commanded by Dovgerd, a noted Lithuanian. The local Polish nobles appeared at the castle of Kamenyets before the news of Vitold’s death had reached it. They came under protext of friendly consultation, and invited Dovgerd to meet them with his attendants. He did so. The Poles threw off the mask then, seized him with his attendants, and took possession of the castle. At the same time they surprised Smotritch, with a few other places, and thus won a part of Podolia. The voevodas of Volynia had heard of Vitold’s death and were prepared. There the Poles could obtain nothing.Svidrigello was indignant when he heard of what had happened at Kamenyets. Yagello was still in Lithuania, hunting; he had not returned since the funeral of Vitold. Svidrigello reproached the king bitterly, and declared that he would hold him a captive till Podolia was returned to its Grand Prince. Yagello met his brother’s outburst of anger and accusation with mild and insinuating speeches. But Svidrigello was unyielding. The king’s Polish suite proposed then a desperate measure: to kill Svidrigello, capture the Vilna castle, and defend themselves till aid came. The king would not consent to this murder, but to effect his escape he made an agreement by which he returned the castles in Podolia to his brother, and commanded Butchatski to yield Kamenyets to Prince Michael Baba, Svidrigello’s commander. Svidrigello was delighted. He rewarded Yagello’s messenger well, then he made rich presents to Yagello and his suite, and they departed for Poland. Despite his sixty years, Svidrigello had let himself be badly deceived.Polish magnates near the king, perhaps with his connivance, thought out a stratagem. They sent a private letter to Butchatski, forbidding him to obey Yagello’s order to yield Kamenyets, and[439]commanding him to arrest Prince Baba and the messenger. The letter was placed in a tube which was covered with wax and made to look like a candle. This counterfeit candle was taken to Butchatski by an attendant of the king’s messenger, who said, as he delivered it: “You will find in this candle all the light needed.” Real candles were burned before images, and were sent to chapels and churches, therefore this candle roused no suspicion. Butchatski cut the candle, found the letter, and followed its instructions.When he heard of the trick Svidrigello was enraged. He tried to recover the castles, but took only a few of them; Smotritch and Kamenyets remained with his opponents. The Poles now declared that Svidrigello must surrender not only Podolia, but Lutsk, and the south of Volynia. They demanded too that he should go to Poland and take an oath of obedience to Yagello. Svidrigello refused to do this. He made a treaty with the Germans, and with the Emperor. Sigismund opposed the growth of Poland, and desired the Order to assist Svidrigello, to whom he promised the same kind of crown that he had sent to Vitold.From the Polish king now came an envoy with reproaches. He condemned Svidrigello savagely for his alliance with the enemies of Poland. The envoy added also that Svidrigello was not a Grand Prince till so acknowledged by a Polish Diet. Svidrigello, borne away by furious anger, detained the Polish envoy, and had him imprisoned. After this insult there was no way to decide the dispute except by armed action.In 1431 the king led a large army into Volynia. The Poles were distinguished for their fury in that war; so irrepressible was it that the people were forced to hide in forests and swamps, and in inaccessible places. The king, to spare native regions, tried to curb the troops under him; he even warned people of his coming, and thus incurred the taunt that he was sparing his rebel brother. The Poles sacked Vladimir; Volynia was burned. Svidrigello, with Wallachians and Mongols, was preparing to meet the invasion, but discovering the great strength of the king’s forces, he withdrew and burned Lutsk to save it from the enemy. In the Lutsk castle he put Yursha, a Russian, who defended that stronghold so stubbornly that the Poles could not take it. Angered by this defeat, they accused the king of malevolent slackness, and of intentional blunders.[440]In the Polish camp disease attacked the men, and a distemper broke out among the horses. Food failed. German knights declared war, and invaded northern provinces. These calamities caused the king to offer peace. The Grand Prince accepted, and concluded a truce without consulting the Germans. Svidrigello retained what he had when the war broke out, that is Eastern Podolia, and Volynia entire. He had vindicated independence for the lands under him, but beyond that the result of the war was merely plunder and bloodshed.At the head of Polish affairs was Olesnitski, the chancellor, at that time cardinal. On meeting failure in the field he sought other means to subject Svidrigello. A rival was selected, Sigismund, Vitold’s youngest brother. Sigismund was to claim the Grand Principality; and in various ways a party was created to support him. A revolt was brought about and Svidrigello, being careless and improvident, was surprised and very nearly captured by his rival. He escaped by desperate speed, but his wife was seized. Vilna and Troki surrendered. Soon Lithuania acknowledged Sigismund, while Russia adhered to Svidrigello.Sigismund was crowned in Vilna, where a papal bull was read freeing Lithuania from its oath to Svidrigello. In Grodno, somewhat earlier, before senators and Olesnitski, Sigismund had surrendered the regions of Lutsk, and its lands, as well as Podolia and Goróden.Meanwhile Svidrigello had no intention of yielding to Sigismund broad regions which were still in his possession. Help was coming to him from the Tver prince. His Russian voevodas were successful. Alexander Nos defended Kief lands, and Prince Ostrogski, Volynia. Especially distinguished was Fedko, who, with help of Wallachians and Mongols, not only repulsed the Poles in Podolia, but seized Kamenyets, luring Butchatski from the fortress, and taking him captive.During this war Yagello died at the age of eighty-six. Thus ended a reign of fifty years, a reign memorable in Eastern Europe. The two great results of his life were the union of Lithuania and Poland, and the reduction of the royal power till it was a mere shadow. Now the nobles, with Olesnitski at the head of them, becameall-powerful. Instead of combining his provinces, and[441]organizing an army, Svidrigello sought alliances, treated with Sigismund, with the Germans, with the Khan, and with the Pope. All this proved his unfitness, and weakened the attachment of the Orthodox party. Besides he was passionate, given to anger, and cruel. He sometimes punished with death those adherents of Sigismund whom he captured. For example, he had one of the princes, Olshanski, sewn up in a bag and drowned in the Dvina. Worse than all of his evil deeds, he burned at the stake the metropolitan Gerásim, for an unknown reason, but presumably for communicating with Sigismund.A decisive battle was fought near Vilkomir, in which Sigismund was victor. Svidrigello fled to Kief, and found refuge there, while Smolensk, Polotsk andVitebskreceived lieutenants from Sigismund. Svidrigello had still a part of Podolia, much of Volynia and the whole of the Kief principality, in which Yursha, his brave voevoda, was commanding, but feeling that he had not sufficient power to continue the struggle, he went to Cracow and offered to become a feudatory of Poland.Sigismund was active against him, and spared nothing in bribery. He demanded for himself all that Svidrigello had held, and his side succeeded. Svidrigello, fearing to fall into Sigismund’s clutches, withdrew to Wallachia, and Kief and Volynia were given to Sigismund, on condition that after he died Lithuania and Russia should be given to Poland.So the war ended with victory for Sigismund, but he had little profit from his triumph. The humiliating position in which the new prince had put his own office roused opposition among Lithuanians and Russians. Especially active were Olgerd’s descendants in fighting against this son of Keistut, who had seized power unjustly, as it seemed to them. Their indignation was increased by the cruelty with which Sigismund hunted down every opponent. Men of the highest distinction were imprisoned and deprived of their property, while others were put to death without cause.When Sigismund summoned a Diet, the report went out quickly that that was only a trap to ruin princes and boyars. Unable to cast down the tyrant, for he was surrounded by Polish defenders, they formed a conspiracy, at the head of which stood a Russian, Prince Chartoriski, Dovgerd, voevoda of Vilna, and Lelyush,[442]who commanded in Troki. The conspirators used the hay tribute to carry out their stratagem.In the night before Palm Sunday, March, 1440, three hundred sleighs bringing hay were drawn into Troki. In each sleigh two or three armed men were secreted, and with each went a driver,—in all a thousand men or more. The following morning Sigismund’s son, Michael, went, accompanied by his father’s attendants, to early mass in the cathedral. During mass the men hidden in the hay came out, shut the gates of the fortress, and were led into the castle by Chartoriski. Sigismund, without leaving his bed, was hearing mass offered up by a priest in a chapel adjoining his chamber. He had a tame bear which served as a guard near his person; when the beast wished to enter he scratched at the door for admission. Chartoriski, seeing the bear in the courtyard, and knowing its habit, scratched on the door in imitation. The door was opened, and the conspirators entered. Skobeiko, equerry to Sigismund, but now false to him, seized an iron poker from the fireplace, and struck the prince on the head with such violence that his blood and brains stained the walls of the chamber. Slavko, a favorite and intimate of the Grand Prince, tried to shield his master; but he was hurled through the window and instantly killed. The body of the dead prince was conveyed in a sleigh to the lake, and left on the ice there; later it was buried, near Vitold’s grave, in the Cathedral of Vilna.When news of this terrible crime spread through Troki, there was a great outbreak. Michael and his attendants took refuge in a small castle on an island of the lake near Troki. Lelyush seized the main castle in the name of Svidrigello, and hung out his white banner above it. Dovgerd did the same in Vilna, but in Vilna the upper castle was taken by adherents of Michael. Meanwhile couriers raced off for Svidrigello. He hurried back from Moldavia, and appearing at Lutsk, was received with gladness by the people. Men imprisoned in strongholds of Lithuania and Russia were freed, but Svidrigello, instead of hastening to Vilna and Troki and securing the throne, which had come to him a second time, loitered in Lutsk till affairs changed again, and not to his profit.In Olshani a number of noted Lithuanians met and resolved to depose both Svidrigello and Michael, and make Yagello’s[443]youngest son, Kazimir, Grand Prince. It seemed to these magnates that they might rear this young boy in the ways of the country and manage it themselves during his minority. The Polish magnates insisted that the Lithuanian throne belonged to their actual king, Vladislav, who at ten years of age had been named as Yagello’s successor, but Vladislav, having been made king in Hungary, and being attracted by the war just beginning with Turkey, was willing to yield Lithuania to his brother. Still the Poles insisted that Kazimir, not being a sovereign, but only a viceroy, should be called prince, and not Grand Prince. This angered Lithuanians, who considered him sovereign, and they acted as follows:Young Kazimir came to Vilna with a large, brilliant suite, and attended by senators from Poland. The Lithuanian magnates prepared a great banquet to show him honor, and plied Polish senators with wine so generously that they were all fast asleep on the following morning. Very early in the day of July 3, 1440, the Lithuanians crowned Kazimir in the Vilna Cathedral, putting on his head the Grand Prince’s cap worn by Gedimin. They then gave him the sword, and placed on his shoulders the Grand Prince’s mantle. The Poles were roused from their slumbers by the thundering shouts of the people, who were greeting their new sovereign. Rich gifts were given to the senators, and they could do nothing but hide their mortification and displeasure, and reply with good wishes.Not slight was the task which confronted young Kazimir. The preceding wars with their manifold miseries, the frosts, untimely and terrible, the failure of harvests, famine, the pestilence, and other visitations are mentioned continually in the chronicle. Besides, many regions refused to accept him as Grand Prince. The king would not acknowledge him, and the Poles were ever ready to uphold his opponents, so as to break up the Grand Principality, and take in its fragments one after another more easily. Hence Svidrigello received Volynia and part of Podolia from the Polish king. Michael, son of that Sigismund murdered at Troki, joined with Mazovian princes, and gave them Berestei. Jmud, which rose against Kazimir, sided with Michael. Smolensk was rebellious in like manner, but Ivan Gashtold, the Grand Prince’s guardian and chief of his council of magnates, pacified all. Even[444]Michael came finally to Vilna, and made peace with Kazimir, receiving from him those same places which Sigismund, his father, had held till he was murdered.This peace, however, proved hollow, for Michael was raging against Kazimir in secret, and plotting to take the throne from him at any cost.Once, when the Grand Prince was learning to hunt, some hundreds of men well armed and mounted appeared in the forest. The moment notice was given of their coming, Andrei Gashtold, the son of Ivan, seized young Kazimir and galloped away with him to Troki. Gashtold, the father, sent warriors to hunt down the horsemen. Some were killed, others made captive; among the latter were five Russian princes, the brothers Volojinski, who were put to death straightway in Troki. Gasthold then hurried off toward Bryansk to meet Michael. But Michael had fled to Moscow, and his lands were confiscated straightway.With Svidrigello the action was simpler. He abandoned the king, and gave oath to Kazimir, who was his nephew. Kazimir left Svidrigello, his old, childless uncle, in Volynia, giving Kief with all its connections to Alexander, his cousin, a grandson of Olgerd and son of Vladimir. Smolensk was not managed so easily, but still it was managed, and kept for the Grand Principality.Barely had Kazimir, acting through Gashtold, brought peace to the princedom and saved its integrity, when new troubles and new dangers came from Poland. The Polish-Hungarian king, Vladislav, brother of Kazimir, attracted by his kingdom of Hungary and his struggle with Turkey, left Lithuania and Russia unmolested; but in 1444 that young king fell at Varna, and his death destroyed the new union between Hungary and Poland. The Poles had their election in 1445, and chose Kazimir. The union with Hungary being lost, they were all the more eager for the Russo-Lithuanian connection. If a king, not descended from Yagello, took the throne, every bond between Poland and the Grand Principality would be severed, but as the election of Kazimir gave the chance not only of preserving this bond, but of merging the Grand Principality in Poland, his election was favored by Poles without exception. This desire of the Poles to subject the principality and find in it lands, wealth and offices was irrepressible, and roused great indignation in Russia, for the nobles valued their[445]independence, and the Orthodox clergy feared Latin encroachment.Young Kazimir, grown accustomed to Russia, liked its ways and its language. Besides, the sovereign had power in Russia, while in Poland he had none. So when first his election was suggested, he answered evasively, saying that his brother’s death was still doubtful. At last the Poles used diplomacy to force him. They feigned to elect a Mazovian, Prince Boleslav, and to prepare for the coronation. This election meant war for the land claimed by Boleslav, and also a new war with Michael by Boleslav himself. The prospect of two wars, and the words of his mother brought conviction to Kazimir. In June, 1447, he was crowned with solemnity in Cracow.The time following Kazimir’s election was remarkable for boisterous Diets. The Poles sought to turn Lithuania and Russia into provinces of their kingdom. They claimed all Podolia and Volynia, with the Upper Bug region. Feodor Butchatski succeeded in seizing some castles, and placing Polish troops in them. The Russo-Lithuanian magnates were indignant. With burning words they defended the integrity of their country at the Diets, and demanded the return of Volynia and Podolia to their proper connection. They showed that historically those regions were theirs beyond question. The Poles referred to their own former conquests, as they called them. They referred to the Horodlo union, and treaties with various Lithuanian princes. The Lithuanians rejected those statements, and declared that from the Horodlo pact should be excluded certain words touching the union of Lithuania and Poland, words inserted without their knowledge, and in secret.The position of the king was unenviable. At first he was under the influence of Gashtold and others, and also of his own feelings, but as king he was powerless to counteract the demands of Polish nobles, who, besides the union of Russo-Lithuanian provinces, asked for confirmation of certain rights granted by Yagello, and demanded still others restricting royal action. There were two Polish parties at this time, those of Great and Little Poland. Great Poland formed what is now Poznan, Little Poland that part of the present Austrian Poland which has its center at Cracow. The men of Great Poland were mainly indifferent to questions[446]in the Grand Principality, because they were distant. Little Poland, on the contrary, turned every effort toward those questions. Immense lands, great careers, and much power were to be won through getting Lithuania and Russia. The head of the Little Poland party was Olesnitski, the chancellor. He held the first place in all councils; behind him stood the party in Cracow. The queen mother supported the chancellor. The young king yielded much to Olesnitski, who had made Sigismund Grand Prince, and was now working ardently for Michael, and urging the king to give him lands in Lithuania and be reconciled. The king would not listen to this; he did not forget that this same Michael had striven to kill him.Michael, after fleeing from Gashtold, had tarried in Moscow for some time, and, with help of the Mongols, had endeavored to seize lands from Lithuania. Vassili the Blind had supported him, while Kazimir had upheld the opponents of Vassili. Failing at last, Michael went to Moldavia, then to Silesia, and afterward back to Moscow. But by this time Vassili of Moscow had agreed with Lithuania, consequently he refused to help Michael further. At last Michael died, it is stated through poison given by some abbot,—poison of such power that the prince died immediately. Then the abbot, terrified by the thought of vengeance from Michael’s cousin, Sophia, the daughter of Vitold, also drank of the poison and died.That same year, 1450, died Svidrigello at Lutsk. Persecuted by the Poles all his life, he had hated them thoroughly, and had taken from his boyars an oath to give the land only to agents of the Grand Prince of Moscow. After his death all places were occupied by Russo-Lithuanian garrisons in the name of the Grand Prince. The Poles were incensed, and announced a campaign to recover those places. But the opposition of the king, and the unwillingness of Great Poland to take part in a struggle, cooled Cracow statesmen, who were forced to be satisfied for the moment with verbal attacks on the king, and hot quarrels with the Russo-Lithuanian contingent of the Commonwealth. The quarrels at last became so savage that all save Poles left the Diet, and went from the place secretly in the night-time.After that the king had great trouble in allaying the bitter hatred and rancor of parties, and in the next Diet, formed of Poles only, he yielded, confirming all the rights demanded, and taking an[447]oath never to alienate from Poland any lands which had ever belonged to it, among others the lands of Lithuania, Moldavia, and Russia. More important still, the king bound himself to keep near his person at all times a council made up of four Poles, and to remove the Lithuanians who were hostile to Poland.In 1455 Olesnitski, the cardinal, died, at a time when the Poles were beginning a war which proved most serious.In Prussia there had long been a dull and stubborn conflict between towns and lay landholders on one side, and the Order, composed of Knights of the Cross, on the other. The Order, retaining all authority, burdened the people with great dues and taxes, and hampered the Hanse towns in their traffic. Certain landholders had formed against the Order a league called the Brotherhood. To this Brotherhood almost all the large trading towns joined themselves. In the struggle which followed, the Pope and the Emperor inclined toward the Order. The league turned to Kazimir, and signed a pact making the Prussian lands subject to Poland, reserving for itself various privileges as to trade, taxes, and government.But now the need came to defend this position. The German Order, notwithstanding its fall, had much force still left, as well as the energy to resist for a long time, and even in 1454 it inflicted on Kazimir a notable defeat on the field of Choinitsi. After that the war lasted with changing results for twelve years. Then the Order, having exhausted its forces, sued for peace, and in 1466 received it at Thorn through the aid of the papal legate.By this peace the lands of Culm and Pomerania, with the cities Marienburg, Dantzig and Elbing, went to Poland, but Eastern Prussia, with Königsberg, its capital, remained with the Order, which assumed certain feudal relations to Poland. The main reason why the war was so long and ended without conquering the Order completely, is found in the quarrels and struggles between the Poles and the Russo-Lithuanians. The latter refrained almost entirely from taking part in the conflict, and the whole weight of it fell upon Poland. Though the same sovereign was both king and Grand Prince, he had so little authority in Poland, and was so hampered by parties that he had no power to make the three countries act as one body. Dlugosh, the Polish historian, declares that in the Grand Principality Russians and Lithuanians[448]opposed to the Poles had secret relations with the Order, against which the Poles were then warring.The first prince in Kief descended from Gedimin, and under a Grand Prince of that descent also, was Gedimin’s grandson, Vladimir, son of Olgerd. In his long rule of thirty years, from 1362 to 1392, the old city rested to a certain extent, and recovered considerably from the terrible destruction wrought by Batu and other Mongol khans.Orthodox in religion, and Russian externally, Vladimir cared for the Orthodox Church of Kief regions, and wished the metropolitan to reside in that ancient city; hence he supported Cyprian when Dmitri would not admit him to Moscow. When Vitold became Grand Prince of Lithuania, he drove out Vladimir, and put him in Kopyl, a small district. Kief he gave to Vladimir’s brother, Skirgello, in 1392. Vladimir tried hard to get the aid of Vassili of Moscow, but he met with no success, and spent the last years of his life in Kopyl. Skirgello, who in action was much like his brother, lived only four years. After his death Vitold, who wished to break up the old system, put no prince in Kief; he governed the city through agents, the first of whom was his confidant, Prince Olshanski.Svidrigello, at the beginning of his rule as Grand Prince, placed Yursha, his valiant assistant, in Kief. When expelled from northwestern regions by Sigismund, Svidrigello found refuge in Kief, and that city became the center of a large political division. Svidrigello, notwithstanding his official change from Orthodox faith to Latinity, was attached to his old Church. When the dignity of Grand Prince went to Yagello’s son, Kazimir, Svidrigello got Lutsk, and Ivan Gashtold, the guardian of Kazimir, thought it needful to yield to the boyars and the Russian party; hence he gave the Kief region to the son of Vladimir of Kopyl, that is, to Prince Alexander, whose surname was Olelko. Alexander, being a grandson of Olgerd, and married to the daughter of Vassili, the Grand Prince of Moscow, was a man of distinction, therefore Sigismund, the son of Keistut, thought him dangerous, and imprisoned him with his wife and two sons. He remained in prison till death removed Sigismund.Alexander governed fifteen years in the spirit of Vladimir, his father. He died at Kief in 1455, and was buried in the Catacomb[449]Monastery of that city. His two sons, Simeon and Michael, thought to divide the Kief region between them, but Kazimir forbade this, adding these words: “Vladimir, your grandfather, fled to Moscow and deserted his Kief rights.” Still Kazimir gave Kief to Simeon to govern, and to Michael the younger he left Slutsk and Kopyl as a property. Simeon ruled in Kief till he died in 1471. After his death, right to Kief went to Michael, his brother, and to his son Vassili.But the Polish king felt so strong now in Western Russia that he determined to give a blow to the system, and put an end to Kief’s separate existence. Kazimir, remembering that the Russo-Lithuanian boyars had demanded that he should live in Lithuania at all times, or send viceroys, indicating Simeon while they did so, not only refused to give Kief to any son of Alexander, but appointed a viceroy, Martin, son of Gashtold. The Kief people now refused to admit this man, but Martin brought with him an army, took Kief by assault, and seated himself in the so-called “Lithuanian castle.”Michael, the son of Alexander, was at this time in Novgorod, whither the Boretskis had called him as Kazimir’s lieutenant. Hearing that his brother Simeon was dead, he left Novgorod quickly and went to Kief, but finding that Martin was already master there, he was forced to take Slutsk and Kopyl. This loss of a princedom offended him deeply.Kazimir had adopted the method of Vitold, and was supplanting the princes by his own men. The princes, of course, did not yield without a struggle. A conspiracy was formed; at the head of it was Alexander’s son, Michael, and his cousin Feodor Bailski, also a grandson of Vladimir. The plans of the conspirators have not been made clear to us; according to some historians, they intended to seize Kazimir, dethrone, or kill him, and make Michael Grand Prince. According to others, they planned to take possession of certain eastern districts, and put them under the Grand Prince of Moscow.Feodor Bailski, who was marrying a daughter of Alexander Chartoriski, had invited the king to his wedding. The king went, but the plot was discovered, and Bailski’s servant, under torture, revealed the whole secret. Bailski, learning of this in the night, jumped out of bed, and when only half dressed sprang on horseback[450]and galloped away toward the boundary. He reached Moscow in safety, and entered the service of the Grand Prince. Kazimir kept Bailski’s young wife in Lithuania, and Bailski found a new wife in Moscow. His associates, Prince Olshanski, and Alexander’s son, Michael, were seized, brought to trial, and received a death sentence. Straightway Kazimir confirmed the sentence, which was carried out August, 1482, in front of the “Lithuanian castle” at Kief.Though the conspiracy is involved in deep mystery, both as to details and object, it is evident that the old order had been given a blow from which it could not recover. Some princes retained their lands, but those petty rulers, serving superior princes, were no longer dangerous to political unity. They took high offices willingly, and very gladly received the incomes going with them. The only danger was from princes whose lands bordered on Moscow, and who thus had the possibility of joining the capital. Therefore the Grand Prince of Lithuania tried to hold them by special treaties. Such treaties proved of small value, however, and toward the end of Kazimir’s reign some of those princes left Lithuania for Moscow.Smolensk was deprived of its old princely stock, and the city was held, through commanders, as a kind of corner-stone to the Lithuanian state in northeastern regions.In the reign of Kazimir IV took place the final separation of the Orthodox Church in Russia into two parts, the Eastern and Western. Isidor, now in Rome, but whilom metropolitan of Russia, played his part in this movement. At the wish of Callixtus III he surrendered to Gregory, his pupil and friend, his right to a part of the Russian Church, namely, nine bishoprics in Lithuania, Western Russia and Poland, and the former Patriarch, Gregory Mana, living also in Rome, ordained in 1458 this Gregory as metropolitan of Kief, Lithuania, and all Western Russia. King Kazimir protected Gregory; but the Orthodox bishops, and generally the Orthodox people, were so opposed to a metropolitan from Rome, that Gregory did not go to Kief; he lived mainly in Kazimir’s palace, and died in 1472 at Novgrodek.Two years later the Smolensk bishop, Misail, was made metropolitan. Being opposed to church union, he received confirmation from Tsargrad, and hence was accepted by all Western Russians.[451]With him began the unbroken succession of Kief metropolitans, independent of Moscow. Kief for a second time became the church center of Western Russia, and through the zeal of the clergy and the people the old city gradually rose again.In 1492 Kazimir IV fell ill while visiting Lithuania, and hastened toward Poland; but he died on the way, at Grodno. In his will he had designated his second son, Yan Albrecht, to the Polish throne, and Alexander, his third son, to the throne of Lithuania. The Poles and Lithuanians afterward confirmed each selection.During Kazimir’s time rose the Khanate of the Crimea. Information touching the origin of this Crimean dynasty is obscure and misleading. There is a tradition that the Black Sea Horde, crushed by civil war, after Edigai’s death chose as Khan a certain Azi, one of Jinghis Khan’s descendants. In childhood, Azi’s life had been saved in Lithuania, and he was reared by one Girei, whose name Azi and his family afterward assumed out of gratitude. Some chronicles describe the accession of the new Khan as happening in Vitold’s time, and under his auspices; according to others, it took place in the days of King Kazimir. One thing is clear, that this Azi lived really in Lithuania, and was descended from Tohtamish, who, as is known, found a refuge in that land.According to the second account, when Mongol raids increased against Russia, Kazimir was advised by his counselors to establish a Khan who might be devoted to Poland, and opposed to the Golden Horde rulers. So advantage was taken of the tendency to establish a Mongol state on the Black Sea.In 1446 the king sent Azi Girei to the Crimea with a convoy of his own men, commanded by Radzivill, and on his arrival, the murzas made him Khan. Besides the Crimean populations, Girei had under him the Nogai Horde, which lived between the Sea of Azoff and the Dnieper. In general he is considered the real founder of the Khanate. This separation of the lands along the Black Sea from the Golden Horde on the Volga was attended by a strife which was increased through inherited hatred between the descendants of Tohtamish and Kutlui.Kutchuk Mohammed was a grandson of Timur Kutlui, and under obligations to King Kazimir for his election. Azi, or Hadji Girei, remained faithful to the king all his life, and frequently punished other Mongols for attacking Russo-Lithuanian lands.[452]Especially distinguished for such robber expeditions at that time was Sedi Ahmed, apparently ruling in the steppes between the Don and the Dnieper. In 1451 Ahmed’s son, Mazovsha, was sent by him to collect tribute. He reached Moscow in July, and burned its outskirts, but at the walls of the town his men were defeated by the Russians, and withdrew in a panic, leaving everything behind them. The following year, while Sedi Ahmed’s men were making raids in Chernigoff, Girei attacked him suddenly and crushed his forces. In 1455 he was forced to seek refuge in Lithuania, but was later captured and imprisoned at Kovno, where he died in confinement.The Genoese colonies felt the weight of this Crimean Horde, which extended its lordship throughout the steppes on the north of the Tauric peninsula, and strove to possess the southeastern shores of it. They hampered greatly the Genoese, who were at last forced to declare themselves vassals. The Khan now transferred his residence to Bakche-Sarai in the Southern Crimea, a city existing to the present day. This first Khan died in 1467.The power of the Crimean Khan was limited to a few groups of people. Of these there were five chief groups: Shirym, Barym, Kuluk, Sulesh, and Mansur, which managed the destinies of the Khanate. Their influence was felt mainly in choosing each new Khan. Since the Khans had many sons, the indefiniteness of succession caused dreadful quarrels and bloodshed. Such struggles were frequent. Girei, who left several sons, was succeeded by his eldest son, Nordoulat, but Mengli Girei, one of the younger sons, got the throne later. This renowned Khan more than once experienced the vicissitudes of fortune. He mounted the throne many times, and was driven from it each time by rivals, but at last he fixed himself firmly, through the aid of the Osmanli.In 1453 the Byzantine Empire fell. The Genoese had given active assistance to the Empire in its agony, and hence they had suffered severely from Mohammed II, whose first work was to ravage Galata, the Genoese suburb. In 1475 a strong Turkish fleet attacked Kaffa (Theodosia). Internal dissensions, treason and the imbecility of the local power helped the Turks to get possession of the city. Among merchants robbed and slain were many Muscovites. After this the Turks subjected other Cumean colonies from Italy. We know not exactly what rôle Girei played in these[453]events; we know that he soon after recognized the Sultan as suzerain, and that Turkish garrisons were established in various towns on the Black Sea.The Crimean Khans, freed recently from subjection to Sarai, fell under the far stronger grasp of the Osmanli, but Mengli Girei, relying on the Sultan, established himself firmly, and continued the policy of his father. As to Sarai, he was its worst enemy, and was ever ready to aid its opponents. He did not, however, carry out his father’s projects with reference to Lithuania and Poland.Never had the Lithuanian state suffered such terrible blows as from Mengli Girei, in whose day the Crimean Horde received that robber character which for three hundred years made it famous. It tormented specially Russian regions connected with Poland, by seizing great numbers of captives, who, forced into slavery, were taken as living wares to the markets of the Osmanli.From the time of Girei, the boundaries of Russia were changed very sensibly. Olgerd had extended those boundaries into the steppes, and in Vitold’s day they touched the Euxine. Vitold had striven to guard southern lands from Mongol raids by strengthening old forts and building new ones. He had fortified Kaneff, and lower down on the Dnieper he had founded Kremnchug and Cherkasy. On the main crossing of the lower Dnieper he had fixed outposts. Near the seacoast he had built a strong place where Ochakoff flourished later, and had made a port near the site of the present Odessa. At the mouth of the Dniester, fronting Akkerman, he had erected a strong post, and higher up a second, known later as Bender; besides, there were other posts, in the steppe lands. But the Russo-Lithuanian state lost these boundaries in the time of the easy-going Kazimir, who was busied far more with quarreling Diets and the endless debates between Russians and Poles than with strengthening these boundaries. In his day the Black Sea was lost; Mengli Girei took possession of those forts built on the steppes and the sea. After that an immense empty space, known later on as the “Wild Fields,” lay between the settled Kief lands and the Horde at the Black Sea. These “Wild Fields” became the battle-ground between Kief colonists and Mongol cut-throats. Kazimir did an evil deed for his realms and for many men, when he set up Girei as a ruler.[454]
CHAPTER XVIIISINGLE RULE ESTABLISHED
Foti, the metropolitan, died in 1431. His successor was Iona, who was born at Soli-Galitch, a place north of the Volga. The late metropolitan had favored Iona, and foretold his elevation. On Foti’s death the Grand Prince wished to make Iona metropolitan. He was appointed, and needed only ordination by the Patriarch, but civil war in Moscow delayed this. In view of Moscow disorders, another metropolitan was chosen in Western Russia and Lithuania. The Smolensk bishop Gerásim was ordained to the office in Tsargrad. But in 1435 Gerásim met a tragic death, because of his negotiations with Sigismund of Poland,—Vitold’s successor, Svidrigello, seized the metropolitan and burned him at the stake. Then Vassili of Moscow, in agreement with the Lithuanian Grand Prince, sent Iona to Tsargrad, but before he arrived there the Emperor and Patriarch had made Isidor, a Greek, metropolitan of Russia.The Emperor Ioann was well known for his discussions with Rome touching union of the Churches. Surrounded by the Osmanli on every side, he sought safety in church union, trusting that the Pope would bring aid to him from all Europe. Church union had been a question at Basle, to which council Ioann had sent three envoys, who agreed on conditions for union. One of these three, the most zealous for union, was Isidor. Wishing to involve Russia in the union, the Patriarch made Isidor metropolitan of Kief and all Russia. He came to Moscow with Iona. The Grand Prince was dissatisfied; still he received the new metropolitan, not knowing the plans of the Emperor and Patriarch. Isidor was barely in office when he asked to make a journey to Italy to be present at the Eighth Oecumenical Council, assembled in Ferrara at that time, 1437, to unite the two Churches. The Grand Prince was very[428]unwilling to grant the metropolitan leave of absence, and demanded from him a promise to preserve Orthodox purity in church belief.At Ferrara were the Byzantine Emperor, with his brother Dmitri and the Patriarch Iosif. The Council was opened 1438. Pope Eugene IV presided. Some months later the plague appeared at Ferrara and the Council was taken to Florence. Two parties were acting among the Greek members; one favored union with Rome, hoping thus to get aid against Islam, while the other would not sacrifice religion to politics for any cause. This party refused to recognize papal supremacy, procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as the Father, and some other articles of faith. The soul of the party was Mark, metropolitan of Ephesus. At the head of the other, and more numerous party, stood the Emperor and the Patriarch. Its most eloquent representative was Vissarion, metropolitan of Nicaea. Isidor, the metropolitan of Russia, was attached to this man through long friendship; he was bound heart and soul to his project of union, and did much for its temporary triumph.In July, 1439, in the Cathedral of Florence, was proclaimed the union of Churches. One of the cardinals read the Latin text of the bull containing the decision of the Council, and Vissarion read the Greek version. Among the names of the twenty metropolitans who signed the bull is that of Isidor. The Greek minority, headed by Mark of Ephesus, refused every signature. Eugene IV appointed Isidor papal legate for Livonia, and Eastern and Western Russia; with this title he left Florence in October. In Western Russia his first act was to publish the decision of the Council. On his return to Moscow a Latin crucifix was borne in front of him. This confused people greatly. In his first mass he prayed for the Pope before others, and at the end of the service the bull was read announcing Church union. In this bull those doctrines were proclaimed which, according to Russian ideas, form the main errors of Latinism. This reading produced immense scandal among both the clergy and laity. The Grand Prince denounced Isidor as a wolf, not a pastor and teacher. He commanded that he should be removed from office at once, and conveyed to the Chudoff monastery. Then he assembled bishops to judge the recreant.This was in 1440. Isidor did not await a decision; he fled from[429]the monastery, and, going through Tver and Lithuania, halted not till he reached the Pope’s palace. The Grand Prince did not pursue him, being satisfied, it seemed, with ending the matter in that way.In Tsargrad the union of Florence met firm resistance. The Emperor and Patriarch dared not proclaim it in the Sophia Cathedral. The new Patriarch, Gregory Mana, a determined advocate of the union, was forced from his office, and withdrew to Rome. Events showed very soon that the plans made in Rome were fruitless. The Turk was not driven from Europe. The Pope roused Yagello’s son, Vladislav, to attack the Osmanli, but Vladislav fell in battle. In 1444 the Christian army was thoroughly defeated by Murad II at Varna. The remnant of the Byzantine Empire received no aid from Western nations.Isidor was welcomed by the Pope with open arms, and made cardinal. He continued, however, to call himself metropolitan of Russia. The next Pope, Nicholas V, favored Isidor also, who was perhaps the chief agent between Rome and Byzantium. After the death of Gregory, who had been driven from his office by adhering to the union, the Pope appointed Isidor Patriarch. Of course the position was titular only.There was no obstacle now to the installation of Iona. The Grand Prince sent an envoy to the Patriarch to explain Isidor’s heresy, and ask him to install a new metropolitan. But while the envoy was on the road tidings met him from Mount Athos that the Patriarch and Emperor had joined the church union, hence he returned to Moscow, and for eight years there was no metropolitan in Russia.In the autumn of 1438 Ulu Mohammed (Big Mohammed) was expelled from the Horde by his rival, Kutchuk Mohammed (Little Mohammed). Ulu Mohammed seized the town of Bailoff on the boundary of Lithuania, and thought, as it seems, that he could win back his throne with the aid of Vassili, to whom he had given the Grand Principality. But Vassili, either wishing to be rid of Mongol robbery, or not desiring to quarrel with the Khan then occupying the throne, sent against Ulu voevodas with whom Dmitri Shemyaká and Dmitri Krasni, his two cousins, joined their forces. This army besieged the Mongols in Bailoff. In vain did Ulu beg for peace, promising to defend Russia from other Mongols, and never[430]again to ask for tribute. The Russian commanders would listen to nothing. But with them at Bailoff was the voevoda Gregori Protasieff, sent, as it seems, by the Lithuanian Grand Prince to help Moscow. This man betrayed his allies. He joined the Khan’s forces and made it possible for him to inflict a defeat upon Moscow. After this victory Ulu withdrew and halted near Nizni. At that point many Mongols came to him, and thus strengthened he was able to make raids against Russia, and even to hold Moscow besieged for several days in succession.In the spring of 1445 the Grand Prince received news that Mongols under Mohmutek and Yagup had been sent against Moscow. Vassili summoned a number of smaller princes and marched out in person to drive back those forces. July 6 he halted near Suzdal, and an encounter with the enemy took place. The Russians attacked the Mongols with vigor, and dispersed them after a short and sharp conflict. But, while hunting the enemy, Vassili’s men scattered, and some fell to stripping the dead. The Mongols now employed their usual tactics. They turned suddenly and attacking on all sides, defeated the Russians. A number of important boyars and princes were captured, among others the Grand Prince Vassili.The Mongol commander took the cross, which Vassili wore next his body, and sent it to Moscow to his wife and his mother, but Vassili they led away with them to Nizni. Before going, however, they plundered many places in Vladimir and Murom.There was weeping and wailing when news came to Moscow that the Grand Prince was a captive among Mongols; all looked for great woe, and a speedy attack on the capital. But the Mongols did not come, and the excitement gradually died away.Vassili’s captivity was not of long duration. From Nizni, the Khan with his forces went eastward to the edge of Moscow regions; thence he sent Baigitch, his murza, to Dmitri Shemyaká, who heard of Vassili’s misfortune with gladness, and straightway sent an envoy to work against liberating the prisoner. The envoy, however, was delayed for a long time; hence the Khan thought Shemyaká an enemy, and liberated the Grand Prince, who took an oath to give a large price for his freedom.Vassili returned to Moscow in the autumn of 1445. With him went Horde magnates, and a crowd of attendants to receive the[431]promised ransom. Some of these men, pleased with Moscow, remained in Russia as subjects. It must be noted that Vassili, in those days of Horde quarrels, had attracted princes and murzas to his capital. He had taken these men to his service, and given land to support them. Many Russians, not understanding his policy, were displeased to see Mongols treated as if they were people of Moscow.Hence, when the Grand Prince had to find his large ransom, dissatisfaction rose straightway on all sides. Shemyaká took advantage of this and brought over to his plans Vassili’s cousin, Ivan, son of Andrei, and grandson of Vladimir the Brave. This Ivan had fought nobly at Suzdal, where Vassili was captured. Wounded and thrown from his horse, he had succeeded with great difficulty in mounting another, and escaping. Discontented with a slender inheritance, as he thought it, he hoped to divide the lands of the Grand Prince with Shemyaká, the new claimant. He and Shemyaká now arranged with the malcontents of Moscow, and going to a place near the city, held communication daily with those conspirators.Vassili, not knowing the plot which his enemies were weaving, went on a pilgrimage to the Troitski monastery, with Ivan and Yuri, his two little sons. His attendants were a few intimate boyars, and a small number of servants. Shemyaká and Ivan rushed with all haste to Moscow and took possession of the city at night, through the help of confederates, who opened the gates to them. The Grand Prince’s mother, Sophia, and his wife were both captured; the treasury was pillaged; boyars faithful to Vassili were made prisoners and their property taken; wealthy citizens were robbed without ceremony.That same night, February 12–13, 1446, Shemyaká sent Ivan to the monastery to capture the Grand Prince. Vassili was at mass when a man named Bunko rushed in and declared that an enemy was approaching. Bunko had served the Grand Prince somewhat earlier, but had left him for Shemyaká’s service. Vassili, therefore, suspected the man of plotting, and commanded to expel him, but at the same time he sent guards out to learn what was happening. Ivan’s men saw those guards and reported. The conspirator had sent in a long line of sleighs, each carrying two armed men hidden under mats and other covering. Behind each sleigh walked a[432]third man, who seemed to be a peasant following his load. Vassili’s guards let a number of these sleighs pass unchallenged. All at once the line halted, and armed men sprang out and seized the guards. As there was deep snow at each side of the road, no man could escape to give warning to Vassili. Ivan’s men were seen only when near the monastery. The prince rushed to the stable, but no horse was ready. The old monks were helpless; among the younger monks some were opposed to Vassili. The prince hastened to the stone Church of the Trinity. He entered and the sexton closed and barred the heavy door.The attackers stormed like wolves in winter; they burst into the monastery, and ran to the Church of the Trinity. “Where is the Grand Prince?” shouted Ivan. Hearing Ivan’s voice, Vassili opened the door, and implored for his eyesight. Ivan commanded to seize him. Nikita, a boyar, obeyed his command. “Thou art taken,” said he, “by Dmitri, son of Yuri, Grand Prince of Moscow.” “God’s will be done,” replied Vassili.They placed him in a rough country sleigh and conducted him to Moscow. His attendant boyars were seized also, but in their haste the attackers forgot the two young princes, Ivan and Yuri, who had hidden, and when Ivan and his men had left the monastery the boys and those who were with them found refuge with Prince Ryapolovski in his village, Boyar Kovo. Later Ryapolovski and his brothers took the princes to Murom, and shut themselves up in the city, where a large force of warriors soon assembled.February 14, Prince Ivan reached Moscow and lodged Vassili at Shemyaká’s court, where three days later his enemies blinded him, accusing him thuswise: “Thou didst bring Mongols to Russia, and give them land. Thy love for those enemies and their speech is beyond measure; thou givest gold, lands, and silver to them; thy oppression of churches is unsparing. Also thou didst blind Prince Vassili, son of Yuri.” Then they sent him, with his princess, to Uglitch. Sophia, his mother, they sent to Chuhloma.Shemyaká began then to reign as Grand Prince in Moscow; his success was short-lived, however. Many princes would not recognize this new man. In Moscow not all the boyars took the oath, and soon complaints and indignation rose mightily against[433]him. His Galitch boyars and attendants seized the best places. People were not gratified when they saw that he was beginning to divide Moscow lands, consolidated with so much toil by preceding princes. Shemyaká soon felt his weakness, and determined to get Vassili’s sons into his power. At his request the nominated metropolitan, Iona, went to Murom and, by promising that Vassili should be liberated, persuaded the Ryapolovskis to surrender the little princes.Not merely was Vassili not liberated, but his sons were imprisoned with him in Uglitch. A great movement began then throughout Moscow regions in favor of the imprisoned and blinded prince. It was agreed by the Ryapolovskis, by Obolenski, and others to meet at Uglitch, storm the town, and free Vassili. Some reached the place, but others were waylaid by Shemyaká’s warriors. Thereupon they attacked and defeated those warriors, and brought in fresh assistants. Seeing that more and more men were leaving him, Shemyaká listened at last to Iona, who ceased not to complain that he had been used as a tool in taking the sons of Vassili from Murom. “What can a man without eyesight do?” asked Iona. “Besides, his sons are little children. Bind him to peace by an oath, and the bishops.”Shemyaká went to Uglitch with abbots, boyars, and bishops, freed Vassili from prison, and begged forgiveness. The blind man said that he had suffered for his sins; he showed great mildness, blaming only himself. Shemyaká, after taking an oath from Vassili that he would not seek power for himself or for his children, gave a great feast as evidence that they were reconciled. Vassili promised that he and his sons would live in distant Vologda. But barely was he free when the new oath was ignored, and the rôle changed completely. From Vologda Vassili went, as it were, on a pilgrimage to the Cyril Bailozero monastery. There many boyars and other men came to him, deserting his opponent. Trifon, the abbot of Bailozero, freed Vassili from the oath given his enemy, taking on himself the sin of breaking it. Then Vassili set out for Tver to obtain the co-operation of Prince Boris and make a league with him against Shemyaká. The alliance was made, and Boris betrothed his daughter to Ivan, Vassili’s eldest son.Meanwhile those attendants of Vassili who had fled to Lithuania gathered their warriors and marched to free the Grand Prince,[434]but on the way they learned that he was already free. They met Mongol troops and fell to fighting. “Who are ye?” inquired the Mongols. “We are men of Moscow hastening to free Prince Vassili, our sovereign.” “We too,” replied the Mongols, “are going with our two princes, Kasin and Yagup, to rescue Prince Vassili in return for kindness.” Both parties now advanced to aid Vassili.Shemyaká and Prince Ivan had despatched troops to block the Moscow road before the boyar Pleschyeff, sent by Vassili to Moscow. But Pleschyeff marched around Shemyaká’s troops very cleverly, and reached Moscow Christmas morning. The gates had just been thrown open for the Princess Julianna, a daughter-in-law of Vladimir the Brave. Vassili’s uncle, Pleschyeff, and his men rushed in behind her suite, and seized the Kremlin immediately. Learning that warriors were marching from Tver with Vassili, that other forces were hurrying from the west, and that the Kremlin was taken, Shemyaká and Ivan fled to Kargopol. At Vassili’s demand they now freed his mother, Sophia. They then begged for peace, and it was granted, but Shemyaká did not keep the conditions which he himself had put forward. He began at once to work against Vassili, who, when he had received undoubted proof of the perfidy, placed the question before the clergy.Then in the name of all spiritual persons a letter was written to Shemyaká. It began by reminding him of the offenses of Yuri, his father; it recounted his own crimes, comparing him to Cain, the first murderer, and to Sviatopolk the Accursed. It reproached him with treason, with robber attacks on the Grand Prince; with the blinding of Vassili, and other offenses. In conclusion, it asked him to observe his own treaty, otherwise he would be cursed and deprived of communion.Threatened not only with a curse, but with warriors of the Grand Prince, Shemyaká strengthened the treaty with a new oath. But soon he was false to this oath also, and renewed the civil war, which continued a number of years. At last Vassili’s troops, led by Obolenski, reached Galitch, now fortified strongly, and armed well with cannon. After a stubborn engagement Shemyaká was defeated and fled to Novgorod. Galitch yielded to Vassili, and in 1450 its citizens took the oath to him.The battle of Galitch was the last struggle of note between[435]Russian princes. After that Shemyaká made a number of efforts. He marched against Ustyug and Vologda, but his acts were mere senseless destruction of property. At last, in Moscow, it was thought best to bring his intimates, by rewards, to abandon him. It is stated that he died in Novgorod in 1453, after eating a chicken which his own cook had poisoned. Vassili Baida came galloping to Moscow with news of his death. For this news he received a good office.Thus ended a strife which had lasted two decades. It cost Moscow dearly, and delayed for a time the final ending of subjection to Mongols. But it had its own value also in developing single rule strongly in Russia. This struggle showed how firmly the new order was established. All classes stood on its side now, and favored its triumph. During Shemyaká’s warfare, Vassili the Dark (that is, blind), as men called him, spared all the other small princes lest they might join his rival, but when Shemyaká, that last champion of the old order of things, had vanished, Vassili was unsparingly stern to opposition, and seized the land of all warring princes.His cousin Ivan, grandson of Vladimir the Brave, who had aided Shemyaká, and betrayed the Grand Prince very often, even trying to bring the Polish king, Kazimir, to Moscow, was expelled from Mojaisk forever. He fled to Lithuania, and his portion was added to Moscow. Vassili of Serpukoff, who had formed a conspiracy against the Grand Prince, was seized and died later in prison. His son, Ivan, went to Lithuania, as did Shemyaká’s son, and Ivan of Majaisk; there the exiles spent their time in framing fruitless plots against Moscow. Toward the end of Vassili’s reign all minor places had been incorporated, save only Vereisk. The prince of that place had always been faithful, and Vassili did not disturb him.While assimilating the land of small princes, Vassili extended his influence over the Tver and Ryazan principalities. He undertook a campaign against Novgorod which ended in establishing Novgorod’s dependence on Moscow; he also subjected Vyatka, that disorderly nest of freebooters.Iona had aided Vassili more than many, and Vassili determined to make him metropolitan. He could not turn then to Tsargrad, for Isidor, who had fled from Moscow, not only continued to call[436]himself metropolitan of Russia, but was recognized as such by the Patriarch and Emperor. At the call of the Grand Prince, the bishops of Russia held a council in the Archangel Cathedral. Referring for authority to the rules of the Apostles and early churches, they ordained Iona December 5, 1448. Thus was created the first Russian metropolitan entirely independent of Tsargrad.The importance of this step was well understood in Russia. Its legality was proven. Iona wrote an epistle to his flock, a special one to Kief, and several to Western Russia. In those epistles he justified his installation, a work not superfluous in that time, for even in Moscow there were men who considered his elevation as contrary to Orthodox usage.When news came that the throne in Tsargrad was occupied by Constantine, instead of Ioann, the defender of the Florentine union, the Grand Prince sent a letter, in which he explained his whole course with Iona and Isidor, and asked final blessing from the Patriarch on the former. But communication with Tsargrad in those days had grown uncertain, through robber bands on the road, and disorders in the Empire itself.Then came the tidings that Tsargrad had fallen, and that Constantine had died while defending the city, May 29, 1453. This sad event in the Orthodox East aided the complete liberation of Russia from Tsargrad.The close connection between each metropolitan and Grand Prince, and the tendencies of Moscow to consolidate brought disagreement between the Moscow metropolitan and the Grand Princes of Lithuania, since the latter were rivals of the Moscow Grand Prince, especially after the Latinizing of Lithuania; hence the attempts to get a separate metropolitan for Western Russia. Finally, in Iona’s day, despite all his efforts, the separation of the Russian Church into two parts was effected. This was grievous to Iona. He wrote in vain to the Western Russian bishops, princes and boyars, to all the Western Russian people, advising them to stand firmly for the Orthodox religion.Three years later Iona died. His successor, Thedosi, Archbishop of Rostoff, was ordained by Russian bishops; thus this system was confirmed finally in Russia.The Grand Prince Vassili died in 1462, before he had reached his fiftieth year. In the second half of his reign, Vassili the Blind[437]was no longer the active, rather simple, and somewhat light-minded person that he had been in his youth. Not so much years as bitter suffering and experience, and especially the loss of his eyesight, developed adroitness and stern resolution. He brought into his own hands almost all the principalities near Moscow, and advanced very greatly the union effected by his immediate successor. At his death Russia included, besides the enlarged principality of Moscow, four independent lands, that is, Pskoff and Novgorod, with the Tver and Ryazan principalities.To give a brief picture of affairs in Lithuania and Russia is now indispensable for an understanding of Moscow. We must return to the beginning of Vassili’s reign.The death of Vitold of Lithuania, in 1430, without heirs raised the great question: Who shall succeed? The former Russo-Lithuanian Grand Prince, Yagello, at that time King of Poland, hesitated to put the two crowns on his own head, fearing opposition from the Russo-Lithuanian boyars, who struggled against merging their own state in Poland. Besides Yagello, there were two grandsons of Gedimin, Svidrigello, Yagello’s younger brother, and Sigismund, the youngest brother of Vitold. There were also grandsons of Olgerd, but being of the Orthodox faith they were unacceptable to the Poles, and to Catholics.Yagellogave the preference to his brother, who succeeded Vitold, and was crowned in the Vilna Cathedral. But Yagello was mistaken in thinking that he had found an obedient assistant. Though Svidrigello had gone over to the Latins through the influence of his brother, he was not a zealot, and was well inclined toward his former co-religionists. Having ruled in Russian principalities, he was Russian in language and sympathies; hence the Russians greeted his elevation, and expected aid from him against Latinism and absorption.Svidrigello had no wish to be a servant. He looked on the Grand Principality as his by right, and wished to preserve the integrity of his inheritance. In one word, his wish was to follow the policy of Vitold. Polish magnates were greatly displeased that the king had permitted this brother to be crowned without pledges, and had yielded Podolia and Volynia, which they claimed for themselves, and which, as they said, they had fought for.The taking of Galitch by Kazimir the Great was the first exploit[438]in distributing the lands of Russia among Polish nobles and the clergy, and also of taking lands from Russian owners, and giving them to Poles. This system had extended to Podolia from Galitch, a part of which had been joined to Poland. But in Vitold’s day Podolia had been given back to Russia almost entirely. In cities and castles were representatives of the Grand Prince supported by Russo-Lithuanian garrisons.No one supposed that Svidrigello would surrender Podolia and Volynia to Yagello, hence the Poles planned to capture them by stratagem. Kamenyets, the chief Podolian city, was commanded by Dovgerd, a noted Lithuanian. The local Polish nobles appeared at the castle of Kamenyets before the news of Vitold’s death had reached it. They came under protext of friendly consultation, and invited Dovgerd to meet them with his attendants. He did so. The Poles threw off the mask then, seized him with his attendants, and took possession of the castle. At the same time they surprised Smotritch, with a few other places, and thus won a part of Podolia. The voevodas of Volynia had heard of Vitold’s death and were prepared. There the Poles could obtain nothing.Svidrigello was indignant when he heard of what had happened at Kamenyets. Yagello was still in Lithuania, hunting; he had not returned since the funeral of Vitold. Svidrigello reproached the king bitterly, and declared that he would hold him a captive till Podolia was returned to its Grand Prince. Yagello met his brother’s outburst of anger and accusation with mild and insinuating speeches. But Svidrigello was unyielding. The king’s Polish suite proposed then a desperate measure: to kill Svidrigello, capture the Vilna castle, and defend themselves till aid came. The king would not consent to this murder, but to effect his escape he made an agreement by which he returned the castles in Podolia to his brother, and commanded Butchatski to yield Kamenyets to Prince Michael Baba, Svidrigello’s commander. Svidrigello was delighted. He rewarded Yagello’s messenger well, then he made rich presents to Yagello and his suite, and they departed for Poland. Despite his sixty years, Svidrigello had let himself be badly deceived.Polish magnates near the king, perhaps with his connivance, thought out a stratagem. They sent a private letter to Butchatski, forbidding him to obey Yagello’s order to yield Kamenyets, and[439]commanding him to arrest Prince Baba and the messenger. The letter was placed in a tube which was covered with wax and made to look like a candle. This counterfeit candle was taken to Butchatski by an attendant of the king’s messenger, who said, as he delivered it: “You will find in this candle all the light needed.” Real candles were burned before images, and were sent to chapels and churches, therefore this candle roused no suspicion. Butchatski cut the candle, found the letter, and followed its instructions.When he heard of the trick Svidrigello was enraged. He tried to recover the castles, but took only a few of them; Smotritch and Kamenyets remained with his opponents. The Poles now declared that Svidrigello must surrender not only Podolia, but Lutsk, and the south of Volynia. They demanded too that he should go to Poland and take an oath of obedience to Yagello. Svidrigello refused to do this. He made a treaty with the Germans, and with the Emperor. Sigismund opposed the growth of Poland, and desired the Order to assist Svidrigello, to whom he promised the same kind of crown that he had sent to Vitold.From the Polish king now came an envoy with reproaches. He condemned Svidrigello savagely for his alliance with the enemies of Poland. The envoy added also that Svidrigello was not a Grand Prince till so acknowledged by a Polish Diet. Svidrigello, borne away by furious anger, detained the Polish envoy, and had him imprisoned. After this insult there was no way to decide the dispute except by armed action.In 1431 the king led a large army into Volynia. The Poles were distinguished for their fury in that war; so irrepressible was it that the people were forced to hide in forests and swamps, and in inaccessible places. The king, to spare native regions, tried to curb the troops under him; he even warned people of his coming, and thus incurred the taunt that he was sparing his rebel brother. The Poles sacked Vladimir; Volynia was burned. Svidrigello, with Wallachians and Mongols, was preparing to meet the invasion, but discovering the great strength of the king’s forces, he withdrew and burned Lutsk to save it from the enemy. In the Lutsk castle he put Yursha, a Russian, who defended that stronghold so stubbornly that the Poles could not take it. Angered by this defeat, they accused the king of malevolent slackness, and of intentional blunders.[440]In the Polish camp disease attacked the men, and a distemper broke out among the horses. Food failed. German knights declared war, and invaded northern provinces. These calamities caused the king to offer peace. The Grand Prince accepted, and concluded a truce without consulting the Germans. Svidrigello retained what he had when the war broke out, that is Eastern Podolia, and Volynia entire. He had vindicated independence for the lands under him, but beyond that the result of the war was merely plunder and bloodshed.At the head of Polish affairs was Olesnitski, the chancellor, at that time cardinal. On meeting failure in the field he sought other means to subject Svidrigello. A rival was selected, Sigismund, Vitold’s youngest brother. Sigismund was to claim the Grand Principality; and in various ways a party was created to support him. A revolt was brought about and Svidrigello, being careless and improvident, was surprised and very nearly captured by his rival. He escaped by desperate speed, but his wife was seized. Vilna and Troki surrendered. Soon Lithuania acknowledged Sigismund, while Russia adhered to Svidrigello.Sigismund was crowned in Vilna, where a papal bull was read freeing Lithuania from its oath to Svidrigello. In Grodno, somewhat earlier, before senators and Olesnitski, Sigismund had surrendered the regions of Lutsk, and its lands, as well as Podolia and Goróden.Meanwhile Svidrigello had no intention of yielding to Sigismund broad regions which were still in his possession. Help was coming to him from the Tver prince. His Russian voevodas were successful. Alexander Nos defended Kief lands, and Prince Ostrogski, Volynia. Especially distinguished was Fedko, who, with help of Wallachians and Mongols, not only repulsed the Poles in Podolia, but seized Kamenyets, luring Butchatski from the fortress, and taking him captive.During this war Yagello died at the age of eighty-six. Thus ended a reign of fifty years, a reign memorable in Eastern Europe. The two great results of his life were the union of Lithuania and Poland, and the reduction of the royal power till it was a mere shadow. Now the nobles, with Olesnitski at the head of them, becameall-powerful. Instead of combining his provinces, and[441]organizing an army, Svidrigello sought alliances, treated with Sigismund, with the Germans, with the Khan, and with the Pope. All this proved his unfitness, and weakened the attachment of the Orthodox party. Besides he was passionate, given to anger, and cruel. He sometimes punished with death those adherents of Sigismund whom he captured. For example, he had one of the princes, Olshanski, sewn up in a bag and drowned in the Dvina. Worse than all of his evil deeds, he burned at the stake the metropolitan Gerásim, for an unknown reason, but presumably for communicating with Sigismund.A decisive battle was fought near Vilkomir, in which Sigismund was victor. Svidrigello fled to Kief, and found refuge there, while Smolensk, Polotsk andVitebskreceived lieutenants from Sigismund. Svidrigello had still a part of Podolia, much of Volynia and the whole of the Kief principality, in which Yursha, his brave voevoda, was commanding, but feeling that he had not sufficient power to continue the struggle, he went to Cracow and offered to become a feudatory of Poland.Sigismund was active against him, and spared nothing in bribery. He demanded for himself all that Svidrigello had held, and his side succeeded. Svidrigello, fearing to fall into Sigismund’s clutches, withdrew to Wallachia, and Kief and Volynia were given to Sigismund, on condition that after he died Lithuania and Russia should be given to Poland.So the war ended with victory for Sigismund, but he had little profit from his triumph. The humiliating position in which the new prince had put his own office roused opposition among Lithuanians and Russians. Especially active were Olgerd’s descendants in fighting against this son of Keistut, who had seized power unjustly, as it seemed to them. Their indignation was increased by the cruelty with which Sigismund hunted down every opponent. Men of the highest distinction were imprisoned and deprived of their property, while others were put to death without cause.When Sigismund summoned a Diet, the report went out quickly that that was only a trap to ruin princes and boyars. Unable to cast down the tyrant, for he was surrounded by Polish defenders, they formed a conspiracy, at the head of which stood a Russian, Prince Chartoriski, Dovgerd, voevoda of Vilna, and Lelyush,[442]who commanded in Troki. The conspirators used the hay tribute to carry out their stratagem.In the night before Palm Sunday, March, 1440, three hundred sleighs bringing hay were drawn into Troki. In each sleigh two or three armed men were secreted, and with each went a driver,—in all a thousand men or more. The following morning Sigismund’s son, Michael, went, accompanied by his father’s attendants, to early mass in the cathedral. During mass the men hidden in the hay came out, shut the gates of the fortress, and were led into the castle by Chartoriski. Sigismund, without leaving his bed, was hearing mass offered up by a priest in a chapel adjoining his chamber. He had a tame bear which served as a guard near his person; when the beast wished to enter he scratched at the door for admission. Chartoriski, seeing the bear in the courtyard, and knowing its habit, scratched on the door in imitation. The door was opened, and the conspirators entered. Skobeiko, equerry to Sigismund, but now false to him, seized an iron poker from the fireplace, and struck the prince on the head with such violence that his blood and brains stained the walls of the chamber. Slavko, a favorite and intimate of the Grand Prince, tried to shield his master; but he was hurled through the window and instantly killed. The body of the dead prince was conveyed in a sleigh to the lake, and left on the ice there; later it was buried, near Vitold’s grave, in the Cathedral of Vilna.When news of this terrible crime spread through Troki, there was a great outbreak. Michael and his attendants took refuge in a small castle on an island of the lake near Troki. Lelyush seized the main castle in the name of Svidrigello, and hung out his white banner above it. Dovgerd did the same in Vilna, but in Vilna the upper castle was taken by adherents of Michael. Meanwhile couriers raced off for Svidrigello. He hurried back from Moldavia, and appearing at Lutsk, was received with gladness by the people. Men imprisoned in strongholds of Lithuania and Russia were freed, but Svidrigello, instead of hastening to Vilna and Troki and securing the throne, which had come to him a second time, loitered in Lutsk till affairs changed again, and not to his profit.In Olshani a number of noted Lithuanians met and resolved to depose both Svidrigello and Michael, and make Yagello’s[443]youngest son, Kazimir, Grand Prince. It seemed to these magnates that they might rear this young boy in the ways of the country and manage it themselves during his minority. The Polish magnates insisted that the Lithuanian throne belonged to their actual king, Vladislav, who at ten years of age had been named as Yagello’s successor, but Vladislav, having been made king in Hungary, and being attracted by the war just beginning with Turkey, was willing to yield Lithuania to his brother. Still the Poles insisted that Kazimir, not being a sovereign, but only a viceroy, should be called prince, and not Grand Prince. This angered Lithuanians, who considered him sovereign, and they acted as follows:Young Kazimir came to Vilna with a large, brilliant suite, and attended by senators from Poland. The Lithuanian magnates prepared a great banquet to show him honor, and plied Polish senators with wine so generously that they were all fast asleep on the following morning. Very early in the day of July 3, 1440, the Lithuanians crowned Kazimir in the Vilna Cathedral, putting on his head the Grand Prince’s cap worn by Gedimin. They then gave him the sword, and placed on his shoulders the Grand Prince’s mantle. The Poles were roused from their slumbers by the thundering shouts of the people, who were greeting their new sovereign. Rich gifts were given to the senators, and they could do nothing but hide their mortification and displeasure, and reply with good wishes.Not slight was the task which confronted young Kazimir. The preceding wars with their manifold miseries, the frosts, untimely and terrible, the failure of harvests, famine, the pestilence, and other visitations are mentioned continually in the chronicle. Besides, many regions refused to accept him as Grand Prince. The king would not acknowledge him, and the Poles were ever ready to uphold his opponents, so as to break up the Grand Principality, and take in its fragments one after another more easily. Hence Svidrigello received Volynia and part of Podolia from the Polish king. Michael, son of that Sigismund murdered at Troki, joined with Mazovian princes, and gave them Berestei. Jmud, which rose against Kazimir, sided with Michael. Smolensk was rebellious in like manner, but Ivan Gashtold, the Grand Prince’s guardian and chief of his council of magnates, pacified all. Even[444]Michael came finally to Vilna, and made peace with Kazimir, receiving from him those same places which Sigismund, his father, had held till he was murdered.This peace, however, proved hollow, for Michael was raging against Kazimir in secret, and plotting to take the throne from him at any cost.Once, when the Grand Prince was learning to hunt, some hundreds of men well armed and mounted appeared in the forest. The moment notice was given of their coming, Andrei Gashtold, the son of Ivan, seized young Kazimir and galloped away with him to Troki. Gashtold, the father, sent warriors to hunt down the horsemen. Some were killed, others made captive; among the latter were five Russian princes, the brothers Volojinski, who were put to death straightway in Troki. Gasthold then hurried off toward Bryansk to meet Michael. But Michael had fled to Moscow, and his lands were confiscated straightway.With Svidrigello the action was simpler. He abandoned the king, and gave oath to Kazimir, who was his nephew. Kazimir left Svidrigello, his old, childless uncle, in Volynia, giving Kief with all its connections to Alexander, his cousin, a grandson of Olgerd and son of Vladimir. Smolensk was not managed so easily, but still it was managed, and kept for the Grand Principality.Barely had Kazimir, acting through Gashtold, brought peace to the princedom and saved its integrity, when new troubles and new dangers came from Poland. The Polish-Hungarian king, Vladislav, brother of Kazimir, attracted by his kingdom of Hungary and his struggle with Turkey, left Lithuania and Russia unmolested; but in 1444 that young king fell at Varna, and his death destroyed the new union between Hungary and Poland. The Poles had their election in 1445, and chose Kazimir. The union with Hungary being lost, they were all the more eager for the Russo-Lithuanian connection. If a king, not descended from Yagello, took the throne, every bond between Poland and the Grand Principality would be severed, but as the election of Kazimir gave the chance not only of preserving this bond, but of merging the Grand Principality in Poland, his election was favored by Poles without exception. This desire of the Poles to subject the principality and find in it lands, wealth and offices was irrepressible, and roused great indignation in Russia, for the nobles valued their[445]independence, and the Orthodox clergy feared Latin encroachment.Young Kazimir, grown accustomed to Russia, liked its ways and its language. Besides, the sovereign had power in Russia, while in Poland he had none. So when first his election was suggested, he answered evasively, saying that his brother’s death was still doubtful. At last the Poles used diplomacy to force him. They feigned to elect a Mazovian, Prince Boleslav, and to prepare for the coronation. This election meant war for the land claimed by Boleslav, and also a new war with Michael by Boleslav himself. The prospect of two wars, and the words of his mother brought conviction to Kazimir. In June, 1447, he was crowned with solemnity in Cracow.The time following Kazimir’s election was remarkable for boisterous Diets. The Poles sought to turn Lithuania and Russia into provinces of their kingdom. They claimed all Podolia and Volynia, with the Upper Bug region. Feodor Butchatski succeeded in seizing some castles, and placing Polish troops in them. The Russo-Lithuanian magnates were indignant. With burning words they defended the integrity of their country at the Diets, and demanded the return of Volynia and Podolia to their proper connection. They showed that historically those regions were theirs beyond question. The Poles referred to their own former conquests, as they called them. They referred to the Horodlo union, and treaties with various Lithuanian princes. The Lithuanians rejected those statements, and declared that from the Horodlo pact should be excluded certain words touching the union of Lithuania and Poland, words inserted without their knowledge, and in secret.The position of the king was unenviable. At first he was under the influence of Gashtold and others, and also of his own feelings, but as king he was powerless to counteract the demands of Polish nobles, who, besides the union of Russo-Lithuanian provinces, asked for confirmation of certain rights granted by Yagello, and demanded still others restricting royal action. There were two Polish parties at this time, those of Great and Little Poland. Great Poland formed what is now Poznan, Little Poland that part of the present Austrian Poland which has its center at Cracow. The men of Great Poland were mainly indifferent to questions[446]in the Grand Principality, because they were distant. Little Poland, on the contrary, turned every effort toward those questions. Immense lands, great careers, and much power were to be won through getting Lithuania and Russia. The head of the Little Poland party was Olesnitski, the chancellor. He held the first place in all councils; behind him stood the party in Cracow. The queen mother supported the chancellor. The young king yielded much to Olesnitski, who had made Sigismund Grand Prince, and was now working ardently for Michael, and urging the king to give him lands in Lithuania and be reconciled. The king would not listen to this; he did not forget that this same Michael had striven to kill him.Michael, after fleeing from Gashtold, had tarried in Moscow for some time, and, with help of the Mongols, had endeavored to seize lands from Lithuania. Vassili the Blind had supported him, while Kazimir had upheld the opponents of Vassili. Failing at last, Michael went to Moldavia, then to Silesia, and afterward back to Moscow. But by this time Vassili of Moscow had agreed with Lithuania, consequently he refused to help Michael further. At last Michael died, it is stated through poison given by some abbot,—poison of such power that the prince died immediately. Then the abbot, terrified by the thought of vengeance from Michael’s cousin, Sophia, the daughter of Vitold, also drank of the poison and died.That same year, 1450, died Svidrigello at Lutsk. Persecuted by the Poles all his life, he had hated them thoroughly, and had taken from his boyars an oath to give the land only to agents of the Grand Prince of Moscow. After his death all places were occupied by Russo-Lithuanian garrisons in the name of the Grand Prince. The Poles were incensed, and announced a campaign to recover those places. But the opposition of the king, and the unwillingness of Great Poland to take part in a struggle, cooled Cracow statesmen, who were forced to be satisfied for the moment with verbal attacks on the king, and hot quarrels with the Russo-Lithuanian contingent of the Commonwealth. The quarrels at last became so savage that all save Poles left the Diet, and went from the place secretly in the night-time.After that the king had great trouble in allaying the bitter hatred and rancor of parties, and in the next Diet, formed of Poles only, he yielded, confirming all the rights demanded, and taking an[447]oath never to alienate from Poland any lands which had ever belonged to it, among others the lands of Lithuania, Moldavia, and Russia. More important still, the king bound himself to keep near his person at all times a council made up of four Poles, and to remove the Lithuanians who were hostile to Poland.In 1455 Olesnitski, the cardinal, died, at a time when the Poles were beginning a war which proved most serious.In Prussia there had long been a dull and stubborn conflict between towns and lay landholders on one side, and the Order, composed of Knights of the Cross, on the other. The Order, retaining all authority, burdened the people with great dues and taxes, and hampered the Hanse towns in their traffic. Certain landholders had formed against the Order a league called the Brotherhood. To this Brotherhood almost all the large trading towns joined themselves. In the struggle which followed, the Pope and the Emperor inclined toward the Order. The league turned to Kazimir, and signed a pact making the Prussian lands subject to Poland, reserving for itself various privileges as to trade, taxes, and government.But now the need came to defend this position. The German Order, notwithstanding its fall, had much force still left, as well as the energy to resist for a long time, and even in 1454 it inflicted on Kazimir a notable defeat on the field of Choinitsi. After that the war lasted with changing results for twelve years. Then the Order, having exhausted its forces, sued for peace, and in 1466 received it at Thorn through the aid of the papal legate.By this peace the lands of Culm and Pomerania, with the cities Marienburg, Dantzig and Elbing, went to Poland, but Eastern Prussia, with Königsberg, its capital, remained with the Order, which assumed certain feudal relations to Poland. The main reason why the war was so long and ended without conquering the Order completely, is found in the quarrels and struggles between the Poles and the Russo-Lithuanians. The latter refrained almost entirely from taking part in the conflict, and the whole weight of it fell upon Poland. Though the same sovereign was both king and Grand Prince, he had so little authority in Poland, and was so hampered by parties that he had no power to make the three countries act as one body. Dlugosh, the Polish historian, declares that in the Grand Principality Russians and Lithuanians[448]opposed to the Poles had secret relations with the Order, against which the Poles were then warring.The first prince in Kief descended from Gedimin, and under a Grand Prince of that descent also, was Gedimin’s grandson, Vladimir, son of Olgerd. In his long rule of thirty years, from 1362 to 1392, the old city rested to a certain extent, and recovered considerably from the terrible destruction wrought by Batu and other Mongol khans.Orthodox in religion, and Russian externally, Vladimir cared for the Orthodox Church of Kief regions, and wished the metropolitan to reside in that ancient city; hence he supported Cyprian when Dmitri would not admit him to Moscow. When Vitold became Grand Prince of Lithuania, he drove out Vladimir, and put him in Kopyl, a small district. Kief he gave to Vladimir’s brother, Skirgello, in 1392. Vladimir tried hard to get the aid of Vassili of Moscow, but he met with no success, and spent the last years of his life in Kopyl. Skirgello, who in action was much like his brother, lived only four years. After his death Vitold, who wished to break up the old system, put no prince in Kief; he governed the city through agents, the first of whom was his confidant, Prince Olshanski.Svidrigello, at the beginning of his rule as Grand Prince, placed Yursha, his valiant assistant, in Kief. When expelled from northwestern regions by Sigismund, Svidrigello found refuge in Kief, and that city became the center of a large political division. Svidrigello, notwithstanding his official change from Orthodox faith to Latinity, was attached to his old Church. When the dignity of Grand Prince went to Yagello’s son, Kazimir, Svidrigello got Lutsk, and Ivan Gashtold, the guardian of Kazimir, thought it needful to yield to the boyars and the Russian party; hence he gave the Kief region to the son of Vladimir of Kopyl, that is, to Prince Alexander, whose surname was Olelko. Alexander, being a grandson of Olgerd, and married to the daughter of Vassili, the Grand Prince of Moscow, was a man of distinction, therefore Sigismund, the son of Keistut, thought him dangerous, and imprisoned him with his wife and two sons. He remained in prison till death removed Sigismund.Alexander governed fifteen years in the spirit of Vladimir, his father. He died at Kief in 1455, and was buried in the Catacomb[449]Monastery of that city. His two sons, Simeon and Michael, thought to divide the Kief region between them, but Kazimir forbade this, adding these words: “Vladimir, your grandfather, fled to Moscow and deserted his Kief rights.” Still Kazimir gave Kief to Simeon to govern, and to Michael the younger he left Slutsk and Kopyl as a property. Simeon ruled in Kief till he died in 1471. After his death, right to Kief went to Michael, his brother, and to his son Vassili.But the Polish king felt so strong now in Western Russia that he determined to give a blow to the system, and put an end to Kief’s separate existence. Kazimir, remembering that the Russo-Lithuanian boyars had demanded that he should live in Lithuania at all times, or send viceroys, indicating Simeon while they did so, not only refused to give Kief to any son of Alexander, but appointed a viceroy, Martin, son of Gashtold. The Kief people now refused to admit this man, but Martin brought with him an army, took Kief by assault, and seated himself in the so-called “Lithuanian castle.”Michael, the son of Alexander, was at this time in Novgorod, whither the Boretskis had called him as Kazimir’s lieutenant. Hearing that his brother Simeon was dead, he left Novgorod quickly and went to Kief, but finding that Martin was already master there, he was forced to take Slutsk and Kopyl. This loss of a princedom offended him deeply.Kazimir had adopted the method of Vitold, and was supplanting the princes by his own men. The princes, of course, did not yield without a struggle. A conspiracy was formed; at the head of it was Alexander’s son, Michael, and his cousin Feodor Bailski, also a grandson of Vladimir. The plans of the conspirators have not been made clear to us; according to some historians, they intended to seize Kazimir, dethrone, or kill him, and make Michael Grand Prince. According to others, they planned to take possession of certain eastern districts, and put them under the Grand Prince of Moscow.Feodor Bailski, who was marrying a daughter of Alexander Chartoriski, had invited the king to his wedding. The king went, but the plot was discovered, and Bailski’s servant, under torture, revealed the whole secret. Bailski, learning of this in the night, jumped out of bed, and when only half dressed sprang on horseback[450]and galloped away toward the boundary. He reached Moscow in safety, and entered the service of the Grand Prince. Kazimir kept Bailski’s young wife in Lithuania, and Bailski found a new wife in Moscow. His associates, Prince Olshanski, and Alexander’s son, Michael, were seized, brought to trial, and received a death sentence. Straightway Kazimir confirmed the sentence, which was carried out August, 1482, in front of the “Lithuanian castle” at Kief.Though the conspiracy is involved in deep mystery, both as to details and object, it is evident that the old order had been given a blow from which it could not recover. Some princes retained their lands, but those petty rulers, serving superior princes, were no longer dangerous to political unity. They took high offices willingly, and very gladly received the incomes going with them. The only danger was from princes whose lands bordered on Moscow, and who thus had the possibility of joining the capital. Therefore the Grand Prince of Lithuania tried to hold them by special treaties. Such treaties proved of small value, however, and toward the end of Kazimir’s reign some of those princes left Lithuania for Moscow.Smolensk was deprived of its old princely stock, and the city was held, through commanders, as a kind of corner-stone to the Lithuanian state in northeastern regions.In the reign of Kazimir IV took place the final separation of the Orthodox Church in Russia into two parts, the Eastern and Western. Isidor, now in Rome, but whilom metropolitan of Russia, played his part in this movement. At the wish of Callixtus III he surrendered to Gregory, his pupil and friend, his right to a part of the Russian Church, namely, nine bishoprics in Lithuania, Western Russia and Poland, and the former Patriarch, Gregory Mana, living also in Rome, ordained in 1458 this Gregory as metropolitan of Kief, Lithuania, and all Western Russia. King Kazimir protected Gregory; but the Orthodox bishops, and generally the Orthodox people, were so opposed to a metropolitan from Rome, that Gregory did not go to Kief; he lived mainly in Kazimir’s palace, and died in 1472 at Novgrodek.Two years later the Smolensk bishop, Misail, was made metropolitan. Being opposed to church union, he received confirmation from Tsargrad, and hence was accepted by all Western Russians.[451]With him began the unbroken succession of Kief metropolitans, independent of Moscow. Kief for a second time became the church center of Western Russia, and through the zeal of the clergy and the people the old city gradually rose again.In 1492 Kazimir IV fell ill while visiting Lithuania, and hastened toward Poland; but he died on the way, at Grodno. In his will he had designated his second son, Yan Albrecht, to the Polish throne, and Alexander, his third son, to the throne of Lithuania. The Poles and Lithuanians afterward confirmed each selection.During Kazimir’s time rose the Khanate of the Crimea. Information touching the origin of this Crimean dynasty is obscure and misleading. There is a tradition that the Black Sea Horde, crushed by civil war, after Edigai’s death chose as Khan a certain Azi, one of Jinghis Khan’s descendants. In childhood, Azi’s life had been saved in Lithuania, and he was reared by one Girei, whose name Azi and his family afterward assumed out of gratitude. Some chronicles describe the accession of the new Khan as happening in Vitold’s time, and under his auspices; according to others, it took place in the days of King Kazimir. One thing is clear, that this Azi lived really in Lithuania, and was descended from Tohtamish, who, as is known, found a refuge in that land.According to the second account, when Mongol raids increased against Russia, Kazimir was advised by his counselors to establish a Khan who might be devoted to Poland, and opposed to the Golden Horde rulers. So advantage was taken of the tendency to establish a Mongol state on the Black Sea.In 1446 the king sent Azi Girei to the Crimea with a convoy of his own men, commanded by Radzivill, and on his arrival, the murzas made him Khan. Besides the Crimean populations, Girei had under him the Nogai Horde, which lived between the Sea of Azoff and the Dnieper. In general he is considered the real founder of the Khanate. This separation of the lands along the Black Sea from the Golden Horde on the Volga was attended by a strife which was increased through inherited hatred between the descendants of Tohtamish and Kutlui.Kutchuk Mohammed was a grandson of Timur Kutlui, and under obligations to King Kazimir for his election. Azi, or Hadji Girei, remained faithful to the king all his life, and frequently punished other Mongols for attacking Russo-Lithuanian lands.[452]Especially distinguished for such robber expeditions at that time was Sedi Ahmed, apparently ruling in the steppes between the Don and the Dnieper. In 1451 Ahmed’s son, Mazovsha, was sent by him to collect tribute. He reached Moscow in July, and burned its outskirts, but at the walls of the town his men were defeated by the Russians, and withdrew in a panic, leaving everything behind them. The following year, while Sedi Ahmed’s men were making raids in Chernigoff, Girei attacked him suddenly and crushed his forces. In 1455 he was forced to seek refuge in Lithuania, but was later captured and imprisoned at Kovno, where he died in confinement.The Genoese colonies felt the weight of this Crimean Horde, which extended its lordship throughout the steppes on the north of the Tauric peninsula, and strove to possess the southeastern shores of it. They hampered greatly the Genoese, who were at last forced to declare themselves vassals. The Khan now transferred his residence to Bakche-Sarai in the Southern Crimea, a city existing to the present day. This first Khan died in 1467.The power of the Crimean Khan was limited to a few groups of people. Of these there were five chief groups: Shirym, Barym, Kuluk, Sulesh, and Mansur, which managed the destinies of the Khanate. Their influence was felt mainly in choosing each new Khan. Since the Khans had many sons, the indefiniteness of succession caused dreadful quarrels and bloodshed. Such struggles were frequent. Girei, who left several sons, was succeeded by his eldest son, Nordoulat, but Mengli Girei, one of the younger sons, got the throne later. This renowned Khan more than once experienced the vicissitudes of fortune. He mounted the throne many times, and was driven from it each time by rivals, but at last he fixed himself firmly, through the aid of the Osmanli.In 1453 the Byzantine Empire fell. The Genoese had given active assistance to the Empire in its agony, and hence they had suffered severely from Mohammed II, whose first work was to ravage Galata, the Genoese suburb. In 1475 a strong Turkish fleet attacked Kaffa (Theodosia). Internal dissensions, treason and the imbecility of the local power helped the Turks to get possession of the city. Among merchants robbed and slain were many Muscovites. After this the Turks subjected other Cumean colonies from Italy. We know not exactly what rôle Girei played in these[453]events; we know that he soon after recognized the Sultan as suzerain, and that Turkish garrisons were established in various towns on the Black Sea.The Crimean Khans, freed recently from subjection to Sarai, fell under the far stronger grasp of the Osmanli, but Mengli Girei, relying on the Sultan, established himself firmly, and continued the policy of his father. As to Sarai, he was its worst enemy, and was ever ready to aid its opponents. He did not, however, carry out his father’s projects with reference to Lithuania and Poland.Never had the Lithuanian state suffered such terrible blows as from Mengli Girei, in whose day the Crimean Horde received that robber character which for three hundred years made it famous. It tormented specially Russian regions connected with Poland, by seizing great numbers of captives, who, forced into slavery, were taken as living wares to the markets of the Osmanli.From the time of Girei, the boundaries of Russia were changed very sensibly. Olgerd had extended those boundaries into the steppes, and in Vitold’s day they touched the Euxine. Vitold had striven to guard southern lands from Mongol raids by strengthening old forts and building new ones. He had fortified Kaneff, and lower down on the Dnieper he had founded Kremnchug and Cherkasy. On the main crossing of the lower Dnieper he had fixed outposts. Near the seacoast he had built a strong place where Ochakoff flourished later, and had made a port near the site of the present Odessa. At the mouth of the Dniester, fronting Akkerman, he had erected a strong post, and higher up a second, known later as Bender; besides, there were other posts, in the steppe lands. But the Russo-Lithuanian state lost these boundaries in the time of the easy-going Kazimir, who was busied far more with quarreling Diets and the endless debates between Russians and Poles than with strengthening these boundaries. In his day the Black Sea was lost; Mengli Girei took possession of those forts built on the steppes and the sea. After that an immense empty space, known later on as the “Wild Fields,” lay between the settled Kief lands and the Horde at the Black Sea. These “Wild Fields” became the battle-ground between Kief colonists and Mongol cut-throats. Kazimir did an evil deed for his realms and for many men, when he set up Girei as a ruler.[454]
Foti, the metropolitan, died in 1431. His successor was Iona, who was born at Soli-Galitch, a place north of the Volga. The late metropolitan had favored Iona, and foretold his elevation. On Foti’s death the Grand Prince wished to make Iona metropolitan. He was appointed, and needed only ordination by the Patriarch, but civil war in Moscow delayed this. In view of Moscow disorders, another metropolitan was chosen in Western Russia and Lithuania. The Smolensk bishop Gerásim was ordained to the office in Tsargrad. But in 1435 Gerásim met a tragic death, because of his negotiations with Sigismund of Poland,—Vitold’s successor, Svidrigello, seized the metropolitan and burned him at the stake. Then Vassili of Moscow, in agreement with the Lithuanian Grand Prince, sent Iona to Tsargrad, but before he arrived there the Emperor and Patriarch had made Isidor, a Greek, metropolitan of Russia.
The Emperor Ioann was well known for his discussions with Rome touching union of the Churches. Surrounded by the Osmanli on every side, he sought safety in church union, trusting that the Pope would bring aid to him from all Europe. Church union had been a question at Basle, to which council Ioann had sent three envoys, who agreed on conditions for union. One of these three, the most zealous for union, was Isidor. Wishing to involve Russia in the union, the Patriarch made Isidor metropolitan of Kief and all Russia. He came to Moscow with Iona. The Grand Prince was dissatisfied; still he received the new metropolitan, not knowing the plans of the Emperor and Patriarch. Isidor was barely in office when he asked to make a journey to Italy to be present at the Eighth Oecumenical Council, assembled in Ferrara at that time, 1437, to unite the two Churches. The Grand Prince was very[428]unwilling to grant the metropolitan leave of absence, and demanded from him a promise to preserve Orthodox purity in church belief.
At Ferrara were the Byzantine Emperor, with his brother Dmitri and the Patriarch Iosif. The Council was opened 1438. Pope Eugene IV presided. Some months later the plague appeared at Ferrara and the Council was taken to Florence. Two parties were acting among the Greek members; one favored union with Rome, hoping thus to get aid against Islam, while the other would not sacrifice religion to politics for any cause. This party refused to recognize papal supremacy, procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as the Father, and some other articles of faith. The soul of the party was Mark, metropolitan of Ephesus. At the head of the other, and more numerous party, stood the Emperor and the Patriarch. Its most eloquent representative was Vissarion, metropolitan of Nicaea. Isidor, the metropolitan of Russia, was attached to this man through long friendship; he was bound heart and soul to his project of union, and did much for its temporary triumph.
In July, 1439, in the Cathedral of Florence, was proclaimed the union of Churches. One of the cardinals read the Latin text of the bull containing the decision of the Council, and Vissarion read the Greek version. Among the names of the twenty metropolitans who signed the bull is that of Isidor. The Greek minority, headed by Mark of Ephesus, refused every signature. Eugene IV appointed Isidor papal legate for Livonia, and Eastern and Western Russia; with this title he left Florence in October. In Western Russia his first act was to publish the decision of the Council. On his return to Moscow a Latin crucifix was borne in front of him. This confused people greatly. In his first mass he prayed for the Pope before others, and at the end of the service the bull was read announcing Church union. In this bull those doctrines were proclaimed which, according to Russian ideas, form the main errors of Latinism. This reading produced immense scandal among both the clergy and laity. The Grand Prince denounced Isidor as a wolf, not a pastor and teacher. He commanded that he should be removed from office at once, and conveyed to the Chudoff monastery. Then he assembled bishops to judge the recreant.
This was in 1440. Isidor did not await a decision; he fled from[429]the monastery, and, going through Tver and Lithuania, halted not till he reached the Pope’s palace. The Grand Prince did not pursue him, being satisfied, it seemed, with ending the matter in that way.
In Tsargrad the union of Florence met firm resistance. The Emperor and Patriarch dared not proclaim it in the Sophia Cathedral. The new Patriarch, Gregory Mana, a determined advocate of the union, was forced from his office, and withdrew to Rome. Events showed very soon that the plans made in Rome were fruitless. The Turk was not driven from Europe. The Pope roused Yagello’s son, Vladislav, to attack the Osmanli, but Vladislav fell in battle. In 1444 the Christian army was thoroughly defeated by Murad II at Varna. The remnant of the Byzantine Empire received no aid from Western nations.
Isidor was welcomed by the Pope with open arms, and made cardinal. He continued, however, to call himself metropolitan of Russia. The next Pope, Nicholas V, favored Isidor also, who was perhaps the chief agent between Rome and Byzantium. After the death of Gregory, who had been driven from his office by adhering to the union, the Pope appointed Isidor Patriarch. Of course the position was titular only.
There was no obstacle now to the installation of Iona. The Grand Prince sent an envoy to the Patriarch to explain Isidor’s heresy, and ask him to install a new metropolitan. But while the envoy was on the road tidings met him from Mount Athos that the Patriarch and Emperor had joined the church union, hence he returned to Moscow, and for eight years there was no metropolitan in Russia.
In the autumn of 1438 Ulu Mohammed (Big Mohammed) was expelled from the Horde by his rival, Kutchuk Mohammed (Little Mohammed). Ulu Mohammed seized the town of Bailoff on the boundary of Lithuania, and thought, as it seems, that he could win back his throne with the aid of Vassili, to whom he had given the Grand Principality. But Vassili, either wishing to be rid of Mongol robbery, or not desiring to quarrel with the Khan then occupying the throne, sent against Ulu voevodas with whom Dmitri Shemyaká and Dmitri Krasni, his two cousins, joined their forces. This army besieged the Mongols in Bailoff. In vain did Ulu beg for peace, promising to defend Russia from other Mongols, and never[430]again to ask for tribute. The Russian commanders would listen to nothing. But with them at Bailoff was the voevoda Gregori Protasieff, sent, as it seems, by the Lithuanian Grand Prince to help Moscow. This man betrayed his allies. He joined the Khan’s forces and made it possible for him to inflict a defeat upon Moscow. After this victory Ulu withdrew and halted near Nizni. At that point many Mongols came to him, and thus strengthened he was able to make raids against Russia, and even to hold Moscow besieged for several days in succession.
In the spring of 1445 the Grand Prince received news that Mongols under Mohmutek and Yagup had been sent against Moscow. Vassili summoned a number of smaller princes and marched out in person to drive back those forces. July 6 he halted near Suzdal, and an encounter with the enemy took place. The Russians attacked the Mongols with vigor, and dispersed them after a short and sharp conflict. But, while hunting the enemy, Vassili’s men scattered, and some fell to stripping the dead. The Mongols now employed their usual tactics. They turned suddenly and attacking on all sides, defeated the Russians. A number of important boyars and princes were captured, among others the Grand Prince Vassili.
The Mongol commander took the cross, which Vassili wore next his body, and sent it to Moscow to his wife and his mother, but Vassili they led away with them to Nizni. Before going, however, they plundered many places in Vladimir and Murom.
There was weeping and wailing when news came to Moscow that the Grand Prince was a captive among Mongols; all looked for great woe, and a speedy attack on the capital. But the Mongols did not come, and the excitement gradually died away.
Vassili’s captivity was not of long duration. From Nizni, the Khan with his forces went eastward to the edge of Moscow regions; thence he sent Baigitch, his murza, to Dmitri Shemyaká, who heard of Vassili’s misfortune with gladness, and straightway sent an envoy to work against liberating the prisoner. The envoy, however, was delayed for a long time; hence the Khan thought Shemyaká an enemy, and liberated the Grand Prince, who took an oath to give a large price for his freedom.
Vassili returned to Moscow in the autumn of 1445. With him went Horde magnates, and a crowd of attendants to receive the[431]promised ransom. Some of these men, pleased with Moscow, remained in Russia as subjects. It must be noted that Vassili, in those days of Horde quarrels, had attracted princes and murzas to his capital. He had taken these men to his service, and given land to support them. Many Russians, not understanding his policy, were displeased to see Mongols treated as if they were people of Moscow.
Hence, when the Grand Prince had to find his large ransom, dissatisfaction rose straightway on all sides. Shemyaká took advantage of this and brought over to his plans Vassili’s cousin, Ivan, son of Andrei, and grandson of Vladimir the Brave. This Ivan had fought nobly at Suzdal, where Vassili was captured. Wounded and thrown from his horse, he had succeeded with great difficulty in mounting another, and escaping. Discontented with a slender inheritance, as he thought it, he hoped to divide the lands of the Grand Prince with Shemyaká, the new claimant. He and Shemyaká now arranged with the malcontents of Moscow, and going to a place near the city, held communication daily with those conspirators.
Vassili, not knowing the plot which his enemies were weaving, went on a pilgrimage to the Troitski monastery, with Ivan and Yuri, his two little sons. His attendants were a few intimate boyars, and a small number of servants. Shemyaká and Ivan rushed with all haste to Moscow and took possession of the city at night, through the help of confederates, who opened the gates to them. The Grand Prince’s mother, Sophia, and his wife were both captured; the treasury was pillaged; boyars faithful to Vassili were made prisoners and their property taken; wealthy citizens were robbed without ceremony.
That same night, February 12–13, 1446, Shemyaká sent Ivan to the monastery to capture the Grand Prince. Vassili was at mass when a man named Bunko rushed in and declared that an enemy was approaching. Bunko had served the Grand Prince somewhat earlier, but had left him for Shemyaká’s service. Vassili, therefore, suspected the man of plotting, and commanded to expel him, but at the same time he sent guards out to learn what was happening. Ivan’s men saw those guards and reported. The conspirator had sent in a long line of sleighs, each carrying two armed men hidden under mats and other covering. Behind each sleigh walked a[432]third man, who seemed to be a peasant following his load. Vassili’s guards let a number of these sleighs pass unchallenged. All at once the line halted, and armed men sprang out and seized the guards. As there was deep snow at each side of the road, no man could escape to give warning to Vassili. Ivan’s men were seen only when near the monastery. The prince rushed to the stable, but no horse was ready. The old monks were helpless; among the younger monks some were opposed to Vassili. The prince hastened to the stone Church of the Trinity. He entered and the sexton closed and barred the heavy door.
The attackers stormed like wolves in winter; they burst into the monastery, and ran to the Church of the Trinity. “Where is the Grand Prince?” shouted Ivan. Hearing Ivan’s voice, Vassili opened the door, and implored for his eyesight. Ivan commanded to seize him. Nikita, a boyar, obeyed his command. “Thou art taken,” said he, “by Dmitri, son of Yuri, Grand Prince of Moscow.” “God’s will be done,” replied Vassili.
They placed him in a rough country sleigh and conducted him to Moscow. His attendant boyars were seized also, but in their haste the attackers forgot the two young princes, Ivan and Yuri, who had hidden, and when Ivan and his men had left the monastery the boys and those who were with them found refuge with Prince Ryapolovski in his village, Boyar Kovo. Later Ryapolovski and his brothers took the princes to Murom, and shut themselves up in the city, where a large force of warriors soon assembled.
February 14, Prince Ivan reached Moscow and lodged Vassili at Shemyaká’s court, where three days later his enemies blinded him, accusing him thuswise: “Thou didst bring Mongols to Russia, and give them land. Thy love for those enemies and their speech is beyond measure; thou givest gold, lands, and silver to them; thy oppression of churches is unsparing. Also thou didst blind Prince Vassili, son of Yuri.” Then they sent him, with his princess, to Uglitch. Sophia, his mother, they sent to Chuhloma.
Shemyaká began then to reign as Grand Prince in Moscow; his success was short-lived, however. Many princes would not recognize this new man. In Moscow not all the boyars took the oath, and soon complaints and indignation rose mightily against[433]him. His Galitch boyars and attendants seized the best places. People were not gratified when they saw that he was beginning to divide Moscow lands, consolidated with so much toil by preceding princes. Shemyaká soon felt his weakness, and determined to get Vassili’s sons into his power. At his request the nominated metropolitan, Iona, went to Murom and, by promising that Vassili should be liberated, persuaded the Ryapolovskis to surrender the little princes.
Not merely was Vassili not liberated, but his sons were imprisoned with him in Uglitch. A great movement began then throughout Moscow regions in favor of the imprisoned and blinded prince. It was agreed by the Ryapolovskis, by Obolenski, and others to meet at Uglitch, storm the town, and free Vassili. Some reached the place, but others were waylaid by Shemyaká’s warriors. Thereupon they attacked and defeated those warriors, and brought in fresh assistants. Seeing that more and more men were leaving him, Shemyaká listened at last to Iona, who ceased not to complain that he had been used as a tool in taking the sons of Vassili from Murom. “What can a man without eyesight do?” asked Iona. “Besides, his sons are little children. Bind him to peace by an oath, and the bishops.”
Shemyaká went to Uglitch with abbots, boyars, and bishops, freed Vassili from prison, and begged forgiveness. The blind man said that he had suffered for his sins; he showed great mildness, blaming only himself. Shemyaká, after taking an oath from Vassili that he would not seek power for himself or for his children, gave a great feast as evidence that they were reconciled. Vassili promised that he and his sons would live in distant Vologda. But barely was he free when the new oath was ignored, and the rôle changed completely. From Vologda Vassili went, as it were, on a pilgrimage to the Cyril Bailozero monastery. There many boyars and other men came to him, deserting his opponent. Trifon, the abbot of Bailozero, freed Vassili from the oath given his enemy, taking on himself the sin of breaking it. Then Vassili set out for Tver to obtain the co-operation of Prince Boris and make a league with him against Shemyaká. The alliance was made, and Boris betrothed his daughter to Ivan, Vassili’s eldest son.
Meanwhile those attendants of Vassili who had fled to Lithuania gathered their warriors and marched to free the Grand Prince,[434]but on the way they learned that he was already free. They met Mongol troops and fell to fighting. “Who are ye?” inquired the Mongols. “We are men of Moscow hastening to free Prince Vassili, our sovereign.” “We too,” replied the Mongols, “are going with our two princes, Kasin and Yagup, to rescue Prince Vassili in return for kindness.” Both parties now advanced to aid Vassili.
Shemyaká and Prince Ivan had despatched troops to block the Moscow road before the boyar Pleschyeff, sent by Vassili to Moscow. But Pleschyeff marched around Shemyaká’s troops very cleverly, and reached Moscow Christmas morning. The gates had just been thrown open for the Princess Julianna, a daughter-in-law of Vladimir the Brave. Vassili’s uncle, Pleschyeff, and his men rushed in behind her suite, and seized the Kremlin immediately. Learning that warriors were marching from Tver with Vassili, that other forces were hurrying from the west, and that the Kremlin was taken, Shemyaká and Ivan fled to Kargopol. At Vassili’s demand they now freed his mother, Sophia. They then begged for peace, and it was granted, but Shemyaká did not keep the conditions which he himself had put forward. He began at once to work against Vassili, who, when he had received undoubted proof of the perfidy, placed the question before the clergy.
Then in the name of all spiritual persons a letter was written to Shemyaká. It began by reminding him of the offenses of Yuri, his father; it recounted his own crimes, comparing him to Cain, the first murderer, and to Sviatopolk the Accursed. It reproached him with treason, with robber attacks on the Grand Prince; with the blinding of Vassili, and other offenses. In conclusion, it asked him to observe his own treaty, otherwise he would be cursed and deprived of communion.
Threatened not only with a curse, but with warriors of the Grand Prince, Shemyaká strengthened the treaty with a new oath. But soon he was false to this oath also, and renewed the civil war, which continued a number of years. At last Vassili’s troops, led by Obolenski, reached Galitch, now fortified strongly, and armed well with cannon. After a stubborn engagement Shemyaká was defeated and fled to Novgorod. Galitch yielded to Vassili, and in 1450 its citizens took the oath to him.
The battle of Galitch was the last struggle of note between[435]Russian princes. After that Shemyaká made a number of efforts. He marched against Ustyug and Vologda, but his acts were mere senseless destruction of property. At last, in Moscow, it was thought best to bring his intimates, by rewards, to abandon him. It is stated that he died in Novgorod in 1453, after eating a chicken which his own cook had poisoned. Vassili Baida came galloping to Moscow with news of his death. For this news he received a good office.
Thus ended a strife which had lasted two decades. It cost Moscow dearly, and delayed for a time the final ending of subjection to Mongols. But it had its own value also in developing single rule strongly in Russia. This struggle showed how firmly the new order was established. All classes stood on its side now, and favored its triumph. During Shemyaká’s warfare, Vassili the Dark (that is, blind), as men called him, spared all the other small princes lest they might join his rival, but when Shemyaká, that last champion of the old order of things, had vanished, Vassili was unsparingly stern to opposition, and seized the land of all warring princes.
His cousin Ivan, grandson of Vladimir the Brave, who had aided Shemyaká, and betrayed the Grand Prince very often, even trying to bring the Polish king, Kazimir, to Moscow, was expelled from Mojaisk forever. He fled to Lithuania, and his portion was added to Moscow. Vassili of Serpukoff, who had formed a conspiracy against the Grand Prince, was seized and died later in prison. His son, Ivan, went to Lithuania, as did Shemyaká’s son, and Ivan of Majaisk; there the exiles spent their time in framing fruitless plots against Moscow. Toward the end of Vassili’s reign all minor places had been incorporated, save only Vereisk. The prince of that place had always been faithful, and Vassili did not disturb him.
While assimilating the land of small princes, Vassili extended his influence over the Tver and Ryazan principalities. He undertook a campaign against Novgorod which ended in establishing Novgorod’s dependence on Moscow; he also subjected Vyatka, that disorderly nest of freebooters.
Iona had aided Vassili more than many, and Vassili determined to make him metropolitan. He could not turn then to Tsargrad, for Isidor, who had fled from Moscow, not only continued to call[436]himself metropolitan of Russia, but was recognized as such by the Patriarch and Emperor. At the call of the Grand Prince, the bishops of Russia held a council in the Archangel Cathedral. Referring for authority to the rules of the Apostles and early churches, they ordained Iona December 5, 1448. Thus was created the first Russian metropolitan entirely independent of Tsargrad.
The importance of this step was well understood in Russia. Its legality was proven. Iona wrote an epistle to his flock, a special one to Kief, and several to Western Russia. In those epistles he justified his installation, a work not superfluous in that time, for even in Moscow there were men who considered his elevation as contrary to Orthodox usage.
When news came that the throne in Tsargrad was occupied by Constantine, instead of Ioann, the defender of the Florentine union, the Grand Prince sent a letter, in which he explained his whole course with Iona and Isidor, and asked final blessing from the Patriarch on the former. But communication with Tsargrad in those days had grown uncertain, through robber bands on the road, and disorders in the Empire itself.
Then came the tidings that Tsargrad had fallen, and that Constantine had died while defending the city, May 29, 1453. This sad event in the Orthodox East aided the complete liberation of Russia from Tsargrad.
The close connection between each metropolitan and Grand Prince, and the tendencies of Moscow to consolidate brought disagreement between the Moscow metropolitan and the Grand Princes of Lithuania, since the latter were rivals of the Moscow Grand Prince, especially after the Latinizing of Lithuania; hence the attempts to get a separate metropolitan for Western Russia. Finally, in Iona’s day, despite all his efforts, the separation of the Russian Church into two parts was effected. This was grievous to Iona. He wrote in vain to the Western Russian bishops, princes and boyars, to all the Western Russian people, advising them to stand firmly for the Orthodox religion.
Three years later Iona died. His successor, Thedosi, Archbishop of Rostoff, was ordained by Russian bishops; thus this system was confirmed finally in Russia.
The Grand Prince Vassili died in 1462, before he had reached his fiftieth year. In the second half of his reign, Vassili the Blind[437]was no longer the active, rather simple, and somewhat light-minded person that he had been in his youth. Not so much years as bitter suffering and experience, and especially the loss of his eyesight, developed adroitness and stern resolution. He brought into his own hands almost all the principalities near Moscow, and advanced very greatly the union effected by his immediate successor. At his death Russia included, besides the enlarged principality of Moscow, four independent lands, that is, Pskoff and Novgorod, with the Tver and Ryazan principalities.
To give a brief picture of affairs in Lithuania and Russia is now indispensable for an understanding of Moscow. We must return to the beginning of Vassili’s reign.
The death of Vitold of Lithuania, in 1430, without heirs raised the great question: Who shall succeed? The former Russo-Lithuanian Grand Prince, Yagello, at that time King of Poland, hesitated to put the two crowns on his own head, fearing opposition from the Russo-Lithuanian boyars, who struggled against merging their own state in Poland. Besides Yagello, there were two grandsons of Gedimin, Svidrigello, Yagello’s younger brother, and Sigismund, the youngest brother of Vitold. There were also grandsons of Olgerd, but being of the Orthodox faith they were unacceptable to the Poles, and to Catholics.Yagellogave the preference to his brother, who succeeded Vitold, and was crowned in the Vilna Cathedral. But Yagello was mistaken in thinking that he had found an obedient assistant. Though Svidrigello had gone over to the Latins through the influence of his brother, he was not a zealot, and was well inclined toward his former co-religionists. Having ruled in Russian principalities, he was Russian in language and sympathies; hence the Russians greeted his elevation, and expected aid from him against Latinism and absorption.
Svidrigello had no wish to be a servant. He looked on the Grand Principality as his by right, and wished to preserve the integrity of his inheritance. In one word, his wish was to follow the policy of Vitold. Polish magnates were greatly displeased that the king had permitted this brother to be crowned without pledges, and had yielded Podolia and Volynia, which they claimed for themselves, and which, as they said, they had fought for.
The taking of Galitch by Kazimir the Great was the first exploit[438]in distributing the lands of Russia among Polish nobles and the clergy, and also of taking lands from Russian owners, and giving them to Poles. This system had extended to Podolia from Galitch, a part of which had been joined to Poland. But in Vitold’s day Podolia had been given back to Russia almost entirely. In cities and castles were representatives of the Grand Prince supported by Russo-Lithuanian garrisons.
No one supposed that Svidrigello would surrender Podolia and Volynia to Yagello, hence the Poles planned to capture them by stratagem. Kamenyets, the chief Podolian city, was commanded by Dovgerd, a noted Lithuanian. The local Polish nobles appeared at the castle of Kamenyets before the news of Vitold’s death had reached it. They came under protext of friendly consultation, and invited Dovgerd to meet them with his attendants. He did so. The Poles threw off the mask then, seized him with his attendants, and took possession of the castle. At the same time they surprised Smotritch, with a few other places, and thus won a part of Podolia. The voevodas of Volynia had heard of Vitold’s death and were prepared. There the Poles could obtain nothing.
Svidrigello was indignant when he heard of what had happened at Kamenyets. Yagello was still in Lithuania, hunting; he had not returned since the funeral of Vitold. Svidrigello reproached the king bitterly, and declared that he would hold him a captive till Podolia was returned to its Grand Prince. Yagello met his brother’s outburst of anger and accusation with mild and insinuating speeches. But Svidrigello was unyielding. The king’s Polish suite proposed then a desperate measure: to kill Svidrigello, capture the Vilna castle, and defend themselves till aid came. The king would not consent to this murder, but to effect his escape he made an agreement by which he returned the castles in Podolia to his brother, and commanded Butchatski to yield Kamenyets to Prince Michael Baba, Svidrigello’s commander. Svidrigello was delighted. He rewarded Yagello’s messenger well, then he made rich presents to Yagello and his suite, and they departed for Poland. Despite his sixty years, Svidrigello had let himself be badly deceived.
Polish magnates near the king, perhaps with his connivance, thought out a stratagem. They sent a private letter to Butchatski, forbidding him to obey Yagello’s order to yield Kamenyets, and[439]commanding him to arrest Prince Baba and the messenger. The letter was placed in a tube which was covered with wax and made to look like a candle. This counterfeit candle was taken to Butchatski by an attendant of the king’s messenger, who said, as he delivered it: “You will find in this candle all the light needed.” Real candles were burned before images, and were sent to chapels and churches, therefore this candle roused no suspicion. Butchatski cut the candle, found the letter, and followed its instructions.
When he heard of the trick Svidrigello was enraged. He tried to recover the castles, but took only a few of them; Smotritch and Kamenyets remained with his opponents. The Poles now declared that Svidrigello must surrender not only Podolia, but Lutsk, and the south of Volynia. They demanded too that he should go to Poland and take an oath of obedience to Yagello. Svidrigello refused to do this. He made a treaty with the Germans, and with the Emperor. Sigismund opposed the growth of Poland, and desired the Order to assist Svidrigello, to whom he promised the same kind of crown that he had sent to Vitold.
From the Polish king now came an envoy with reproaches. He condemned Svidrigello savagely for his alliance with the enemies of Poland. The envoy added also that Svidrigello was not a Grand Prince till so acknowledged by a Polish Diet. Svidrigello, borne away by furious anger, detained the Polish envoy, and had him imprisoned. After this insult there was no way to decide the dispute except by armed action.
In 1431 the king led a large army into Volynia. The Poles were distinguished for their fury in that war; so irrepressible was it that the people were forced to hide in forests and swamps, and in inaccessible places. The king, to spare native regions, tried to curb the troops under him; he even warned people of his coming, and thus incurred the taunt that he was sparing his rebel brother. The Poles sacked Vladimir; Volynia was burned. Svidrigello, with Wallachians and Mongols, was preparing to meet the invasion, but discovering the great strength of the king’s forces, he withdrew and burned Lutsk to save it from the enemy. In the Lutsk castle he put Yursha, a Russian, who defended that stronghold so stubbornly that the Poles could not take it. Angered by this defeat, they accused the king of malevolent slackness, and of intentional blunders.[440]
In the Polish camp disease attacked the men, and a distemper broke out among the horses. Food failed. German knights declared war, and invaded northern provinces. These calamities caused the king to offer peace. The Grand Prince accepted, and concluded a truce without consulting the Germans. Svidrigello retained what he had when the war broke out, that is Eastern Podolia, and Volynia entire. He had vindicated independence for the lands under him, but beyond that the result of the war was merely plunder and bloodshed.
At the head of Polish affairs was Olesnitski, the chancellor, at that time cardinal. On meeting failure in the field he sought other means to subject Svidrigello. A rival was selected, Sigismund, Vitold’s youngest brother. Sigismund was to claim the Grand Principality; and in various ways a party was created to support him. A revolt was brought about and Svidrigello, being careless and improvident, was surprised and very nearly captured by his rival. He escaped by desperate speed, but his wife was seized. Vilna and Troki surrendered. Soon Lithuania acknowledged Sigismund, while Russia adhered to Svidrigello.
Sigismund was crowned in Vilna, where a papal bull was read freeing Lithuania from its oath to Svidrigello. In Grodno, somewhat earlier, before senators and Olesnitski, Sigismund had surrendered the regions of Lutsk, and its lands, as well as Podolia and Goróden.
Meanwhile Svidrigello had no intention of yielding to Sigismund broad regions which were still in his possession. Help was coming to him from the Tver prince. His Russian voevodas were successful. Alexander Nos defended Kief lands, and Prince Ostrogski, Volynia. Especially distinguished was Fedko, who, with help of Wallachians and Mongols, not only repulsed the Poles in Podolia, but seized Kamenyets, luring Butchatski from the fortress, and taking him captive.
During this war Yagello died at the age of eighty-six. Thus ended a reign of fifty years, a reign memorable in Eastern Europe. The two great results of his life were the union of Lithuania and Poland, and the reduction of the royal power till it was a mere shadow. Now the nobles, with Olesnitski at the head of them, becameall-powerful. Instead of combining his provinces, and[441]organizing an army, Svidrigello sought alliances, treated with Sigismund, with the Germans, with the Khan, and with the Pope. All this proved his unfitness, and weakened the attachment of the Orthodox party. Besides he was passionate, given to anger, and cruel. He sometimes punished with death those adherents of Sigismund whom he captured. For example, he had one of the princes, Olshanski, sewn up in a bag and drowned in the Dvina. Worse than all of his evil deeds, he burned at the stake the metropolitan Gerásim, for an unknown reason, but presumably for communicating with Sigismund.
A decisive battle was fought near Vilkomir, in which Sigismund was victor. Svidrigello fled to Kief, and found refuge there, while Smolensk, Polotsk andVitebskreceived lieutenants from Sigismund. Svidrigello had still a part of Podolia, much of Volynia and the whole of the Kief principality, in which Yursha, his brave voevoda, was commanding, but feeling that he had not sufficient power to continue the struggle, he went to Cracow and offered to become a feudatory of Poland.
Sigismund was active against him, and spared nothing in bribery. He demanded for himself all that Svidrigello had held, and his side succeeded. Svidrigello, fearing to fall into Sigismund’s clutches, withdrew to Wallachia, and Kief and Volynia were given to Sigismund, on condition that after he died Lithuania and Russia should be given to Poland.
So the war ended with victory for Sigismund, but he had little profit from his triumph. The humiliating position in which the new prince had put his own office roused opposition among Lithuanians and Russians. Especially active were Olgerd’s descendants in fighting against this son of Keistut, who had seized power unjustly, as it seemed to them. Their indignation was increased by the cruelty with which Sigismund hunted down every opponent. Men of the highest distinction were imprisoned and deprived of their property, while others were put to death without cause.
When Sigismund summoned a Diet, the report went out quickly that that was only a trap to ruin princes and boyars. Unable to cast down the tyrant, for he was surrounded by Polish defenders, they formed a conspiracy, at the head of which stood a Russian, Prince Chartoriski, Dovgerd, voevoda of Vilna, and Lelyush,[442]who commanded in Troki. The conspirators used the hay tribute to carry out their stratagem.
In the night before Palm Sunday, March, 1440, three hundred sleighs bringing hay were drawn into Troki. In each sleigh two or three armed men were secreted, and with each went a driver,—in all a thousand men or more. The following morning Sigismund’s son, Michael, went, accompanied by his father’s attendants, to early mass in the cathedral. During mass the men hidden in the hay came out, shut the gates of the fortress, and were led into the castle by Chartoriski. Sigismund, without leaving his bed, was hearing mass offered up by a priest in a chapel adjoining his chamber. He had a tame bear which served as a guard near his person; when the beast wished to enter he scratched at the door for admission. Chartoriski, seeing the bear in the courtyard, and knowing its habit, scratched on the door in imitation. The door was opened, and the conspirators entered. Skobeiko, equerry to Sigismund, but now false to him, seized an iron poker from the fireplace, and struck the prince on the head with such violence that his blood and brains stained the walls of the chamber. Slavko, a favorite and intimate of the Grand Prince, tried to shield his master; but he was hurled through the window and instantly killed. The body of the dead prince was conveyed in a sleigh to the lake, and left on the ice there; later it was buried, near Vitold’s grave, in the Cathedral of Vilna.
When news of this terrible crime spread through Troki, there was a great outbreak. Michael and his attendants took refuge in a small castle on an island of the lake near Troki. Lelyush seized the main castle in the name of Svidrigello, and hung out his white banner above it. Dovgerd did the same in Vilna, but in Vilna the upper castle was taken by adherents of Michael. Meanwhile couriers raced off for Svidrigello. He hurried back from Moldavia, and appearing at Lutsk, was received with gladness by the people. Men imprisoned in strongholds of Lithuania and Russia were freed, but Svidrigello, instead of hastening to Vilna and Troki and securing the throne, which had come to him a second time, loitered in Lutsk till affairs changed again, and not to his profit.
In Olshani a number of noted Lithuanians met and resolved to depose both Svidrigello and Michael, and make Yagello’s[443]youngest son, Kazimir, Grand Prince. It seemed to these magnates that they might rear this young boy in the ways of the country and manage it themselves during his minority. The Polish magnates insisted that the Lithuanian throne belonged to their actual king, Vladislav, who at ten years of age had been named as Yagello’s successor, but Vladislav, having been made king in Hungary, and being attracted by the war just beginning with Turkey, was willing to yield Lithuania to his brother. Still the Poles insisted that Kazimir, not being a sovereign, but only a viceroy, should be called prince, and not Grand Prince. This angered Lithuanians, who considered him sovereign, and they acted as follows:
Young Kazimir came to Vilna with a large, brilliant suite, and attended by senators from Poland. The Lithuanian magnates prepared a great banquet to show him honor, and plied Polish senators with wine so generously that they were all fast asleep on the following morning. Very early in the day of July 3, 1440, the Lithuanians crowned Kazimir in the Vilna Cathedral, putting on his head the Grand Prince’s cap worn by Gedimin. They then gave him the sword, and placed on his shoulders the Grand Prince’s mantle. The Poles were roused from their slumbers by the thundering shouts of the people, who were greeting their new sovereign. Rich gifts were given to the senators, and they could do nothing but hide their mortification and displeasure, and reply with good wishes.
Not slight was the task which confronted young Kazimir. The preceding wars with their manifold miseries, the frosts, untimely and terrible, the failure of harvests, famine, the pestilence, and other visitations are mentioned continually in the chronicle. Besides, many regions refused to accept him as Grand Prince. The king would not acknowledge him, and the Poles were ever ready to uphold his opponents, so as to break up the Grand Principality, and take in its fragments one after another more easily. Hence Svidrigello received Volynia and part of Podolia from the Polish king. Michael, son of that Sigismund murdered at Troki, joined with Mazovian princes, and gave them Berestei. Jmud, which rose against Kazimir, sided with Michael. Smolensk was rebellious in like manner, but Ivan Gashtold, the Grand Prince’s guardian and chief of his council of magnates, pacified all. Even[444]Michael came finally to Vilna, and made peace with Kazimir, receiving from him those same places which Sigismund, his father, had held till he was murdered.
This peace, however, proved hollow, for Michael was raging against Kazimir in secret, and plotting to take the throne from him at any cost.
Once, when the Grand Prince was learning to hunt, some hundreds of men well armed and mounted appeared in the forest. The moment notice was given of their coming, Andrei Gashtold, the son of Ivan, seized young Kazimir and galloped away with him to Troki. Gashtold, the father, sent warriors to hunt down the horsemen. Some were killed, others made captive; among the latter were five Russian princes, the brothers Volojinski, who were put to death straightway in Troki. Gasthold then hurried off toward Bryansk to meet Michael. But Michael had fled to Moscow, and his lands were confiscated straightway.
With Svidrigello the action was simpler. He abandoned the king, and gave oath to Kazimir, who was his nephew. Kazimir left Svidrigello, his old, childless uncle, in Volynia, giving Kief with all its connections to Alexander, his cousin, a grandson of Olgerd and son of Vladimir. Smolensk was not managed so easily, but still it was managed, and kept for the Grand Principality.
Barely had Kazimir, acting through Gashtold, brought peace to the princedom and saved its integrity, when new troubles and new dangers came from Poland. The Polish-Hungarian king, Vladislav, brother of Kazimir, attracted by his kingdom of Hungary and his struggle with Turkey, left Lithuania and Russia unmolested; but in 1444 that young king fell at Varna, and his death destroyed the new union between Hungary and Poland. The Poles had their election in 1445, and chose Kazimir. The union with Hungary being lost, they were all the more eager for the Russo-Lithuanian connection. If a king, not descended from Yagello, took the throne, every bond between Poland and the Grand Principality would be severed, but as the election of Kazimir gave the chance not only of preserving this bond, but of merging the Grand Principality in Poland, his election was favored by Poles without exception. This desire of the Poles to subject the principality and find in it lands, wealth and offices was irrepressible, and roused great indignation in Russia, for the nobles valued their[445]independence, and the Orthodox clergy feared Latin encroachment.
Young Kazimir, grown accustomed to Russia, liked its ways and its language. Besides, the sovereign had power in Russia, while in Poland he had none. So when first his election was suggested, he answered evasively, saying that his brother’s death was still doubtful. At last the Poles used diplomacy to force him. They feigned to elect a Mazovian, Prince Boleslav, and to prepare for the coronation. This election meant war for the land claimed by Boleslav, and also a new war with Michael by Boleslav himself. The prospect of two wars, and the words of his mother brought conviction to Kazimir. In June, 1447, he was crowned with solemnity in Cracow.
The time following Kazimir’s election was remarkable for boisterous Diets. The Poles sought to turn Lithuania and Russia into provinces of their kingdom. They claimed all Podolia and Volynia, with the Upper Bug region. Feodor Butchatski succeeded in seizing some castles, and placing Polish troops in them. The Russo-Lithuanian magnates were indignant. With burning words they defended the integrity of their country at the Diets, and demanded the return of Volynia and Podolia to their proper connection. They showed that historically those regions were theirs beyond question. The Poles referred to their own former conquests, as they called them. They referred to the Horodlo union, and treaties with various Lithuanian princes. The Lithuanians rejected those statements, and declared that from the Horodlo pact should be excluded certain words touching the union of Lithuania and Poland, words inserted without their knowledge, and in secret.
The position of the king was unenviable. At first he was under the influence of Gashtold and others, and also of his own feelings, but as king he was powerless to counteract the demands of Polish nobles, who, besides the union of Russo-Lithuanian provinces, asked for confirmation of certain rights granted by Yagello, and demanded still others restricting royal action. There were two Polish parties at this time, those of Great and Little Poland. Great Poland formed what is now Poznan, Little Poland that part of the present Austrian Poland which has its center at Cracow. The men of Great Poland were mainly indifferent to questions[446]in the Grand Principality, because they were distant. Little Poland, on the contrary, turned every effort toward those questions. Immense lands, great careers, and much power were to be won through getting Lithuania and Russia. The head of the Little Poland party was Olesnitski, the chancellor. He held the first place in all councils; behind him stood the party in Cracow. The queen mother supported the chancellor. The young king yielded much to Olesnitski, who had made Sigismund Grand Prince, and was now working ardently for Michael, and urging the king to give him lands in Lithuania and be reconciled. The king would not listen to this; he did not forget that this same Michael had striven to kill him.
Michael, after fleeing from Gashtold, had tarried in Moscow for some time, and, with help of the Mongols, had endeavored to seize lands from Lithuania. Vassili the Blind had supported him, while Kazimir had upheld the opponents of Vassili. Failing at last, Michael went to Moldavia, then to Silesia, and afterward back to Moscow. But by this time Vassili of Moscow had agreed with Lithuania, consequently he refused to help Michael further. At last Michael died, it is stated through poison given by some abbot,—poison of such power that the prince died immediately. Then the abbot, terrified by the thought of vengeance from Michael’s cousin, Sophia, the daughter of Vitold, also drank of the poison and died.
That same year, 1450, died Svidrigello at Lutsk. Persecuted by the Poles all his life, he had hated them thoroughly, and had taken from his boyars an oath to give the land only to agents of the Grand Prince of Moscow. After his death all places were occupied by Russo-Lithuanian garrisons in the name of the Grand Prince. The Poles were incensed, and announced a campaign to recover those places. But the opposition of the king, and the unwillingness of Great Poland to take part in a struggle, cooled Cracow statesmen, who were forced to be satisfied for the moment with verbal attacks on the king, and hot quarrels with the Russo-Lithuanian contingent of the Commonwealth. The quarrels at last became so savage that all save Poles left the Diet, and went from the place secretly in the night-time.
After that the king had great trouble in allaying the bitter hatred and rancor of parties, and in the next Diet, formed of Poles only, he yielded, confirming all the rights demanded, and taking an[447]oath never to alienate from Poland any lands which had ever belonged to it, among others the lands of Lithuania, Moldavia, and Russia. More important still, the king bound himself to keep near his person at all times a council made up of four Poles, and to remove the Lithuanians who were hostile to Poland.
In 1455 Olesnitski, the cardinal, died, at a time when the Poles were beginning a war which proved most serious.
In Prussia there had long been a dull and stubborn conflict between towns and lay landholders on one side, and the Order, composed of Knights of the Cross, on the other. The Order, retaining all authority, burdened the people with great dues and taxes, and hampered the Hanse towns in their traffic. Certain landholders had formed against the Order a league called the Brotherhood. To this Brotherhood almost all the large trading towns joined themselves. In the struggle which followed, the Pope and the Emperor inclined toward the Order. The league turned to Kazimir, and signed a pact making the Prussian lands subject to Poland, reserving for itself various privileges as to trade, taxes, and government.
But now the need came to defend this position. The German Order, notwithstanding its fall, had much force still left, as well as the energy to resist for a long time, and even in 1454 it inflicted on Kazimir a notable defeat on the field of Choinitsi. After that the war lasted with changing results for twelve years. Then the Order, having exhausted its forces, sued for peace, and in 1466 received it at Thorn through the aid of the papal legate.
By this peace the lands of Culm and Pomerania, with the cities Marienburg, Dantzig and Elbing, went to Poland, but Eastern Prussia, with Königsberg, its capital, remained with the Order, which assumed certain feudal relations to Poland. The main reason why the war was so long and ended without conquering the Order completely, is found in the quarrels and struggles between the Poles and the Russo-Lithuanians. The latter refrained almost entirely from taking part in the conflict, and the whole weight of it fell upon Poland. Though the same sovereign was both king and Grand Prince, he had so little authority in Poland, and was so hampered by parties that he had no power to make the three countries act as one body. Dlugosh, the Polish historian, declares that in the Grand Principality Russians and Lithuanians[448]opposed to the Poles had secret relations with the Order, against which the Poles were then warring.
The first prince in Kief descended from Gedimin, and under a Grand Prince of that descent also, was Gedimin’s grandson, Vladimir, son of Olgerd. In his long rule of thirty years, from 1362 to 1392, the old city rested to a certain extent, and recovered considerably from the terrible destruction wrought by Batu and other Mongol khans.
Orthodox in religion, and Russian externally, Vladimir cared for the Orthodox Church of Kief regions, and wished the metropolitan to reside in that ancient city; hence he supported Cyprian when Dmitri would not admit him to Moscow. When Vitold became Grand Prince of Lithuania, he drove out Vladimir, and put him in Kopyl, a small district. Kief he gave to Vladimir’s brother, Skirgello, in 1392. Vladimir tried hard to get the aid of Vassili of Moscow, but he met with no success, and spent the last years of his life in Kopyl. Skirgello, who in action was much like his brother, lived only four years. After his death Vitold, who wished to break up the old system, put no prince in Kief; he governed the city through agents, the first of whom was his confidant, Prince Olshanski.
Svidrigello, at the beginning of his rule as Grand Prince, placed Yursha, his valiant assistant, in Kief. When expelled from northwestern regions by Sigismund, Svidrigello found refuge in Kief, and that city became the center of a large political division. Svidrigello, notwithstanding his official change from Orthodox faith to Latinity, was attached to his old Church. When the dignity of Grand Prince went to Yagello’s son, Kazimir, Svidrigello got Lutsk, and Ivan Gashtold, the guardian of Kazimir, thought it needful to yield to the boyars and the Russian party; hence he gave the Kief region to the son of Vladimir of Kopyl, that is, to Prince Alexander, whose surname was Olelko. Alexander, being a grandson of Olgerd, and married to the daughter of Vassili, the Grand Prince of Moscow, was a man of distinction, therefore Sigismund, the son of Keistut, thought him dangerous, and imprisoned him with his wife and two sons. He remained in prison till death removed Sigismund.
Alexander governed fifteen years in the spirit of Vladimir, his father. He died at Kief in 1455, and was buried in the Catacomb[449]Monastery of that city. His two sons, Simeon and Michael, thought to divide the Kief region between them, but Kazimir forbade this, adding these words: “Vladimir, your grandfather, fled to Moscow and deserted his Kief rights.” Still Kazimir gave Kief to Simeon to govern, and to Michael the younger he left Slutsk and Kopyl as a property. Simeon ruled in Kief till he died in 1471. After his death, right to Kief went to Michael, his brother, and to his son Vassili.
But the Polish king felt so strong now in Western Russia that he determined to give a blow to the system, and put an end to Kief’s separate existence. Kazimir, remembering that the Russo-Lithuanian boyars had demanded that he should live in Lithuania at all times, or send viceroys, indicating Simeon while they did so, not only refused to give Kief to any son of Alexander, but appointed a viceroy, Martin, son of Gashtold. The Kief people now refused to admit this man, but Martin brought with him an army, took Kief by assault, and seated himself in the so-called “Lithuanian castle.”
Michael, the son of Alexander, was at this time in Novgorod, whither the Boretskis had called him as Kazimir’s lieutenant. Hearing that his brother Simeon was dead, he left Novgorod quickly and went to Kief, but finding that Martin was already master there, he was forced to take Slutsk and Kopyl. This loss of a princedom offended him deeply.
Kazimir had adopted the method of Vitold, and was supplanting the princes by his own men. The princes, of course, did not yield without a struggle. A conspiracy was formed; at the head of it was Alexander’s son, Michael, and his cousin Feodor Bailski, also a grandson of Vladimir. The plans of the conspirators have not been made clear to us; according to some historians, they intended to seize Kazimir, dethrone, or kill him, and make Michael Grand Prince. According to others, they planned to take possession of certain eastern districts, and put them under the Grand Prince of Moscow.
Feodor Bailski, who was marrying a daughter of Alexander Chartoriski, had invited the king to his wedding. The king went, but the plot was discovered, and Bailski’s servant, under torture, revealed the whole secret. Bailski, learning of this in the night, jumped out of bed, and when only half dressed sprang on horseback[450]and galloped away toward the boundary. He reached Moscow in safety, and entered the service of the Grand Prince. Kazimir kept Bailski’s young wife in Lithuania, and Bailski found a new wife in Moscow. His associates, Prince Olshanski, and Alexander’s son, Michael, were seized, brought to trial, and received a death sentence. Straightway Kazimir confirmed the sentence, which was carried out August, 1482, in front of the “Lithuanian castle” at Kief.
Though the conspiracy is involved in deep mystery, both as to details and object, it is evident that the old order had been given a blow from which it could not recover. Some princes retained their lands, but those petty rulers, serving superior princes, were no longer dangerous to political unity. They took high offices willingly, and very gladly received the incomes going with them. The only danger was from princes whose lands bordered on Moscow, and who thus had the possibility of joining the capital. Therefore the Grand Prince of Lithuania tried to hold them by special treaties. Such treaties proved of small value, however, and toward the end of Kazimir’s reign some of those princes left Lithuania for Moscow.
Smolensk was deprived of its old princely stock, and the city was held, through commanders, as a kind of corner-stone to the Lithuanian state in northeastern regions.
In the reign of Kazimir IV took place the final separation of the Orthodox Church in Russia into two parts, the Eastern and Western. Isidor, now in Rome, but whilom metropolitan of Russia, played his part in this movement. At the wish of Callixtus III he surrendered to Gregory, his pupil and friend, his right to a part of the Russian Church, namely, nine bishoprics in Lithuania, Western Russia and Poland, and the former Patriarch, Gregory Mana, living also in Rome, ordained in 1458 this Gregory as metropolitan of Kief, Lithuania, and all Western Russia. King Kazimir protected Gregory; but the Orthodox bishops, and generally the Orthodox people, were so opposed to a metropolitan from Rome, that Gregory did not go to Kief; he lived mainly in Kazimir’s palace, and died in 1472 at Novgrodek.
Two years later the Smolensk bishop, Misail, was made metropolitan. Being opposed to church union, he received confirmation from Tsargrad, and hence was accepted by all Western Russians.[451]With him began the unbroken succession of Kief metropolitans, independent of Moscow. Kief for a second time became the church center of Western Russia, and through the zeal of the clergy and the people the old city gradually rose again.
In 1492 Kazimir IV fell ill while visiting Lithuania, and hastened toward Poland; but he died on the way, at Grodno. In his will he had designated his second son, Yan Albrecht, to the Polish throne, and Alexander, his third son, to the throne of Lithuania. The Poles and Lithuanians afterward confirmed each selection.
During Kazimir’s time rose the Khanate of the Crimea. Information touching the origin of this Crimean dynasty is obscure and misleading. There is a tradition that the Black Sea Horde, crushed by civil war, after Edigai’s death chose as Khan a certain Azi, one of Jinghis Khan’s descendants. In childhood, Azi’s life had been saved in Lithuania, and he was reared by one Girei, whose name Azi and his family afterward assumed out of gratitude. Some chronicles describe the accession of the new Khan as happening in Vitold’s time, and under his auspices; according to others, it took place in the days of King Kazimir. One thing is clear, that this Azi lived really in Lithuania, and was descended from Tohtamish, who, as is known, found a refuge in that land.
According to the second account, when Mongol raids increased against Russia, Kazimir was advised by his counselors to establish a Khan who might be devoted to Poland, and opposed to the Golden Horde rulers. So advantage was taken of the tendency to establish a Mongol state on the Black Sea.
In 1446 the king sent Azi Girei to the Crimea with a convoy of his own men, commanded by Radzivill, and on his arrival, the murzas made him Khan. Besides the Crimean populations, Girei had under him the Nogai Horde, which lived between the Sea of Azoff and the Dnieper. In general he is considered the real founder of the Khanate. This separation of the lands along the Black Sea from the Golden Horde on the Volga was attended by a strife which was increased through inherited hatred between the descendants of Tohtamish and Kutlui.
Kutchuk Mohammed was a grandson of Timur Kutlui, and under obligations to King Kazimir for his election. Azi, or Hadji Girei, remained faithful to the king all his life, and frequently punished other Mongols for attacking Russo-Lithuanian lands.[452]Especially distinguished for such robber expeditions at that time was Sedi Ahmed, apparently ruling in the steppes between the Don and the Dnieper. In 1451 Ahmed’s son, Mazovsha, was sent by him to collect tribute. He reached Moscow in July, and burned its outskirts, but at the walls of the town his men were defeated by the Russians, and withdrew in a panic, leaving everything behind them. The following year, while Sedi Ahmed’s men were making raids in Chernigoff, Girei attacked him suddenly and crushed his forces. In 1455 he was forced to seek refuge in Lithuania, but was later captured and imprisoned at Kovno, where he died in confinement.
The Genoese colonies felt the weight of this Crimean Horde, which extended its lordship throughout the steppes on the north of the Tauric peninsula, and strove to possess the southeastern shores of it. They hampered greatly the Genoese, who were at last forced to declare themselves vassals. The Khan now transferred his residence to Bakche-Sarai in the Southern Crimea, a city existing to the present day. This first Khan died in 1467.
The power of the Crimean Khan was limited to a few groups of people. Of these there were five chief groups: Shirym, Barym, Kuluk, Sulesh, and Mansur, which managed the destinies of the Khanate. Their influence was felt mainly in choosing each new Khan. Since the Khans had many sons, the indefiniteness of succession caused dreadful quarrels and bloodshed. Such struggles were frequent. Girei, who left several sons, was succeeded by his eldest son, Nordoulat, but Mengli Girei, one of the younger sons, got the throne later. This renowned Khan more than once experienced the vicissitudes of fortune. He mounted the throne many times, and was driven from it each time by rivals, but at last he fixed himself firmly, through the aid of the Osmanli.
In 1453 the Byzantine Empire fell. The Genoese had given active assistance to the Empire in its agony, and hence they had suffered severely from Mohammed II, whose first work was to ravage Galata, the Genoese suburb. In 1475 a strong Turkish fleet attacked Kaffa (Theodosia). Internal dissensions, treason and the imbecility of the local power helped the Turks to get possession of the city. Among merchants robbed and slain were many Muscovites. After this the Turks subjected other Cumean colonies from Italy. We know not exactly what rôle Girei played in these[453]events; we know that he soon after recognized the Sultan as suzerain, and that Turkish garrisons were established in various towns on the Black Sea.
The Crimean Khans, freed recently from subjection to Sarai, fell under the far stronger grasp of the Osmanli, but Mengli Girei, relying on the Sultan, established himself firmly, and continued the policy of his father. As to Sarai, he was its worst enemy, and was ever ready to aid its opponents. He did not, however, carry out his father’s projects with reference to Lithuania and Poland.
Never had the Lithuanian state suffered such terrible blows as from Mengli Girei, in whose day the Crimean Horde received that robber character which for three hundred years made it famous. It tormented specially Russian regions connected with Poland, by seizing great numbers of captives, who, forced into slavery, were taken as living wares to the markets of the Osmanli.
From the time of Girei, the boundaries of Russia were changed very sensibly. Olgerd had extended those boundaries into the steppes, and in Vitold’s day they touched the Euxine. Vitold had striven to guard southern lands from Mongol raids by strengthening old forts and building new ones. He had fortified Kaneff, and lower down on the Dnieper he had founded Kremnchug and Cherkasy. On the main crossing of the lower Dnieper he had fixed outposts. Near the seacoast he had built a strong place where Ochakoff flourished later, and had made a port near the site of the present Odessa. At the mouth of the Dniester, fronting Akkerman, he had erected a strong post, and higher up a second, known later as Bender; besides, there were other posts, in the steppe lands. But the Russo-Lithuanian state lost these boundaries in the time of the easy-going Kazimir, who was busied far more with quarreling Diets and the endless debates between Russians and Poles than with strengthening these boundaries. In his day the Black Sea was lost; Mengli Girei took possession of those forts built on the steppes and the sea. After that an immense empty space, known later on as the “Wild Fields,” lay between the settled Kief lands and the Horde at the Black Sea. These “Wild Fields” became the battle-ground between Kief colonists and Mongol cut-throats. Kazimir did an evil deed for his realms and for many men, when he set up Girei as a ruler.[454]