1515
The death of Mengli-Girei and the accession of his son Makhmet to the Krim khanate, scarcely affected the relations between Moskva and the Horde, for the new Khan’s influence had for some time been dominant. Neither Vasili nor Sigismund could count on the support or even the neutrality of the Tartar chief, who took advantage of the hostility between Lit’uania and Moskva to ravage the lands of each with perfect impartiality. Another shift in the political balance deprived the Grand Prince of a more exalted though equally unreliable ally; a new family compact had been patched up between the Kaiser and the Kings of Hungary and Poland, and Maximilian was now as anxious to compose the quarrel in the east as he previously had been to inflame it. The continued successes of the Turks could not fail to inspire uneasiness in a prince who was scheming to acquire a preponderance in the lands of south-east Europe, and the Emperor wished to engineer a powerful alliance, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Polish, against this undesirable neighbour. The idea was obviously unworkable as long as Moskva hung threateningly on the Polish flank, hence the solicitude which the Habsburg felt to bring about a peace between the two Slav powers. For this end an Imperial ambassador, one Sigismund, Baron von Herberstein, left Germany at the end of 1516 on a mission of mediation to the Moskovite Court, where he arrived in April the following year, after a heroic journey over innumerable lakes and marshes “slippery with snow and ice,” over frozen rivers, and, towards the end, across ice rendered rotten by melting snow-water; much of the “way” lying too through a country desolated by skirmishing bands of Poles and Russians.1517The chances of successful negotiation were not improved by an autumn campaign which Ostrojhski carried on, with disastrous result, in the districtof Pskov; the small burg of Opotchka, valiantly defended by Vasili Saltikov, held out for fifteen days against the vigorous assaults of Polish, Lit’uanian, and Bohemian troops, and was eventually relieved, on the 18th October, by two converging Moskovite forces which drove Ostrojhski off the field. Notwithstanding this side-play the Polish envoys had joined Herberstein at Moskva, and were seeking to arrange a peaceable understanding between the Grand Prince and their master. Each side put forward absurdly unwarranted claims—Vasili, for instance, stipulated for the cession to Moskovy of Kiev and Polotzk, among other places, while the Poles demanded, in addition to Smolensk, a half-share of Novgorod, Pskov, and Tver. The real bone of contention was Smolensk, and as neither party would bate their pretension to the possession of that city, the negotiations came to an abortive end in November.
If Herberstein’s efforts for the termination of the war were not crowned with success, his long and arduous journey was in other respects by no means barren of result. It is mainly owing to observations made on this, and on a subsequent embassy, that a picture has been preserved of the life at that gloomy Court, which was partly Asiatic, partly Archaic European.[120]In theRerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, Maximilian’s ambassador set forth to the western world his experiences in the remote and desolate region beginning to be known as Muscouvie, much as an explorer in a more travelled age would retail the account of his wanderings in Central Africa. The Moskva of Vasili Ivanovitch was a curious compound of primitive Russian squalor, Byzantine splendour, the rude hospitality of feudal Christendom, and the dark and tortuous restraint of an Oriental capital. The state banquets, or rather the solemn and awful occasions when the Grand Prince invited the foreign ambassadors to dine with him and his dvoryanins(courtiers), are good examples of the conglomerate of ceremonial, simplicity, and patriarchal domesticity which obtained at the Moskovite Court. The Grand Prince and his brothers with the highest boyarins sat together at one table; at another, opposite, sat the distinguished guests of the evening, while round the hall were ranged tables for the remainder of the company. Bread was solemnly served out from the Prince’s table to such as he wished to compliment, and the feast invariably opened with the consumption of brandy and roast swans. The dishes were borne in and out by servants sumptuously attired, and in addition to brandy, mead, beer, and Greek wines were served in goblets which, like all the other appointments, were of pure gold. In such ponderous dissipations, in occasional coursing matches in his hare preserves round Moskva, in watching his foreign gunners exercise their skill with the heavy uncouth field-pieces at stated periods, and of course in elaborate religious ceremonies, did the Gosoudar of all Russia fill up the round of his private existence. The coursing seems to have been as cautious and “safe” as the Moskovite state-policy. “When the hare shows herself, three, four, five, or more dogs are slipped, and set after her on all sides; and when she is taken, there is loud hallooing, as if they had taken a large wild beast.” “Moreover, about an hundred men stood in long array, one half of whom were dressed in black, and the other in yellow; not far from them stood all the other horsemen, to prevent the hares from running through and escaping.”[121]
While the Imperial negotiations had been dragging out their span of stately uselessness, Vasili had effected a diplomatic stroke on his own account. The Grand Master Albrecht, despairing of receiving adequate support from the Emperor, in his present frame of mind, against the aggressive policy of the Polish monarch, turned his eyes towards the schismatic heretic who was playing so large a part in the affairs of east Europe. The common bond of hostility to Sigismund drew together the interests alike ofGrand Prince and Grand-Master, and the plenipotentiary of the latter, Dietrich von Schönberg, was able to conclude a close alliance between Moskva and the Prussian section of the Order.1517Various causes contributed to delay the threatened struggle between Sigismund and the knights; chief of which was the restraining influence of the Kaiser, whose narrow family policy did not at present lend itself to a war between Teuton and Pole for the possession of the Baltic provinces. The death of Maximilian, however (January 1519), removed this obstacle, and the outbreak of hostilities was only postponed by a sudden and victorious incursion of the Krim Tartars upon Podolia and Lit’uania. The respite enabled Albrecht to enlist fresh support in men, money, and material, from several quarters. Von Plettenberg raised on his behalf a considerable number of troops and a heavy contribution to the war-chest; the King of Denmark, the Elector of Brandenburg, and the Grand Prince of Moskva helped to swell the resources of the venturesome Grand-Master, while on the other hand Sigismund knitted together all the available military force of the Yagiellos to crush the insubordination of this ambitious vassal. In the last days of the year 1519 broke “the long-threatened wild war-storm over the Order-lands.”[122]The Polish monarch marched against the presumptuous warrior monks with an army “twelve miles wide,” swelled by Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian contingents. Against this formidable array the undaunted Hohenzollern—worthy scion of an illustrious House—rode forth “on New Year’s Day, a dark stormy winter’s day,” with all the following he could muster.1520A wild and devastating war ensued, in which whole provinces were cruelly wasted, and the skill and courage of the Order knights were pitted in unequal struggle against the overwhelming might of Poland. In the open country and in the villages and unprotected towns the invaders wrought havoc unchecked, but in the fortified strongholds the Teutons made desperate resistance. Reinforcements from Denmark helped the Grand-Master to puta better complexion on the struggle; the beleaguered garrisons of Balga and Braunsberg held out stoutly, and the Order lanzknechts were able to break into Mazovia, and requite on that province the gruesome savageries which had made a desert of the bishopric of Pomesania. At this juncture Vasili undoubtedly threw away the opportunity of his lifetime. Since the breakdown of the negotiations with Poland, his troops had waged a fitful border war with varying success.(1518)The neighbourhood of Polotzk had been laid waste, but an attack on that town had failed; Moskovite armies had penetrated as far as Vilna, and hunted the Lit’uanian forces before them.(1519)Now, however, when Sigismund was experiencing an increased difficulty in coping with the opposition of the Grand-master, and dreading moreover an attack from some of the German princes, Vasili, instead of leading an army into Samogitia, concluded with his hard-pressed adversary a six months’ truce.1520The following year a “Waffenstillstand” for four years was arranged between the German Order and the Poles, while at the same time Moskovy was drawn aside from the western war by a recurrence of the troubles with Kazan, which indeed wore a serious aspect. The Krimskie Khan, Makhmet, had displaced the Russian vassal of the Volga Horde, and established in his stead his own brother, Saip-Girei. This defiant action was followed up by an invasion of the grand principality by the Krim Khan, who crossed the Oka and defeated a hastily gathered Moskovite force under kniaz Dimitri Bielski and the Grand Prince’s brother, Andrei. The victorious Tartars were reinforced by the Kazanese, led by their new Khan, and the combined host marched upon Moskva, burning and plundering in wild unholy triumph which recalled the fearful days of the Mongol mastery. Vasili “the courageous” fled before the approaching storm. An unkind report was afterwards circulated to the effect that he hid himself under a haystack.[123]Such an accusation is not to be accepted lightly, though the Russians of that period were not given to pokingfun at their sovereign. Possibly the account of Moskovite panic and German staunchness which Herberstein sets forth in his commentary is not altogether uncoloured by national prejudice. One Nikolas, a native of Spire, was placed in command of the Kreml artillery and made the necessary dispositions for withstanding a siege, but the crowds of burgers and countryfolk who had rushed into that sanctuary would have rendered a protracted defence impossible. Threatened with an outbreak of pestilence at any moment—the time was midsummer and the place Moskva—the besieged were glad to buy off the Tartars with the promise of tribute from the Grand Prince to the Krim Khan; a promise which was unauthorised and need not be adhered to. The invaders withdrew, bearing with them captives computed at the almost incredible number of 800,000. A treacherous attempt upon Riazan was foiled by the alertness of another German, “one Johann Jordan, an artilleryman ... who came from the Innthal.”[124]With the receding of the Tartar waters back came the affrighted hares to their feeding-grounds around Moskva, and back came Vasili Ivanovitch to his palpitating capital, to deal out judgment upon those responsible for the disaster on the Oka. A somewhat delicate matter. The kniaz Bielski had no doubt mismanaged the whole affair, but on the other hand the Grand Prince’s brother had been the first to yield to the homing instinct which sometimes asserts itself on the field of battle. Under the circumstances the only thing to do was to fasten the blame upon one who, if less responsible, was also of less exalted position, and a noble who had run a good second to Andrei Ivanovitch was accordingly thrown into prison. The matter of the haystack does not appear to have been gone into.
1522
During the greater part of the following year the Moskovite army remained in camp at Kolomna, awaiting a fresh attack from the Krimskie, who, however, remained within the shelter of their wide-stretching steppes. Negotiations were going on at the same time with Poland, and inDecember a truce of five years was effected, which left Smolensk still in the hands of the Grand Prince.
The strife between Poland and the Order now entered upon a new development of great historical importance. The Roman Papacy, ever glowering at the irruption of the Faithful (or the Infidel, according to Christian label), into the domains of Christendom, sought to raise enthusiasm and money among the piously disposed princes and people of the Empire and neighbouring lands, in order to float a crusade against the Ottomans. Among the expedients for obtaining the latter commodity which met with the approval of Christ’s Vicegerent, was the barter of indulgences, conducted in such wholesale manner that none but the very poor, who could not afford luxuries, were excluded from the attainment of eternal glory. Adversity and competition have an unmistakably broadening effect, and the sixteenth-century camel went through the eye of the once exclusive needle with absolute comfort, and took all its relations, dead and living, with it if so minded. The enterprising Pontiff, however, experienced the bitter perversion of fate which too often mocks the best directed efforts; not only did the traffic in souls fail in its original purpose of financing a crusade, but its injudicious prosecution among the cities of Northern Germany, where men had grown somewhat doubtful of the accumulated truths of the Church, resulted in the springing up of a new enemy, more formidable even than Islam. Without going into the dogmatical issues involved in the agitation which sprang out of the original “monks’ quarrel,” it is necessary to note that the “Reformation” owed much of its success to the secularising theories which it put forward, and which exercised a fascinating influence upon the princes and petty sovereigns of the Empire. The Houses of Wettin and Hohenzollern especially, lent favourable ear to the new doctrines, and the Grand-Master Albrecht, while roaming Germany in search of possible assistance against his ever imminent enemy, came in contact with the leaders of the anti-Catholic movement, from whom he imbibed principles which he immediately proceeded to put intopractice.[125]The fundamental stumbling-block to a composition with Poland was the question of homage insisted on by Sigismund as due from the Grand-Master of the Order. Albrecht had made gigantic efforts to resist this obligation, and to preserve the independence of his office, but he now saw a way by which both his own ambitions and the requirements of the King of Poland might be accommodated. This was nothing less than the secularisation of the Order-lands into a hereditary duchy, dependent on the Polish crown; Albrecht, needless to say, being the proposed Duke thereof. The suggestion, which offered a solution to what had seemed a hopeless quarrel, met with approval from Sigismund, and was embodied in the Peace of Krakow (April 1525), whereby the Grand-Master was transformed “from the head of a Catholic religious order into a Lutheran temporal prince.”[126]The required oath of vassalage was tendered by Albrecht and in return the King presented him with a new blazon for his new-born duchy of Prussia; “the old Order changeth,” and the black cross is laid aside for a black eagle, crowned, beaked, and membered gold. In days to come, what time the white eagle of Poland shall droop its failing wings in feebleness, this sable eaglet which it has helped to hatch, grown lusty with maturity, shall snap its hungry beak in unison with the other birds of prey that hover round the doomed one. For the present, it is worthy of remark that the first political result of the religious schism which was to plunge the greater part of Europe, and especially the Empire, into a paroxysm of strife, was the closing of a long and bitter quarrel in the Baltic lands. As regards the immediate effect of the disappearance of the Order from Prussia, Moskva was chiefly concerned in the isolation which that event entailed upon the Teutonic colony in Livland and Estland. In return for the valuable help von Plettenberg had afforded the Grand-Master during the war, the latter had already granted him complete independence from the control of the Prussian executive; hence, when the secularrevolution was effected, the knights of Livland retained their organisation and temporal possessions.[127]
While Sigismund had been employed in bringing East Prussia under his domination (West Prussia was already an integral part of the Polish dominion), Vasili had composed his differences with his Tartar neighbours. Makhmet-Girei had diverted his warlike tendencies towards the subjection of the khanate of Astrakhan; Kazan, after being several times overrun and almost conquered in a series of campaigns (in which the Moskovite voevodas displayed such scandalous slackness that corruption was openly hinted at), concluded a truce of five years with the Grand Prince. The latter, meanwhile, had struck an astute blow at the prosperity of Kazan by prohibiting Russian merchants from attending the great summer fair held annually at the Tartar city, and by establishing a rival fair at Makar’ev, in the province of Nijhni-Novgorod.[128]
At a moment when the western Church was offering a spectacle of dissension and rampant heresy, Vasili occasioned a mild scandal in the Orthodox communion by consecrating his unfruitful consort to the service of heaven, and taking unto himself another wife. Twenty years of conjugal felicity had not been crowned with the desired offspring, and the Grand Prince, weary of waiting for the overdue answer to reiterated prayers, took steps to remedy the breakdown in the succession. Solomonia was bundled off to a convent near Souzdal, where she received the veil, enforced, according to current rumour, by a whipping.[129]1526Vasili then proceeded to espouse a second wife, selecting for that honour Elena, niece of the imprisoned Mikhail Glinski. This infraction of the Church’s laws was connived at by the plastic Metropolitan Daniel, though the majority of theclergy and many of the boyarins viewed the whole affair with pious reprobation. Tradition credited the inconsiderate Solomonia with the crowning offence of mistaking the nunnery for a lying-in hospital, and giving birth to a male child; the rumour certainly existed, though it is doubtful if it had any foundation in fact.[130]Anxious days these for the Moskovite Court. The Grand Princess and her husband progressed wearily from shrine to shrine, invoking the good offices of various saints who were supposed to have influence in the matter, and distributing alms and donations with a lavishness wholly foreign to Moskovite finance, which suggested a conviction that heaven was open to bribery and was only standing out for its price. At length, after three years of patient expectancy, the much-prayed-for infant arrived “on the 25th August 1530, at seven in the morning,” accompanied by a rousing thunderstorm.[131]The city of Moskva rejoiced with its sovereign at the birth of the heaven-sent child, to whom was given the name of Ivan. The succession was further ensured by the begetting of another son the following year.
The remainder of the reign of Vasili presented no important features beyond a recurrence of inconclusive hostilities with the Krim Tartars, and occasional diplomatic intercourse with Constantinople. While yet, comparatively speaking, in the prime of life, Vasili was attacked with a leech-baffling malady, which declared itself when he was on his way to the autumn hunting at Voloko Lamsk.1533For reasons of state it was desirable that the sovereign’s critical condition should be kept from the knowledge of the general public, and especially from the foreign ambassadors. Therefore the suffering monarch was sledge-borne in a painful journey to Moskva, at a season when the falling snow and young ice rendered travelling laborious and unsafe. With the exception of his brothers, Urii and Andrei, Mikhail Glinski—restored to liberty and princely favour—and a few boyarins, none were admitted to the Grand Prince’s presence, but the rumour of his mortal sickness soon spread. Thedying man played to the end his cold impassive game of statecraft, and his last hours were employed in arranging safeguards and regulations for the government during the minority of his successor. As the third day of December drew to a wintry close the crowds gathered in the streets and stood round the silent palace, and that night no one slept in Moskva. Dark-robed ecclesiastics emerged from their retreats and swarmed into the house of death like vultures swooping upon a dying beast. And as the huddled crowds watched and waited without, a curious scene was being enacted in the grim bed-chamber. With notable exceptions, it had been the custom for Russian Grand Princes to receive on their deathbed the tonsure, monastical habit, and a new name; this custom the Metropolitan wished to adhere to in the case of Vasili, while Prince Andrei and another layman desired that he should die, as he had lived, a sovereign and not a monk. At midnight, while prince and boyarin were endeavouring to snatch the black neophyte’s robe from the Vladuika, and while the latter solemnly and vehemently cursed them “in this world and the next,” Vasili Ivanovitch drew his last breath. It was the first time in the course of his career that he had shown any impatience. Hastily they thrust the all-important garment on the corpse, and called it Varlam; but the baptismal name had a clear minute’s start. The great bell of Moskva boomed out to the watching multitudes the news that their sovereign was dead. A new day dawned, and another reign had begun.
During the reigns of Vasili and Ivan the Great a new factor in Russian history comes into notice, and afterwards develops into no little importance. This was the appearance in two distinct localities, which may be roughly designated as the lower basins of the Dniepr and the Don respectively, of organised bands of “steppe-folk,” who were neither exactly Russian nor Tartar, nomad nor settled, and who were known under the vague appellation of Kazaks, or Kozaks. The name “has been variously derived from words meaning, in radically distinct languages, an armedman, a sabre, a rover, a goat, a promontory, a coat, a cassock, and a district in Circassia”; an equal uncertainty hangs over the origin of the race, or rather races. Perhaps the clearest account of the etymology and ethnology of the Kozak is that given by a Russian author in a history of the peoples of the Don region. “Kazak signifies alike volunteer, horseman, freebooter. Malo-Russians, mingled with remains of peoples known under the common name ofTcherni Kloboukie, under the name of Kazaks, constituted one people, who became to all intents and purposes Russian ... their fathers dwelling from the tenth century in the neighbourhood of Kiev, were themselves already almost Russian. Increasing more and more in numbers, maintaining among themselves the spirit of independence and fraternity, the [western] Kazaks organised a Christian republic, and established themselves between the lower basins of the Dniepr and Dniestr, building villages and fortresses.”[132]The causes which drove these Slav and Turko outcasts into the wild steppe-land and scarcely accessible islands of the Dniepr, and welded them together in an origin-obliterating union, were first the Mongol invasion, and secondly the gradual establishment of irksome and far-reaching central authorities both in Moskovy and Lit’uania. The absolutism of the one monarchy, and the Catholic persecution of the other, sent men in search of liberty, to swell the ranks of those whose fathers had fled from the insecurity and degradation of a Tartar-haunted land. Similar causes—hostility to the surrounding khanates and impatience of the certain taxes and doubtful protection of the Moskovite government—were responsible for the existence of the Don Kozaks, among whom, however, there was a strong Tcherkess (Circassian) strain, while the Russian element was proportionately weaker. But the great factor in this double evolution was undoubtedly a physico-geographical one. The nature of the steppes themselves, those vast-stretching, level, grass-grown wolds, spread in seeming endlessness under the boundless sky, those solitudeswhere a man and his horse might lose themselves from all pursuit, called as irresistibly to the lustre after freedom as ever the Highlands of Scotland to the Saxon-hating Kelts, or the Tcherni-Gora to the unconquered Slavs of the Balkan coast. And having lured, it held, and holding, moulded. The Kozak and his wiry steed became as much a part of the fauna of the great Russian plain as the wolves, the hawks, and the steppe-eagles that hunted and roamed throughout its wide expanse.
SKETCH MAPofGRAND-PRINCIPALITY of MOSKVAwithGRAND-DUCHYofLITHUANIA and BALTIC PROVINCES.
SKETCH MAPofGRAND-PRINCIPALITY of MOSKVAwithGRAND-DUCHYofLITHUANIA and BALTIC PROVINCES.
The lapse of 500 years found the principles of settled hereditary government in much the same condition in Russia as they had been when the infant Sviatoslav succeeded to the throne of Kiev under the guardianship of his mother. Despite the fact that two of the late Sovereign’s brothers were yet living, Elena Glinski assumed the regency on behalf of her three-year-old son, supported by a knot of boyarin-princes, whom the circumstances of the time suddenly threw into prominence. The over-shadowing figures of the last two Moskovite monarchs had almost obliterated the fact that there were persons of importance in the land besides the members of the princely family. Now a whole crop of nobles emerges from the background, like a ready-made second chamber from the brain of an Abbé Sieyés. Ivan Oblenski, an offshoot of the House of Tchernigov, the Bielskis, the Glinskis, and the Shouyskies, form the aristocratic nucleus round which revolve the intrigues and faction vicissitudes which seem the natural accompaniments of queen-mothers and minorities. Necessarily the Princess Regent had a lover, in the person of Oblenski, and equally as a matter of course, the latter had personal enemies. Of these he proceeded to dispose with all expediency; Urii Ivanovitch, uncle of the Grand Prince, suspected of plotting against the Existing Order of Things, was lodged in a state dungeon, where he died of hunger some two and a half years later.[133]A more celebrated, if lessaugust victim was the kniaz Mikhail Glinski, who had expostulated with his niece anent her unseemly intimacy with Oblenski, and was thrown into prison, where he “died unhappily.”1534From which it would appear that the old saying concerning the unwisdom of intervening between husband and wife might be applied with equal truth to a less recognised connection. Andrei Ivanovitch, Vasili’s remaining brother, took fright at the irreverent procedure of the Regent and her favourite (who caged Princes of the Blood as unconcernedly as though they were linnets or human beings), and stole off one day, with all his household and retainers, towards Novgorod.1537The farther he got from Moskva the more his courage rose, and ere long he had drifted into open rebellion against the boyarin-wielded authority. Numbers of disaffected landowners sped to his support, but the gates of Novgorod remained shut and the Oblenskie were hard upon his track with the best-mounted Moskovite cavalry. Andrei surrendered without striking a blow, and was escorted back to the city of his deep dislike, leaving behind him at intervals along the Novgorodskie road the swinging corpses of thirty of his adherents. His remaining followers died by torture or in prisons, and the latter fate disposed of the last surviving son of the great Ivan.
Meanwhile the success of Elena’s regency had justified the means taken to retain it. Vasili’s death had encouraged the King of Poland to renew with threatening insistency his demands for the restitution of the territories conquered by the late Prince and his father; refusal on the part of Moskva led to hostilities in which the Lit’uanian forces were unable to obtain any advantages, and a prolongation of the truce, on the terms “as you were,” ensued (1537). A skilful balancing of the conflicting interests which agitated the Krim and Kazan Hordes maintained the Moskovite peace in those directions, and a renewal was also effected of the truces with Sweden and the Livlander knights. Nor was the inner administration of the regency wanting in beneficial activity. The Kitai-gorod of Moskva (after the Kreml the most important quarter of the city, containing the houses of the boyarinsand the principal bazaars and trading stores) was surrounded by walls and towers which added greatly to the security of the capital.[134]Vladimir, Tver, Novgorod, and other provincial towns were newly fortified and in some cases rebuilt; the state coinage was also put upon a more satisfactory footing. Under these circumstances the severities and loose morals of Elena Glinski might well be overlooked by her subjects. Her greatest offence was yet to come. She died.Ap. 1538Of poison, said many-tongued rumour, on which the only rational comment must be the useful Scotch verdict, “not proven.” Her untimely death left Oblenski in precarious possession of the supreme authority, which his enemies were already preparing to wrest from him. Foremost among these was the veteran Vasili Shouyskie, nick-named “the Silent,” the head of an important Souzdalian family. For seven days lasted Oblenski’s regency, and then himself and his sister were seized and thrown into prison, where the fashionable death-by-starvation awaited them. The silent Shouyskie assumed the regency, which he held till his decease in the October of the same year, when it passed to his brother, Ivan Shouyskie, who displayed his newly-acquired power by packing the Metropolitan Daniel off to the cloister, and installing in his place Ioasaf,hegumen(abbot) of the Troitza monastery. Hard and brutal was the rule of the Shouyskies; “fierce as lions,” bemoaned the Pskovskie chronicle, “were the voevodas, and as wild beasts their people against the peasants.” The only check on the absolute supremacy of the dominant family was the ever-present apparition of the kniaz, Ivan Bielski—Ivan and Vasili were fashionable names among the Moskovite aristocracy of that period—who was a formidable competitor for the possession of the regency. Bielski justified the nervous apprehensions of the Shouyskies (who had kept himin prison for several years and only released him at the intercession of the new Metropolitan), by taking advantage of the disaffection bred by their arrogance to oust them from the head of affairs. As Regent his rule was milder and less overbearing than that of the kniaz he had supplanted, and a firmer front was shown against the Tartars of Kazan and the Krim Horde, who were continually devastating the frontiers. Possibly the increased activity was rather forced by their side, for in the year 1541 both Hordes set themselves in motion against Moskva. The Krim Tartars brought a formidable force into the field, augmented by cannon, musketeers, and some squadrons of Ottoman cavalry—the first warriors of that nation who had fought against the Russians. The double danger stifled for the moment the bickerings of the Shouyskie and Bielski factions, and the Moskovites found themselves strong enough, when thus united, to repel the incursion of both Hordes. Safa-Girei and the Kazanese were chased out of the neighbourhood of Mourom, which town they had fruitlessly attacked; Saip-Girei, confronted by a powerful army on the yonder bank of the Oka, dared not attempt to force the passage, and retired to the Don. The jealousy which existed between the leading boyarins made it impossible for the Russians to follow up their advantage by a campaign in Tartar territory, and Ivan Shouyskie turned instead to his own advantage the employment of the troops which the war had placed at his disposal. Secretly supported by many of the notables of Moskva, and openly by those of Novgorod, he resolved upon a bold bid for the recovery of his ascendency.1542On a dark night in January Petr Ivanovitch Shouyskie rode into Moskva with a picked body of soldiers from Vladimir, and before morning the Kreml was in his hands. Bielski was seized in his bed, and the Metropolitan was disagreeably awakened by showers of stones hurtling through his windows and weapons hammering against his door. The chief of the Church barely escaped with his life to the shelter of the Troitza, an unpleasant exercise for an early morning in mid-winter. At daybreak Ivan Shouyskie entered the city and resumed his old position of authority.Bielski and the Metropolitan were sent off to safe keeping at Bielozero, the lonely stronghold on the waters of the lake of that name, where the Grand Princes’ treasures and prisoners were securely stored away.[135]This time Shouyskie took good care that his rival should not emerge from prison to trouble him, and the soul of Bielski put on immortality.[136]A new Metropolitan, the second who had been nominated by the Shouyskies, was elected to fill the place of the shifty Ioasaf, who had leisure, in the seclusion of the Kirillov monastery at Bielozero, to reflect on the unwisdom of being all things to all men in sixteenth-century Moskva. The Novgorodskie had supported thecoup d’etat, and their Archbishop Makarie was rewarded with the vacant post. In the meantime, while these various Ivans were ruling the State and crushing one another in turn, how fared it with the other Ivan in the background? The much-prayed-for princeling had not, since the death of his mother, spent a very happy or altogether comfortable childhood. The chief boyarins and their followers appear to have treated their Sovereign with a curious mixture of neglect, disrespect, and superstitious awe. Surrounded exclusively by the partisans of whichever faction happened to be uppermost, the friendless orphan could only brood in silent resentment over the wrongs he sustained at the hands of his temporary masters. The rude-mannered, tyrannical, gold-greedy Ivan Shouyskie was an especial object of his dislike. A letter written by the monarch in after days to Prince Andrei Kourbski, comments bitterly on the fact that though, in the lifetime of the Princess Elena, Shouyskie had possessed only one cloak, green silk trimmed with marten fur, “and that a very old one,” during his regency he was able to have cups of gold and silver fashioned him, with his initials graved thereon.[137]The despotic jealousy of Shouyskie and of his supporters in the State Council robbed the young Ivan of friends as well as treasure. For one of their number, a boyarin named Vorontzov, the Prince had betrayed a marked partiality, a dangerous compliment, whichbrought down on the recipient’s person the practically-expressed dislike of his fellow-councillors. In solemn conclave, and in the presence of Prince and Metropolitan, the angry men of State fell murderously upon the courtier whom the Sovereign had delighted to honour, and Ivan’s entreaties, backed up by those of Makarie, could scarcely obtain a mitigation of his fate to one of exile and imprisonment. The amusements of the boy Prince, besides religious devotions, at which he was an adept, and the more legitimate forms of hunting, consisted in chasing dogs and cats over the battlements of the Kreml, and in wild gallops with his allotted companions through the streets of Moskva, in which the old and unwary were ruthlessly trampled underfoot.[138]The days of his repression were, however, drawing to a close. The fearsome Regent Ivan died in 1543, and left a commission of his sons and relatives to replace him. But the reign of the Shouyskies was doomed. The manly exercise of the chase is a valuable school for inculcating self-reliance and a will to overcome the obstacles of life. It was straight from a day’s sport in the woods of Vincennes that the grand young Louis, whip in hand, strode in upon the Parliament of Paris and quenched it with an epigram; it was after the autumn hunting at Voloko-Lamsk that Ivan Vasilievitch first showed his teeth and gave evidence of that cold-blooded severity which was to gain for him the distinctive adjective “Groznie” (Terrible). At Moskva, where the Court had assembled for the festival of Noel, the Prince suddenly accused the ruling boyarins of misgovernment and abuse of their powers; many had been guilty, but he would content himself with one example. Calling to his kennel-men he bade them seize Andrei Shouyskie and throw him to the dogs. Out into the street they dragged the unhappy man, and there, before the mute, disconcerted boyarins and the long-time Shouyskie-ridden citizens, the Prince’s hounds worried the offending kniaz to pieces in the reddening snow. “The little tin gods” had missed “the hour when great Jove wakes”; Andrei Shouyskie paid dearly for the oversight. The youth of Ivanstill necessitated a regency, and his mother’s relatives, the Glinskies, next came into power; but from the day of the red Noel no liberties were taken with the young monarch. His new counsellors, indeed, encouraged him in his savage inclinations, and the chronicles give instances of callous brutalities inflicted upon Russian subjects by both Ivan and the Glinskies. A party of Novgorodskie arquebusers, who had interrupted one of the Prince’s hunting expeditions with importunities respecting their pay, were punished for their presumption by being tortured to death, and a similar ghastly fate awaited some petitioners from Pskov, upon whom was poured blazing spirits, which ignited their hair, beards, and clothes.[139]
When Ivan was in his eighteenth year he celebrated with much pomp and circumstance the double event of his coronation and his marriage with Anastasia, daughter of Roman Zakharin-Koshkin, member of a family which had migrated from Prussia to Moskva in the fourteenth century.[140]Jan. 16, 1547In the hallowed Ouspienskie Cathedral the Metropolitan crowned him with the title of Tzar, which was here used for the first time at the coronation of a Russian ruler. The old style of Velikie-kniaz dies out from this moment, and as the customary chant, “In plurimos annos,” swells through those dim frescoed arches, the old order seems to pass away with the wafted incense fumes. A new figure is borne into Russian history amid the striking of bells and shouting of a myriad throated multitude. The Tzar comes!
The fact of Ivan’s coronation caused no immediate change in the government of Russia, which continued to be directed by the “Vremenszhiki,” or men-of-the-season, that is to say, by the Glinskies. That their administration was iniquitous to an insupportable degree may be gathered, not only from the possibly exaggerated accounts of the chroniclers, but from the fact that long-suffering Moskvawas goaded to the brink of revolution. Ivan amused himself with his religious hobbies and other less respectable diversions, and only assumed the part of Sovereign when he wished to “make an example” of some offending subject. The purging of Moskva from the vampire brood that afflicted it, and the simultaneous “reformation” of the young Tzar, form a curious episode in the history of this time. The summer of 1547 was signalised by disastrous conflagrations in the capital, the first of which broke out on the 12th April; the last and most serious occurred in June. The flames on this occasion reduced to ashes a large portion of the Kreml, the Kitai-gorod, and the outer town, and destroyed 1700 of the adult inhabitants, besides children, “who were not counted.” Amid blazing streets and rolling smoke-clouds, falling roofs and crashing cupolas, panic and anarchy reigned supreme. The populace, rendered unreasonable by terror and hatred, loudly denounced the Glinskies as the authors of the calamity; in particular, Anna Glinski, Ivan’s maternal grandmother, was accused of sprinkling the streets of Moskva with a decoction of boiled human hearts, which apparently possessed inflammable qualities unknown to science. Urii Glinski, the Tzar’s uncle, was seized by the enemies of his party and slain in the sanctuary of a sacred building, and the infuriated townsfolk penetrated into the country palace at Vorobiev, whither Ivan had retreated, with a demand for more Glinskies. At this moment a thing happened which, in the accounts of the earlier Russian historians, recalls Edinburgh before the battle of Flodden. A “holy man of Novgorod,” one Silvestr, appeared on the scene and quietly annexed the soul of the Tzar. The people had attributed the conflagrations to the Glinskies; more critical and dispassionate examiners have been inclined to suspect the Shouyskie faction of complicity in the matter. Silvestr, however, put a different complexion on the affair and announced that the partial destruction of the town and burning of the 1700 inhabitants and unenumerated children was the work of God. Ashe supported this theory by producing “visions,” there could be no further doubt on the matter—none, at least, with Ivan, who saw the visions.[141]The conscience-stricken young man, convinced that the Glinski administration was as unpopular with heaven as it was with the Moskvitchi, since such heroic measures had been taken to displace it, surrendered himself, body and soul, into the hands of Silvestr, who, needless to say, made a clean sweep of the Vremenszhiki and replaced them with his own friends. Without ruthlessly disturbing the halo of romance and sanctity which has been fastened upon the man of Novgorod, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that the monk was an old acquaintance of Ivan—who was a frequent visitor to all the religious establishments within his reach—and took advantage of the popular excitement and general disorder to upset the palace intrigues of both the Glinski and Shouyskie factions. That Silvestr, and the equally nebulous layman, Adashev, whom he associated with him in the new government, exercised a restraining and beneficent influence on the young Prince may well be believed; with an opposition of watchful and resentful nobles in the background, circumspection was essential, and Ivan, who had seen a consuming fire, an angry populace, and a frowning Providence threatening him on all sides, was likely to be a docile pupil. For the time. The austere and monkish repression of the latest Vremenszhiki was the finishing touch necessary to perfect the education of the Terrible Tzar.
The early part of Ivan’s reign, and the whole of the preceding one, are characterised by the recurrence at irregular periods of a deliberate campaign against Kazan. The Russians seem to have borrowed the tactics of the wolves which inhabited their steppes and forests, and to have leisurely and persistently wearied their quarry down, without caring to rush in and dispatch it. Again and again did the Tzar summon from the far corners of his dominions an enormous army, trail forth his ponderoussiege-pieces and sacred banners, take an affecting farewell of his capital, and march upon the Tartar city. The wooden walls were relentlessly battered down, the garrison reduced to the last extremity, and then the Moskovite hosts would return home in good order. The walls were easily rebuilt and the Kazanese would pursue the even tenor of their way. It would almost appear as though the Russians were loth to irrevocably destroy the only enemy against whom they warred with any comfort. A more feasible explanation is that the Kazanese supplemented their feeble defences by a judicious outlay of the metal which corrupts, and that some of the Moskovite voevodas did not return empty-handed from these abortive expeditions. In 1552 Ivan determined to set once more in motion the huge army which had been left quartered on the frontiers of Kazan, a locality which had had a demoralising effect on the troops, many of whom had shaved off their beards to please the Tartar maidens who for the time being under-studied their wives, “to prove,” remarked a scandalised messenger from the Metropolitan, “by the indecent nudity of your faces, that you have shame to be men.” Familiarity had bred contempt, and the dwellers in the city by the Volga’s shore scornfully refused to open their gates at the approach of the 150,000 footmen and the 150 cannon which the Tzar brought against them. The Moskovites prepared for a long and obstinate resistance, and by way of a beginning erected and dedicated three pavilion churches in their camp. Events justified their expectations; the Kazanese held out stoutly against both the assaults of the besiegers and the offers of the Tzar. August and September passed in continual sorties and battles without the walls, skirmishing attacks by the Kozaks in the tzarskie army, and mining operations by the German engineers. The overwhelming forces and superior artillery which Ivan was able to bring against the city at length beat down the heroic defence, and the triumphant Moskovites put their stubborn and still resisting enemies to the sword. The Tzar is said to have been moved to tearsat the sight of so many Tartar corpses; “they are not Christians,” he observed, “but yet they are men.” The reduction of Kazan was an event of the first importance in Russian annals. It marked an epoch. “The victory of Ivan the Terrible is the first great revenge of the vanquished over the vanquishers ... the first stage reached by European civilisation in taking the offensive towards Asia.”[142]Prudence suggested that Ivan should remain on the scene of his conquest until his authority over the neighbouring districts was assured; a desire to return to his capital in the full flush of triumph prompted him to disregard more solid considerations. He was still very young. The newly-acquired territory was therefore left under the united protection of the Christ, the Virgin, the Russian intercessory saints, and Aleksandr Shouyskie. Ivan, on his homeward way, received the welcome intelligence that his wife had given birth to a son, the Tzarevitch Dimitri, first of a series of Ivanovitches so named. The prolonged rejoicings, banquetings, and thanksgivings which ensued at Moskva were followed by a disagreeable sequel; Kazan, despite the august protection under which it had been left, rose in revolt, and the Russian ascendency was seriously imperilled.1553The Tzar’s health at the same time broke alarmingly down, and another long minority seemed to threaten the State. The boyarins and princes, summoned to take an oath of allegiance to the infant Dimitri, showed a strong reluctance to bind themselves down in the manner required; the succession of Ivan’s child to the Tzardom would mean a Romanov regency and a repetition of the faction intrigues which had attended the early years of the present reign. Urii, the Tzar’s brother, appears to have been a weakling in mind and body, too feeble even to decorate with the divine attributes of monarch; in Vladimir Andreievitch, the Tzar’s first cousin, however, there existed a possible candidate for the throne, and even Silvestr and Adashev hesitated between the claims of the hereditary and collateral succession. The oath, whatever its value mightbe, was exacted from the unwilling courtiers, but Ivan’s recovery prevented the necessity of testing it. The convalescent Tzar, in spite of the remonstrances of his advisers, set off on a course of shrine visiting, taking with him his unfortunate offspring, who was scarcely of an age to stand such energetic piety. In fact he died on the journey. The pilgrimage of Ivan was, if the chroniclers and some of the later historians are to be believed, disastrous in another fashion. Among the religious establishments visited was the Piesnoshkie monastery, wherein was caged an interesting prisoner. Vassian, Bishop of Kolumna in the reign of Vasili, had been deprived of his episcopal office during the time of the regencies on account of his evil life; now, in the decrepitude of age, he is represented as harbouring with unquenched passion the unholy frettings of a sin-warped mind. Ivan desired an interview with the hoary reprobate; perhaps after a course of devotions among a community of irreproachable saints, living and departed, he was attracted by the rare personality of a sometime bishop who was no better than he should be. The monk-with-a-past seized the grand opportunity to poison the monarch’s mind against his boyarins, his relations, and his subjects, and Ivan drank in with greedy ears the vicious counsels of the unhallowed recluse. It is a fascinating picture, the aged priest who had eaten his heart out in helpless bitterness these many years, and chafed against the restraint of his prison-cell, given at last one deadly moment of revenge in which to work a superb evil against the society that had mishandled him. And as the Tzar went out from his presence a changed man, might not the ex-prelate have flung a crowning blasphemy at his heaven and chanted exultinglynunc dimittis? Ivan, indeed, in the hands of the chroniclers, is a creature easily swayed; a monk from Novgorod tells him to be good, and he straightway abandons the wrong-headed sins of his wayward youth and becomes an exemplary monarch, till a monk of Piesnoshkie gives him dark and evil counsel, and sends him forth upon the world with a cankered, blood-lusting soul.
The Tzar’s return to health was accompanied by a return of Moskovite prosperity. Another Tzarevitch, Ivan, replaced the dead Dimitri; Kazan was gradually Kozaked into submission, and received a bishop as a mark of special favour. Another conquest equally important was achieved without bloodshed. The Astrakhanese having insulted the envoys of Moskovy, a small but well-equipped army was sent against them, with the result that this khanate, once the head-country of the redoubtable Golden Horde, acknowledged Ivan’s sovereignty and yielded equal rights in the Volga fishery to his Great Russian subjects.1554The Nogai Tartars, occupying the intermediate steppes, submitted at the same time to the Moskovite dominion, and the Russian state, still cut off from the Black Sea, to which in the tenth century it had given its name,[143]wriggled its way down to the Kaspian.
The acquisition of the two Tartar sovereignties, while giving increased importance and security to Ivan’s dominions, and opening up a valuable trade with Persia and other eastern countries, did not tend to make Moskovy less Asiatic, or bring her closer into the European family. The Tzar’s political ambitions turned naturally towards the west. With a sagacity equal to that of his most celebrated successor, and in opposition to the advice of his counsellors, he wished to find a free outlet for communication with the great Empire-Republic (which, though decaying in organisation, was at this moment so instinct with life), and with Europe generally. The death of Sigismund of Poland (1548) and the accession of his son, Sigismund-August, had scarcely affected the grudgingly pacific relations between the two countries, though their common grievance against the Krim Tartars seemed to warrant the hope of a more cordial understanding. With Sweden the Moskovites waged one of those short inconclusive wars, in which neither party seemed to have any definite object in view, beyond the fact that they “lived unhappily” as neighbours.1557A forty years’ truce concluded the hostilities between these ancient enemies. It was about this time thatsome adventurous merchant-seamen of the city of London “discovered” Moskovy, by way of the White Sea, and opened up a commercial and diplomatic intercourse between the two isolated nations who were one day to come face to face with each other on the roof of the world. The country, however, towards which Ivan’s thoughts were chiefly turned was the uniquely governed Baltic land, comprising Estland, Livland, and Kourland, and the adjacent islands of Dago and Oesel. The extinction of the Prussian section of the Order had necessarily weakened the Livlandish branch, and the spread of Lutheran ideas had further added to the confusion which reigned throughout the Baltic burghs. Nowhere, perhaps, in Europe did bishops wield such extensive temporal powers, and the fact that local opinion ran strongly in the direction of the reformed principles and of secularisation made the immediate future of these districts a very open question. Ivan had a solution of the difficulty which he was not loth to put into practice. A grievance he undoubtedly had against the Livlanders, who had hindered his intercourse with the Hansa League and prevented free immigration of artificers and craftsmen from the Empire into Russia. Consequently he suddenly bethought him of the clause in the original truce with von Plettenberg, whereby an annual tribute from the town of Dorpat had been agreed to, and promptly lost sight of. The Tzar reminded the Livlandish envoys of this unremembered pledge, and refused to renew the truce until the arrears had been paid in full.1557The representatives of the Land-Master and the sovereign bishops argued and promised, but they did not pay, and Ivan prepared for war. Von Fürstenberg vainly endeavoured to rouse his subordinates and coadjutors to a sense of the coming danger. The Bishop of Dorpat hastily declined the offer of a few companies of lanzknechts, whose loosely disciplined habits he well remembered; he had forgotten the Russians.1558In January three divisions of Moskovite, Tartar, and Tcherkess troops, under the command of a Glinski, a Romanov, and an erstwhile Khan of Kazan, rode into the Order territory and wasted Livland and Estland to withinfour miles of Revel.[144]The outskirts of Dorpat were burnt, and the invaders returned from this preliminary winter campaign with a heavy spoil of cannons, church bells, treasure, and captives. A contemporary account accuses the Tartars of fiendish cruelties upon the hapless inhabitants who fell into their clutches; among other fantastically devised tortures, men were fastened on to the ground, holes punctured into their sides, and gunpowder poured therein, which being ignited, sent the victims into shreds.[145]Ivan’s object in sending war and desolation careering through the land was to bring the various factors which composed its government into subjection to his authority, as the Prussian State had been brought under the sovereignty of Poland. The Livlanders still imagined that peace might be bought, and at a Landtag held at Wolmar in March it was resolved to send envoys to the Tzar with an offer of 60,000 thalers. Ivan refused to receive the ambassadors, and the chances of reconciliation were still further lessened by an outbreak of hostilities between the opposing fortresses of Narva and Ivangorod, the former of which was captured by the Russians. The war recommenced with renewed vigour on the part of the invaders; the defending forces were too hopelessly disorganised to offer an effective resistance to the Moskovite attack. Churchmen and Ordermen, nobles and burghers, blamed each other mutually, and the luckless peasantry (who since their conversion to Christianity by the Sword Brethren had scarcely been surfeited with the peace and goodwill which had been officially promised them) suffered at the hands of all. Dorpat, Neuhausen, Ringen, and many other strongholds fell before the assaults of the Moskovites, and Ivan’s troops extended their ravages into Kourland. But meanwhile significant events had been taking place at the headquarters of the Order. Von Fürstenberg had resigned his office to a younger man, Gotthard Kettler, and this new chief had inaugurated vigorous measures whereby to save, if possible, some fragment from the ruin of the rapidly dissolving anachronism which had held together forover 300 years. The Kings of Poland, Sweden, and Denmark were appealed to for assistance, and a more spirited opposition was shown to the Tzar’s voevodas. A half-hearted irruption of the Krim Khan, Devlet Girei, into Moskovite territory towards the close of the year did not materially weaken Ivan’s grip upon the struggling provinces, but in the following May, through the mediation of the new King of Denmark (Frederick II.), an armistice of six months was granted to the distressed Livlanders.1559Kettler, the Archbishop of Riga (Wilhelm Hohenzollern), and the various representatives of the Order, the cathedral lands, and the cities sought to turn this respite to good account. Like vultures swooping down from an empty sky, the agents of the neighbouring northern powers appeared suddenly on the scene now that they understood that the Baltic Bund really meant dying. The Empire, torn and exhausted by the religious warfare which had attended the progress of the Reformation, was unable to take effective part in the obsequies of its detached colony. Other interested waiters upon Providence, however, there were in plenty. Magnus of Holstein, brother of the King of Denmark, was elected successor to Johann Munchausen, Bishop of Oesel and Wiek, who was willing, for a substantial recompense, to evacuate a bishopric which had become neither Catholic nor safe. Revel and the Estlandish barons turned their eyes Swedenward, while in September an alliance was formed between Poland and the expiring Order, which showed in which direction Kourland and Livland were likely to fall. The truce came abruptly to an end in the midst of all these schemings, and the Order knights fought their last campaign amid depressing circumstances. The strongly fortified town of Fellin, in which ex-Master von Fürstenberg had entrenched himself, was captured—or bought—by the Moskovite voevoda Kourbski, and another disaster overtook the Cross warriors at Ermes, where a whole detachment was surrounded by an overpowering force of the enemy and all who were not slain taken as prisoners to Moskva. The Tzar who had wept over the dead Kazanese did not on this occasion permit histriumph to soften his feelings towards the wretched captives, who were flogged through the streets of the capital with whips of wire and then beheaded.[146]Hatred and fear of the Tartar-tinged and autocratic Moskovite sovereignty, heightened by acts such as this, drove the Baltic folk more speedily into the arms of the various foreign powers who were able and willing to absorb them. Oesel had already come under Danish influence; in June 1561 Erik XIV. of Sweden (who had succeeded Gustavus Vasa the preceding September) took Estland formally under his protection. Sigismund-August completed the partition by taking over from the Order Kourland and as much of Livland as was not in the hands of the Russians.Mar. 1562The former province was erected into a hereditary duchy dependent on the Polish crown, and bestowed upon the ci-devant Master, Gotthard Kettler, who was transformed into Duke of Kourland; the ecclesiastical lands of the Kourlandish bishopric of Pilten, however, “went with” the territory of Oesel, which also comprised the church-lands of Wiek in Estland. Riga remained for the present a free city, depending more or less upon Poland, and the archbishopric was extinguished on the death of its last prelate, Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in 1563.[147]Thus passed away in violent dissolution the strange anomalous time-honoured Baltic Bund, that missionary outpost of western Christianity and civilisation, which had crammed its commerce and its Christ swordwise down the throats of the Liv tribes, had led an existence of intermittent strife with its neighbours and within itself, and dying, left a legacy of two hundred years’ warfare behind it.
Ivan, in killing the Order, had not reaped unmixed benefits from his destructive efforts; he had advanced the Russian frontier in a direction in which expansion was most needed, but he had seen a large accession of territory fall to his hereditary enemy, Poland, and his other hereditary enemy, Sweden, had obtained a foothold south of the Finnish gulf—two circumstances which did not bode peace on hisnorth-west frontier. At Moskva meanwhile troubles were brewing. The Tzar had probably never forgotten or forgiven the part Adashev and Silvestr had played when their sovereign seemed little better than a dead dog, and his consort had since that affair nourished open enmity against the two advisers. Their opposition to the war with Livland, in place of which they would have preferred a crusade against the Krim khanate, still further nettled Ivan, and the Vremenszhiki might plainly perceive that their “season,” which had set in amid the glowing ashes of a burnt Moskva, was drawing to a close in the winter of the Tzar’s displeasure.(Aug. 1560)The death of Anastasia (who had erewhile presented her husband with another son, Thedor, and a daughter, Eudokiya) did not improve the monarch’s temper, and the fallen favourites were glad to leave the unhealthy neighbourhood of the Court. Adashev was sent in the capacity of voevoda to the newly acquired fortress of Fellin, and the man of Novgorod relapsed into the obscurity of the cloister. Their rule had been ambitious, austere, and paternal to the point of irritation, and they left behind them a circle of disparaging courtiers who helped the Tzar to remember how arrogant his disgraced counsellors had been in the past, and to realise how dangerous they might be in the future. It was darkly hinted at the Kreml that Anastasia Romanov had died in the prime of life and health, and that she had been the enemy of the Vremenszhiki. Ivan himself raked up real or imagined grievances against these restrainers of his violent youth, and before long the frown of the Tzar was followed by a stroke of his far-reaching arm. Adashev was removed to a prison at Dorpat, where he died six months later—by his own hand, said his enemies; Silvestr was sent to contemplate the abstract to the music of “the ice-fields which grind against the Solovetsky Monastery on its savage islet” in the White Sea—a favourite storing-place for inconvenient churchmen, as Bielozero was for lay offenders.
A new circle of favourites and boon companions sprang fungus-like around the stern-grown Tzar, but for the future they ceased to try and control his goings; if they couldavoid being trampled on they counted themselves lucky. The Basmanovs—Thedor, the son, “with the face of an angel and the heart of a devil”—were among this sinister throng, which also included Maluta Skouratov, “readiest of all to minister to his depraved inclinations and shameful lusts.”[148]Ivan, after the punishment of Silvestr and Adashev, was seized with remorse—for wasted opportunities. He might have been so much more savagely exemplary than he had been. It was not yet too late to remedy the omission; Adashev had been disposed of, and the recluse could not well be dragged forth again and re-sentenced; but there were others. The gravest political fault that must be laid to Ivan’s account is that his cruelties were occasionally stupid. In the instance of his first experiment at a reign of terror he selected as principal victim of his unappeased wrath Daniel Adashev, brother certainly of the late minister, but one of the few reliable voevodas with the army in Livland. The exact ground on which he received the death-sentence—beyond the fundamental one of blood-relationship with a fallen idol—does not transpire, but the fault was apparently a comprehensive one, as with him perished his youthful son, his wife’s father, his brother’s wife’s brothers, and his relative Ivan Shiskin, with wife and child.[149]At the same time was put to death, on the double charge of sorcery and affection towards the Adashevs, a woman of Livland, a convert to Orthodoxy, who had come to Moskva with her family, the interesting name of Magdalin, and a reputation for piety. The first perished with her. Other victims of the Tzar’s dislike or distrust were sent either to their graves or to Bielozero, and then the “young man’s fancy” lightly turned to “thoughts of love.” Envoys were sent to the King of Poland suggesting the marriage of Ivan with one of Sigismund-August’s sisters as a basis of peace between the two countries, but the negotiations fell through. The question of Livland had added another item to the many vexed points which made a durable reconciliation impossible.Aug. 1561The offendedwooer haughtily turned his back upon possible western brides and allied himself with a beautiful Tcherkess maiden, of a princely house, whom he caused to be Christianised and baptized at Moskva under the name of Mariya. Towards the close of the following year Ivan assembled an immense army with which to give practical effect to his resentment against Poland, and in January 1563 led his troops in person against Polotzk. Probably no previous Russian prince or voevoda had ever been at the head of so imposing a host; its fighting strength was computed at 280,000 men, another 80,000 accompanied the huge baggage train, and 200 cannon bumped in their sledges over the frozen snow. How such a multitude of men and horses was maintained in the frost-bound and much ravaged border province of Polotzk it is difficult to surmise. Fortunately the siege was not of long duration; the old capital of the House of Isiaslav surrendered to the mighty host which encompassed it, and Ivan was able to add the title of Grand Prince of Polotzk to his already fatiguingly imposing designations. His return journey to Moskva was a repetition of his earlier triumph after the fall of Kazan. As on that occasion, he was met with the pleasing intelligence that his consort had presented him with a son (Vasili).[150]The infant continued the parallel by dying when a few weeks old. Another death happened in the tzarskie family towards the end of the year, Urii, the weakling brother, dropping quietly out of existence at this time. Makarie, the Shouyskie-elevated Metropolitan, died on the last day of the year, “leaving behind him the blessed memory of a prudent pastor.”[151]As he had lived in peace with the various Vremenszhiki and with Ivan himself, the prudence cannot be gainsaid.1564Athanasie, the Tzar’s confessor, was elected to the vacant post, which he probably found less onerous than that of keeper of his Majesty’s conscience.
A truce of six months had been accorded to Sigismund-August, notwithstanding which both Moskovites and Poles(the latter with the assistance of the Dniepr Kozaks) mutually harried each other’s lands. The Polish ambassadors who came to Moskva in December 1563 put forward the usual inflated demands for Pskov, Novgorod, and other integral Russian possessions; scarcely likely to be yielded to a country which had just lost a valuable province. Ivan’s diplomatists countered these extravagant proposals by equally unreasonable claims, and the futile negotiations—which more resembled a Dutch auction—were broken off in January.1564The renewal of active hostilities brought disaster upon the Moskovite arms; in the ill-fated neighbourhood of Orsha Petr Ivanovitch Shouyskie, in command of a large Russian force, was surprised by the hetman Nikolai Radzivil and completely defeated. Among the many conflicting accounts of this battle it is impossible to estimate what was the proportionate loss of victors and vanquished, but it is fairly evident that the Moskovites abandoned their cannon and baggage train to the enemy, that they were pursued by moonlight through brakes and swamps, and that Shouyskie lost his life in the battle or the flight. According to some writers his body was found in a well. The consequences of this defeat were not weighty, but Ivan was at the same time confronted with the defection of one of his most important voevodas, Aleksandr Mikhailovitch Kourbski. This boyarin, who held command of the troops in Livland, had been a companion-in-arms of Daniel Adashev, and was well disposed towards the Vremenszhiki who had had so grim a downfall. As Moskovite generals went, he had been energetic and fairly successful, though at a battle at Nevl he had been worsted by a much inferior Polish force. The cruelty and tyranny which were making the Tzar daily more breathlessly interesting to his courtiers roused apprehensions in the mind of Kourbski, who suddenly took the resolution to transfer his services to the cause of Sigismund-August. The letter or declaration in which he informed the Tzar of the reasons which had driven him to take this step was couched in terms of Biblical reproach, and upbraided the tyrant with having shed the blood of innocent men and slainthe mighty ones of Israel. Kourbski was pleased with this composition and expressed his intention of having a copy of it buried with him. Ivan, who was not so pleased with it, drove his iron-tipped staff through the foot of the messenger who had brought it, and kept it there while he read it; and it was a long letter. An extraordinary correspondence ensued; Ivan hurled at his departed boyarin reproaches, scriptural texts, sarcasms, and fragments of classical history. Why to save his miserable body had Kourbski stained his immortal soul with treachery? What, he wished to know, would happen to Kourbski’s soul “on the day of awful judgment”? How had he dared to say that the throne of God was surrounded by his (Ivan’s) victims, against the authority of the Apostle, who said that no man could see God? Heretic! “You tell me that I shall never again see your Ethiopian face. O Heaven! what misfortune for me!” And let him place his letter in his coffin, thereby proving that he was no Christian, since Christians loved to die in forgiveness and not hate. “Written in our residence of Moskva, in Great Russia, the 5th of the month of July, the year of the world 7,072.”[152]
The passing over of Kourbski infused new vigour into Sigismund-August’s war measures. Devlet-Girei, who had been on the point of concluding an alliance with Moskva, was suddenly induced by Polish gold to make an inroad upon Riazan; Kourbski and Radzivil led a large army against Polotzk, and hostilities were actively prosecuted in Livland. Nothing, however, resulted from this triple attack; Riazan was heroically defended by the Basmanovs, father and son, until reinforcements arrived to drive the Tartars back into the steppes. Polotzk equally defied the Polish arms, and the Moskovites on their part captured the Lit’uanian fortress of Ozeriszh. In Livland neither side could claim a decided advantage.