Ivan the terrible, p.15
Ivan the Terrible, page 15
As the manpower needs of the Russian state expanded and the armed forces settled into new patterns, the cavalry to which pomest'ia were granted fell into two broad categories, those who served as individuals po otechestvu, by hereditary social rank, and those who served po priboru, or collectively on lists attached to provincial centres. Was this feudalism? It is generally argued that it was not, because there was no contract binding on both sides, on lord and vassal; only the vassal was bound to serve for the upkeep he received from the land. Nevertheless, in practice as distinct from theory, in its impact on the life of an individual, the Russian cavalry levy was not so different from the levy on land held from a baron or directly from the king in early medieval England, though there was no mechanism, such as scutage in England, to enable a holder of a pomest'ie to commute his service duty for a money payment.
Chapter VI
The Conquest of Kazan'
While Ivan IV was struggling in the 1550s with his first experience of ruling, he was also facing his first experience of the complexities of war and foreign policy. Russia was a landlocked power, with a toehold on the Gulf of Finland at Ivangorod, opposite Narva. To the southwest was the vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which had absorbed so much of the Dnieper basin and so many principalities of Kievan Rus'. It was no longer as powerful as it had been in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, since Ivan III and Vasily III, in the course of various wars, recovered some of the principalities, notably Smolensk, which had once belonged to the Grand Principality of Kiev, though they did not recover Kiev itself. To the north, access to the Baltic was almost entirely shut off by the Order of the Livonian Knights, the northern remnant of the Teutonic Knights, whose lands in East Prussia had now been secularized. To the south, Russia was hemmed in by the Khanate of Crimea, which held the northern shore of the Black Sea, and to the east, extending along the Volga, were the Khanates of Kazan' and Astrakhan' and the lands of the Tatars of Kabarda. The three Tatar Khanates were the remainder of the fearsome Mongol Golden Horde, which had finally disintegrated in 1502, leaving these three unstable Moslem principalities with indeterminate borders between themselves, with Russia and to the east.
Each separate realm had its own political aims, Poland–Lithuania, under the Jagiellonian dynasty, hoped to recover the lands lost to Ivan III and Vasily III. Russia hoped to recover even more of the heritage of Kiev,1 to achieve access to the Baltic Sea, which would enable her to break through the barrier presented by Poland–Lithuania and Livonia to communication with the West, and to put an end for ever to the instability on her western and southern border and to the perpetual and damaging Tatar slave-raids to which she was so vulnerable. Poland–Lithuania had for long been the strongest enemy, and both Russia and Poland intrigued actively for the alliance of the Tatar khanates in the wars against each other. A new dimension was introduced into the shifting pattern of alliances in the south by the fall of Constantinople and the establishment of the powerful Ottoman empire, which would inevitably attract the allegiance of the Moslem enemies of Russia. The Khanate of Crimea had already become a Turkish vassal state.
Ivan III as Grand Prince played on these different strings in his foreign policy with skill and care, and took advantage of the internal weakness of the Khanate of Kazan', which was not a homogeneous Tatar realm but a conglomeration of tribes, some Tatar, some not, and riven by dynastic conflicts. The Volga divided the land into the meadow side and the mountain side (left bank and right bank) and there were settlements of non-Tatar peoples and various Finnic tribes who were neither Christian nor Moslem and thus had no particular attachment to Kazan'. On the death of Khan Ibrahim, Ivan III was able to intervene and, acting with one of the candidates to the throne, Mehmet Emin,2 to conquer the city in 1487. It was not a permanent conquest, but it established Ivan III for the first time in the role of an overlord who ‘invested’ the Khan of Kazan' with his throne, inverting the situation which had existed since the Mongol conquest, when it was the Tatar khans who decided which Russian prince was to rule in which Russian city. The Khanate of Kazan' was now in a situation of intermittent dependency. The players in the game included also the Khan of Astrakhan', the chiefs of the Nogai Horde and, further east, the Khanate of Sibir'. The patterns of alliance shifted between these various rulers according to commercial, and often dynastic, factors, as mortality took its toll.
The religious and political flexibility demonstrated by all the Russian grand princes in their relations with the Tatars had allowed many of the latter to settle in Russia, in groups, keeping their faith, being allotted towns and taking service with the Grand Prince, or entering Russian service as individuals, converting to Christianity and marrying Russian women. The most prominent of these Tatar appanages was the Moslem Khanate of Kasimov on the River Oka, established by Tsarevich Kasim, a son of Khan Ulug Mehmed of the Golden Horde, in mid-fifteenth century, by agreement with Grand Prince Vasily II. The Khan of Kasimov was a Genghisid, and therefore qualified to reign in the various Tatar khanates should their dynasties die out.3 In these Tatar appanages4 police, justice and administration were in the hands of the Tatar rulers, even when Russian Orthodox subjects also lived there, but their rights over the indigenous people were somewhat different; they enjoyed the same rights over the Moslem population as the appanage princes in Russia enjoyed over the Orthodox population, but only the rights of kormlenie over the Orthodox.5
Mehmet Emin, who had lasted many years in Kazan', most of them in alliance with Russia, died in 1518, leaving no direct descendant. Vasily III tried to impose the thirteen-year-old Shah Ali (Shigali in Russian sources) from the Khanate of Kasimov. But he was deposed by a rival khan sponsored by the Khan of Crimea, with the support of Poland–Lithuania, while the Khan of Crimea launched an offensive which reached Moscow in 1521. Peace negotiations were undertaken between the Khan of Crimea and the governor of Moscow, Vasily III's brother-in-law, the converted Genghisid Tatar prince known as Tsarevich Peter, who was married to Vasily's sister.6 Vasily III realized that a military base had to be set up closer to Kazan' than Nizhnii Novgorod (at the time the nearest base on the Volga), if the Russians were ever to achieve victory, and a fort, Vasil'sursk, was eventually built at the junction of the River Sura and the Volga; this, since it was on lands belonging to Kazan', was the first actual annexation of land. Renewed conflict reversed the balance between the Crimeans and the Russians, though the throne of Kazan' remained in the hands of a khan of the Crimean dynasty during the regency of Ivan's youth.
Could this unstable situation last? Both the khans of Kazan' and the khans of Crimea were interested in extending their authority in the east, but as regards Russia, they were concerned not so much with the conquest of territory as with slave-raiding, since the trade in slaves and the ransoming of prisoners was one of their principal sources of wealth. The Russian frontier was open and extremely vulnerable to invasion by large Tatar cavalry forces, and the Crimean Khanate was no minor succession state but a powerful and well-armed nation which preserved its independence until 1783. The frequent changes of alliance between Kazan', Crimea and Poland–Lithuania subjected Russian towns and villages to constant destructive inroads.
It is also possible that Russia was launched on a path of conquest by a general awareness of the religious polarization in Europe brought about by the Reformation, by a new, crusading anti-Islamic fervour, evident since the fall of Constantinople and by the threatening Ottoman advance in the Balkans. Belgrade fell in 1521, Rhodes in 1522; the battle of Mohacs in August 1526 destroyed the Hungarian kingdom and killed the Jagiellonian king. In 1529 Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege fruitlessly to Vienna in a terribly destructive campaign which ended in a truce between Ferdinand of Habsburg (the brother of Charles V) and Suleiman in 1533 and which confirmed the loss of Buda to the Turks. In 1538 Peter Raresh, the voevoda of Moldavia, sent an envoy to negotiate – in vain – for help from Russia,7 but Suleiman invaded Moldavia, dislodged the voevoda and replaced him with new and more subservient client rulers.
More to the point as regards Russia, the fall of Constantinople and the final elimination of the last remnants of the Roman Empire of the East left the Orthodox Church in captivity, with no other free protector but Russia. The theory of ‘Moscow the third Rome’ was in the air.8 It does seem that at this time what had for years been a tolerated modus vivendi between many races and religions was under increasing strain, and all the powers involved were determined to reach a final solution rather than to live from truce to truce. The threat of Islam was much more immediate and visible than it had ever been – most of the lands that had once been under the sovereignty of the Christian East Roman Empire were now ruled by the Moslem Turks.
From the point of view of the other central European powers, Russia had now emerged from diplomatic obscurity and had become an unknown quantity which had to be taken into account. The Holy Roman Emperors, in the persons of Maximilian I and Charles V, dominated western European politics of the age in terms of prestige rather than power. They were viewed with constant hostility by the kings of France, who sought safety in alliance with the powers which might attack the Habsburgs from the east. The pattern of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century diplomacy could already be discerned, with France seeking friendly relations with Poland–Lithuania and alliance with the Ottoman sultans. The Jagiellos of Poland–Lithuania in turn, rivals of the Habsburgs for the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary, and for control of the Danube, were hemmed in from the east by the Grand Principality of Moscow, nibbling away at the Lithuanian lands and increasingly subject to the devastating attacks mounted by the khans of Crimea.
To the north of Russia, the crisis caused by the collapse of the Order of the Livonian Knights, under the impact of the Reformation, intensified the rivalry between its neighbours for its inheritance. The Poles and Lithuanians met with the hostility of the Habsburgs, since Livonia was a dependency of the Holy Roman Empire. They also faced the enmity of the Grand Principality of Moscow, anxious to acquire land and ports in Livonia; and of Sweden, similarly desirous of protecting the shores of Finland by occupying Livonian lands and ports. Russia was not at this stage an initiator of policy, but Ivan III and Vasily III manoeuvred quietly and skilfully between Crimea, Poland–Lithuania and the Empire – maintaining good relations with the latter – and thus increased their diplomatic importance and widened the range of their relationships, while rejecting all attempts, by the Empire or the Papacy, to establish Moscow's rank in the pecking order of European states by the offer of papal or imperial crowns, and indeed claiming superiority of status.9
Under Ivan III and his forerunners Russia had already mastered the ways of international negotiation with the East Roman Empire and the Tatar states to the east, and the Grand Prince had also learnt to conduct diplomatic relations with the neighbouring powers in western Europe. As the range of Russian contacts increased, so Ivan III and Vasily III began to develop not only a certain skill and continuity in international relations but also a staff of secretaries experienced in conducting international affairs and qualified to some degree in language and diplomatic practice – a practice which varied widely from country to country. In the build-up of the rituals of diplomacy, Russia ended up astride East and West, influenced by long experience of Mongol/Tatar manners, while learning to adapt to Western ones. For instance, the custom of exchanging gifts between rulers, between ambassador and ruler and between ambassador and local magnate was most carefully regulated to take account of all possible implications. Gifts of money, or even of gold and silver currency, were frowned upon, for, as Montaigne noted, Sultan Bajazet never accepted gifts from envoys because the giver, as a result, is always raised above the receiver. In general the Mongols and Tatars did not distinguish between gifts and tribute.10 Gifts of furs, usually in bundles of forty skins, were common – sables were the most highly prized. Nothing was wasted. Even the skins of the sheep eaten by ambassadors on the way to the Russian border, where the foreign country would take over the supply of food, had to be returned to the tsar, as did the skins of the sheep eaten by the foreign envoys in Russia.11
In the West too, in the sixteenth century, the manner of conducting relations with other powers was only just beginning to acquire consistency, to be established in the law of nations (the words ‘international law’ did not exist, though the concept was vaguely adumbrated)12 and to be expounded in textbooks, the first of which seems to be that written by Bertrand du Rosier, dating from around 1500.13 A common manual served for western European countries, for in theory they all belonged to the res publica christiana, the community of Latin Christendom. It was indeed not an inclusive Christian community, for the Orthodox Christians did not ‘belong’ to it, in practice if not in theory. They were schismatics, not ‘one of us’, and even their long obedience to the Roman Empire of the East in religious matters earned them no merit.14 As a result the Grand Principality of Moscow had no precise rank in the European order of precedence, and the Russians were anxious to work out where they stood. For the Russians this also implied working out which sovereign rulers were addressed by the grand prince (or tsar) as ‘brother’, and which were too low in status to merit such a distinction.15
A Russian version of what was probably an Italian list of European states placed in order of rank, dating from the early sixteenth century, and in all likelihood originating in the Office of Foreign Affairs, has been found in Russia and gives some indication of their view; though as Russia does not figure on the list, one cannot judge of the Tsar's standing and there is no indication of where western countries placed the Grand Principality of Moscow.16 The Holy Roman Emperor obviously came first, followed by the ‘king of the Germans’, i.e. the heir to the Holy Roman Emperor, then the kings of France, Hungary, Spain, England (‘Negliter'sky’), Portugal, Naples, Bohemia, Scotland, Denmark–Sweden, in that order, and finally Poland–Lithuania. Precisely which qualifications decided the order of precedence is hard to tell, but judging by other, later, lists it was such things as the antiquity of a crown, the date of the ruler's conversion to Christianity, when a country achieved its independence etc.17 Where exactly the Office of Foreign Affairs thought that Russia belonged is not clear, but Ivan IV probably considered that his place was immediately after the Holy Roman Emperor, since he was descended, as everybody knew, from Augustus Caesar. (This placing was somewhat odd, because Ivan IV regarded all elective monarchies as inferior to hereditary ones. But the elective quality of the Holy Roman Empire went back to Rome ‘on the plea that to allow the throne of Caesar and the temporal lordship of the world to pass by inheritance like a farm, was unbecoming its peculiar dignity’.18)
Precedence was important not only in the signature of treaties, in the forms of address and ceremonial (who dismounted first and who remained on his horse, who took off his hat and who kept it on) used on public occasions between ambassadors and sovereigns, and in the nature and quality of the gifts exchanged, but also in the etiquette prescribed for the ceremonial in use at receptions according to the rank of the power concerned, the rank of the envoy and the nature of the relations between their respective governments, whether friendly or hostile at a given moment. Even the display of silver (much of which eventually was English) at Russian official banquets for foreign envoys was regulated by the status of the power concerned in the diplomatic pecking order.19 The sort of misunderstanding that might occur is illustrated when Queen Elizabeth, on a warm summer's day, made the mistake of receiving the Russian ambassador walking up and down in her private garden, and not in full panoply, sitting on a throne under her canopy of estate. Ivan complained at the lack of ceremony shown to his envoy and was assured in reply that the garden was the Queen's own privy garden and that vegetables like onions and garlic were not grown there.20
Traditionally, crowned heads, or kings, addressed each other as ‘brother’ (brat).21 But some kings were more equal than others, and acknowledgement of the status of brotherhood was a bargaining counter to be used in negotiations. Essential for the acceptance of the rank and quality of a royal house was the recognition of a God-given hereditary right to reign, and an ancestral claim by descent to outright ownership of hereditary lands; thus Ivan IV regarded information about the genealogy of the Riurikovichi as a state secret, which it was treason to penetrate or disclose, and did not acknowledge elected rulers as his equals. As a result of the break-up of the Union of Kalmar between the three northern crowns in 1521, Grand Prince Vasily III had refused to recognize the new King of Denmark–Norway, Frederick II, and the new King of Sweden, Gustavus I Vasa, as his brothers. The elected king of Sweden, a minor noble, was not even a noble, according to the Russians, but a merchant and a trader, and the ruler of Denmark was a king of ‘salt and water’.22 In 1559, when the envoys of the new King Christian III of Denmark attempted to impose equal treatment of their king on the Tsar, the Russian boyars refused even to discuss the subject, and insisted that Christian III should address Ivan not as brother but as father. When Ivan heard that Sigismund Augustus of Poland–Lithuania had used ‘brother’ to a later king of Sweden, Erik XIV, he exclaimed contemptuously ‘he is free to call his coachman brother if he wants to’. The same problem arose in an even more acute form in relations with the Tatars and specifically the Crimeans. As descendants of the Golden Kin who continued to regard the Russians, who addressed them as ‘tsars’, as their vassals, the Crimeans made their recognition of the grand princes as brothers conditional on gifts of gerfalcons, sables and walrus tusks, or on the ransom of prominent prisoners.23
