Ivan the terrible, p.19
Ivan the Terrible, page 19
The rulers of Livonia were among the most determined in barring Russian access to the West through their lands, and they warned the Emperor Charles in 1551 that all the Tsar's neighbours went now in fear of him and bent their heads to him and that the Livonians dreaded to be brought under his grausame Gewalt (cruel power) and to be compelled to change their religion; and if craftsmen and artists were allowed to stream into Russia, they would be followed by thousands of evil Anabaptists, Sacramentists and others expelled from the German lands. For the time being Ivan contented himself in 1554 with a renewal of the existing truce with Livonia on payment by the latter of the tribute allegedly due to Russia since 1503, including the arrears, and the restoration of the Orthodox churches destroyed, together with the Catholic churches, by Lutheran fanatics in Livonia. The negotiations were carried out by Aleksei Adashev and Viskovaty. Trade was to be free for Russian imports and exports, but the Livonians still refused to allow the free passage of foreigners into Russia.45
Ivan's interest in direct communications and trade with western Europe was strengthened by the totally unexpected arrival on the shores of the White Sea, in summer 1553, of an English sea captain, Richard Chancellor, seeking a northern route to the Indies. The expedition had been financed by a group of English merchants, with government approval, and bore a letter from King Edward VI addressed to ‘all kings, princes, rulers, judges and governours of the earth’, in the hope of discovering a new, northern sea route to the Indies, free from Spanish and Portuguese control. Three ships were commissioned, but two were lost at sea.46 Chancellor, with the Edward Bonaventure, made land near the mouth of the Northern Dvina river in the White Sea, on 24 August 1553, where local fishermen informed him that he was in the dominions of the Tsar of Russia. The northern route to Russia was not unknown, but Chancellor was the first Englishman to arrive in Russia by it, and he was eventually met by Russian officials (pristavy) and escorted to Moscow in November. Chancellor's letter from Edward VI opened the way for him in Moscow, and when he left for England in February 1554, he had secured Ivan's consent, in a letter addressed to Edward, to more English ships visiting his ports, and the Tsar had declared his willingness to open negotiations for the regulation of trade between the two countries.
From the very beginning Chancellor viewed the inhabitants of this strange land as ‘the barbarous russes’, though he was in many ways less prejudiced than later English envoys from the Russia Company. He had travelled in the Middle East, and possibly France, and was less supercilious than most Protestant Englishmen. He provided the first, and in many ways the most perceptive and sympathetic, of many accounts of Russia as seen by Englishmen, as well as information about Russian products, weights and measures, and trade. His description of northern Russia is in striking contrast to the devastation recorded by Giles Fletcher thirty years later.
Chancellor was impressed by the size but not the beauty of Moscow, and he thought poorly of the Kremlin, where the public buildings lacked the external ornamentation and internal decoration customary in Tudor palaces. But when he was finally received at court, he realized that finery in Moscow was worn, not hung on walls. The hundred courtiers who welcomed him were all dressed in cloth of gold to their ankles, while in the actual presence chamber Ivan was seated on a high throne with a ‘diadem or crown of gold, appareled with a robe all of goldsmith's work’ and a sceptre inset with precious stones, surrounded by his principal officials and members of his council, and flanked by two men who were probably Aleksei Adashev and Ivan Viskovaty, the two men in charge of Russian foreign relations with the West at this time. Chancellor was deeply impressed by the riches and the majesty of the Tsar, and after the usual formal exchanges, he withdrew into an adjoining chamber where he was looked after by Aleksei Adashev before proceeding to a banquet in the Golden Chamber starting as usual with roast swan.47 Ivan was now clothed in a robe of silver and wearing a different diadem. The food was served on golden dishes, the tablecloths were spotless, and in the middle of the room there was a ‘mighty cupboard’ with the most elaborate display of gold and silver plate. Chancellor was also struck by the fact that Ivan greeted all his guests and nobles by name when he served each one with bread.48
Like Christopher Columbus, Chancellor started out to find one place and found another, in his case Russia. But trade was the immediate object of the English Company of Merchant Adventurers which sponsored his voyage, and Chancellor made the best use of his opportunities. When he reached home, however, the letters he carried, addressed to Edward VI, were delivered to Queen Mary I. From Ivan's point of view, Chancellor's landfall in the White Sea showed that direct access to the West could be opened, dangerous for sailors, but only liable to political interference by sea from Denmark–Norway. Access to the Holy Roman Empire, Italy and the West would remain precarious.
Chapter VIII
The War in Livonia and the End of the ‘Chosen Council’
As usual there is no agreement among historians about what Ivan intended to do after the conquest of Kazan' and Astrakhan'. Was his first assault on Livonia in 1558 part of a campaign to acquire an opening on the Baltic, as is usually maintained, or was it merely an effort, at a time when he was strapped for cash, to collect tribute allegedly due to him from part of Livonia, namely the city of Dorpat?1 Or was he hesitating between the Livonian option and a push to conquer the Khanate of Crimea, put an end to Tatar slave raids into Russia and perhaps acquire an outlet to the Black Sea? There is no evidence but his deeds.
Russian negotiations with the Livonian Order usually took place between Novgorod and the Order, or between Pskov and the Order or in the form of a treaty between the bishop of Dorpat and Pskov. Negotiations took place in Novgorod or Pskov, not in Moscow.2 Livonia had been disrupted by religious and political conflict for some time, and the province was open to invasion from all sides. Authority was now divided between the remnants of the Teutonic or Livonian Order headed by Prince Wilhelm von Fürstenberg, the Archbishop of Riga and the leaders of the major commercial cities like Riga, Reval, Narva and Dorpat, now mainly Lutheran, who did not all view Russia with the same distrust. In Dorpat, for instance, many Russians had been settled for some time as traders or craftsmen, and there had even been an Orthodox church for them, which had allegedly suffered from vandalism during the religious turmoil in the province. Other cities were still closely linked with the German towns of the Hansa.3
Ivan's broader aims were quite clear: uninterrupted access to the West via a Baltic port would create a direct commercial link all the way from the Baltic to the Caspian, now that Kazan' and Astrakhan' were in Russian hands. Imports from the West, particularly of arms and military supplies, were ever more necessary now that Russia was embarking on hostilities with Western powers, requiring a more sophisticated type of armament. At present Russia's only outlet on the Baltic was the shallow and unsatisfactory port of Ivangorod, built over against Narva. The benefits to be drawn from the northern route explored by Chancellor could not yet be assessed. Frontier disputes between Russia and Sweden in Karelia had been settled by a truce of sixty years concluded in 1510.4 Recent conflicts with Livonia over Russian trading rights and the free passage of craftsmen and supplies to Russia had been temporarily shelved by means of a five-year truce between the two sides in 1550. But in 1551, long before the expiry of the truce, the Livonian towns again obstructed direct Russian trade relations with the West, forcing the Russians to trade only through Livonian merchants. War was not yet implicit in the situation, but a pretext now existed.
In further discussions in 1554, Ivan IV reminded the Livonian envoys that, from the Russian point of view, the Order was in Livonia only on sufferance, and that if they did not comply with his demands, the Tsar would come for them in person. Russian diplomacy, in the persons of Aleksei Adashev and Ivan Viskovaty, now produced ancient claims to Russian suzerainty over the city of Dorpat, which had paid a tribute to Pskov of one mark per adult male dwelling in the city and its surroundings, or about six thousand marks, as far back as the time of Ivan III, when Pskov was an independent city republic.5 The Livonians climbed down and agreed that all males in the bishopric of Dorpat would pay the agreed tribute by 1557, and they consented to allow Russians to buy all the goods they needed in Livonia except armaments, and to permit the passage of craftsmen. In the event, when the Livonian envoys arrived in Moscow early in 1557 they brought no money, and were sent packing by Ivan.
In the meantime a glimmer of light showed in the West, where Chancellor had returned to England with news of his auspicious reception in Moscow and of the permission given by the Tsar to open up trade between the two countries on very favourable terms for English merchants. Edward VI had been succeeded by Queen Mary and King Philip, who now granted a formal charter to the Russia Company. The company decided to send Chancellor back to Russia to attempt to establish trading relations on a stable footing.6 Anglo-Russian trade could now become independent of the Danish-imposed Sound tolls,7 the Hansa and the interposition of middlemen.
Events in Livonia developed in parallel with events in Kazan', where the Russian forces were still deeply engaged in mopping-up operations. Moreover, until Russian relations with the Khan of Crimea and the Grand Prince of Lithuania–King of Poland were established on a firm basis, Ivan could not afford to advance deep into Livonia. But in 1557, the pacification of Kazan' and the conquest of Astrakhan' seemed relatively complete and many detachments from the various local tribes around Kazan' joined the Russian armed forces drawn up on the Livonian border. In the meantime yet another Livonian embassy arrived in Moscow in December 1557, again without any tribute money.
A little while earlier, in 1555–6, a feint, or possibly a more determined, operation had been launched in the south against the Khan of Crimea, now a vassal of the Ottoman Sultan, who had not recognized Ivan IV's newly proclaimed sovereignty over Kazan'. Its leader was Prince Dmitri Vishnevetsky, the Orthodox Lithuanian magnate whose base was in the Ukraine, around Kiev and the lower Dnieper, and who offered to cooperate with Russia. To what extent it was an independent undertaking and to what extent it was ordered by Ivan as part of a general strategic plan is difficult to establish. In military sorties of varying success, acting together with Cossack detachments which were beginning to acquire consistency, Vishnevetsky harassed the Crimeans, occupying the island of Kortitsa in the rapids of the Dnieper, which was later to become the headquarters of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. This led to a formal breach between the Khan of Crimea and Russia.8
Ivan had also been successful in warding off an attack by Sweden. The Grand Prince of Vladimir-Moscow did not have direct diplomatic relations with the ruler of Sweden, which were carried on through the namestnik or governor of Novgorod. This was a tradition going back to the days of the independent city republic, when Novgorod negotiated in its own name; it now enabled Ivan to bring pressure to bear on Sweden by continuing to refuse to treat her as a sovereign state. Indeed, in the diplomatic documents exchanged in this period, Ivan is very careful to stress the difference between himself as the hereditary Tsar of his lands and the base-born, non-royal, ‘elected’ King Gustavus of Sweden.
Gustavus had attempted in 1554 to construct a coalition between Sweden, Denmark, Poland–Lithuania and Livonia against Russia and had made his plan public at the Diet of Wolmar in Livonia in 1554, using the threat that if Livonia rejected his plans he would be forced to make peace with Moscow, leaving the province to the tender mercies of the Tsar. Sweden's projected coalition was of course regarded as hostile by Russia, who in 1555–6 twice attacked and ravaged Vyborg, while the Swedes attempted to seize Oreshek at the mouth of the Neva. This was clearly not a serious campaign, and, moreover, Livonia refused to follow the Swedish initiative. Hence in the following year Gustavus backed down and sent envoys to the then governor of Novgorod, Prince. M.V. Glinsky, to discuss peace with Russia. Ivan eventually consented to talks with the Swedish envoys in person, who were sent on to Moscow, formally received by the Tsar and treated to a proper banquet in the presence of the boyars and other members of his court.9 In March 1557 a truce, to last until 1597, was signed between the King of Sweden and the governor of Novgorod, in which Sweden had to agree not to support either Livonia or Poland–Lithuania in a war with Russia. But Ivan still refused, in very rude language, to meet Swedish envoys himself in future, and they were again relegated to the governor of Novgorod.10
Meanwhile relations with England were taking shape. The newly formed Merchant Adventurers Company landed the cargoes of three ships in 1556, in the port of St Nicholas on the White Sea. They were forwarded by river down to Vologda, then by land to Iaroslavl' and on to Moscow. On the return journey in July 1556 (only one outward and one return journey could be undertaken before the port of St Nicholas became ice-bound) four ships sailed with cargoes of wax, train oil, tallow, furs, felt, yarn and so on, some of which probably belonged to a Russian envoy, Osip Nepea, sent by Ivan to Queen Mary. The voyage was disastrous: only one ship reached Britain, the Edward Bonaventure, belonging to Chancellor, and it was wrecked off the coast of Scotland. Chancellor lost his life in saving Nepea, and the cargo was pillaged by ‘the rude and ravenous people of the country’. Rescued from the Scots, Nepea and the nine surviving members of his suite were given a lavish welcome in London, where Philip and Mary presented him with a lion and a lioness for Ivan. Nepea was informed that Russians would be allowed to trade freely in England, but unlike the English in Russia, they would have to pay customs dues. It was widely believed at this time that English ships were carrying arms to Russia, and the Emperor Ferdinand I interceded later with Queen Elizabeth to beg her not to supply such a dangerous monarch with weapons.11
There remained Poland–Lithuania. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth needed outlets to the Baltic Sea just as much as Russia, if not more, because her trade was more bound up with Europe than that of Russia, which also traded to the Near and Far East. Control of the river Dvina and the great port of Riga would enable the Commonwealth to break through the German encirclement which extended north along the Baltic shore to the Russian border at Narva, and south to the now secularized lands of the Teutonic Knights in East Prussia. Ever since the collapse of the central authority of the surviving Order of the Livonian Knights, the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom had been conducting secret negotiations with the Archbishop of Riga on the future of the city, and on the choice of a successor who might be able to transform the bishopric into a lay principality on the East Prussian model, behind the back of the merchants and the city council, who supported the continuation of the rule of the Order, as it secured their monopolistic hold on Russian trade.
There was in addition a standing cause of war between Russia and the Commonwealth in the claim, first formally put forward in diplomatic negotiations by Ivan III, and recognized by King Alexander of Poland–Lithuania in 1503, that many of the Ukrainian lands which had once formed part of Kievan Rus' belonged as of right to the house of Riurik.12 This is a claim which has been disputed by nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians who, in accordance with the dominant ideology of the times, in their approach to historiography, placed the demands of nationality before those of a dynasty. But Ivan III thought in terms of his dynastic rights, and the fact that Moscow had never ruled over Kiev was irrelevant to him, since his ancestor, Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh of Kiev, had once ruled over what was one day to become Moscow. After all Vladimir Monomakh had been Grand Prince of both Vladimir and Kiev, and Vladimir was senior to Moscow and came before it in the Russian titulature.
Since 1552 a five-year truce between the two countries had maintained peace, but it was too unstable to last, since Poland–Lithuania firmly refused to recognize Ivan's new title as tsar and continued to address him as Grand Prince. Anxious to maintain the defence of their trade once the Order was unable to deliver, the cities of Livonia too turned towards the Commonwealth for protection, though Riga stood out for its independence. In September 1557, the Livonian Order concluded an alliance against Russia with Poland–Lithuania, the treaty of Pozvol, which placed the remnants of the Order under Polish– Lithuanian protection. The treaty clarified the situation in Livonia and was of course regarded as a casus belli by Ivan IV, who decided on war with Livonia before Poland–Lithuania could mobilize its forces to intervene in the province.13
War began in January 1558, when the main Russian army, together with a large contingent of Tatar cavalry led by a number of Tatar tsars, tsarevichi and nobles, Kabardian princes and nobles, and large numbers of Cheremis, Circassians, Bashkirs and Kazan' Tatars, invaded Livonia, under the supreme command of the one-time Khan of Kazan' who had now reverted to his previous role as Shigali (Shah Ali), Khan of Kasimov and vassal of Ivan IV. The countryside was duly plundered and ravaged, but Ivan was more concerned with the cities; in May 1558 the port of Narva surrendered to the Russian forces. Aleksei Adashev and Ivan Viskovaty carried out negotiations with the city's representatives to determine the conditions of its transfer to Russian sovereignty,14 since Ivan hoped to open it up at once to direct European trade with Russia. The Russian conquest of Narva indeed altered the terms of trade in the eastern Baltic, freeing it from Livonian control and opening it up to Dutch and north German ports, to the extent that privateering now also became a lucrative business for the Livonian fleet in the Finnish Gulf.15 On 19 July, Dorpat fell to Ivan's Tatar allies, who seem – at any rate in the cities – to have been fairly disciplined at this stage, in order not to alienate the future subjects of the Tsar.
Ivan also left a door open for talks, ordering the commander in chief, Shigali, to proclaim the Tsar's willingness to listen to what the Livonians might submit to him, while the authorities in Dorpat set about collecting the tribute allegedly due to the Russians, and originally paid to the independent city of Pskov.16 There was a temporary respite in operations later in 1558, while Ivan switched troops under Prince I.D. Bel'sky to defend the line of the River Oka against a renewed Crimean attack. But operations in Livonia continued, for the time being, directed primarily against the port of Reval (Tallinn), which held out against a long siege. With Narva in Russian hands, however, direct Russian trade with the West had now been achieved. So dangerous was this for the other Baltic powers that an embassy sent by King Gustavus of Sweden to England in 1557 now appealed to Queen Mary to forbid her subjects to sail to the Russian port of St Nicholas in the White Sea.
