Ivan the terrible, p.46
Ivan the Terrible, page 46
This must have been enough to unsettle the Tsar.28
Inevitably Ivan now turned to diplomacy, and in September 1579, in Pskov, he attempted to interest the voevoda of Vilna, then N. Radziwill the Red, in opening peace talks. But he accompanied this opening with a most insulting letter directed to Stephen Bathory, accusing the King of adopting Kurbsky's treasonable ways, and still ‘asserting his will to win’. Ivan declared that the Polish King's ‘Latin’ faith was only ‘half Christian’, that of his nobles Lutheran, and that now a new heresy had appeared in his country, Arianism (by which he presumably meant anti-Trinitarianism). God would not give victory to such people, who were not even Christian.
Yet again, however, this letter may not have been sent and was perhaps only a safety valve for Ivan's overwhelming rage and resentment at his powerlessness.29 Meanwhile, in summer 1580, Bathory renewed the offensive, again taking the Russians by surprise by attacking neither Pskov nor Smolensk, but Velikie Luki, a minor but strategically placed Russian town lying between the two. Couriers travelled again between the two warring parties, but it led to nothing. The Russian loss of Velikie Luki, which fell to the Poles on 5 September 1580, and the defeat of another Russian force two weeks later by the Poles, together with a further Swedish assault in Karelia forced Ivan to think seriously of peace negotiations with the Commonwealth, but he did not wish to suffer the humiliation of being the first to open the subject formally, nor did Stephen Bathory, who categorically refused to open negotiations even for the exchange of prisoners.30
Ivan now embarked on a wide ranging diplomatic ploy, which reveals that though he may not have been a good general, he understood very well how to muddy the European diplomatic waters. He had lately showed himself more amenable to discussion, and sent proposals for the renewal of talks between Russia and the Commonwealth in November 1579 and January 1580. He called a meeting of the Boyar Council, on 25 August 1580, in Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda, to discuss the situation. The result of these consultations was the dispatch of a messenger first to Vienna, then on to Rome. Leontii Istoma Shevrigin, who left on 6 September, was a mere courier (gonets), belonging to the lowest diplomatic rank in the Russian service, which enabled him to travel without ostentation, and therefore with greater safety, since he was less likely to attract attention and be intercepted. He was charged with a letter from Ivan proposing to join the Emperor Rudolph II in an alliance against the Ottomans and, in order to enable him to do so, inviting the Emperor at the same time to bring pressure to bear on Bathory to make peace with Russia, on terms which would allow Ivan to keep at least four Livonian fortresses.31
But Ivan was proposing an even bolder venture. Shevrigin was to continue on to Rome and pick up the threads of earlier soundings from the Vatican, throwing out hints of a possible acceptance of the supremacy of the Pope by the Russian Orthodox Church, an aspiration which had been high on the agenda of the popes ever since the Council of Florence in the fifteenth century.32 Ivan hoped thus to win time and to encourage the Pope, then Gregory XIII, to mediate a peace or a truce between Russia and the Commonwealth, a thoroughly original proposal running counter to all previous Russian dealings with the Papacy.33 Since travel by land was too dangerous for a Russian envoy, Shevrigin travelled by sea from Pernau in Livonia to Lübeck, and collected there an Italian interpreter, Francesco Pallavicino, to add to his escort of a German interpreter, Wilhelm Popler. He arrived in Prague at the beginning of January 1581, and was lodged in the accommodation unflatteringly allocated to ‘Turks and Muscovites’, who were evidently treated on the same footing.
The Emperor Rudolph received Shevrigin on 10 January 1581, but showed no interest at all in his proposals for an alliance against the Turks and for the improvement of trade, nor in the timber of sables offered to him as a gift. The fate of Livonia was in the hands of the Imperial Diet, Shevrigin was told, and he was treated in Prague much as the foreign envoys were treated in Moscow, left in isolation. His request for a passport to Venice was promptly granted if only to get rid of him. The Russian party arrived in the Adriatic on 13 February 1581.
In contrast with his reception in Prague, the Venetian regents received the Russian courier with great pomp and ceremony, and showed him everything, including their formidable naval armament. But alas they did not know that Shevrigin's letter of credentials to them from the Tsar, solemnly read aloud, was a forgery. Since he had no credentials to present to the Serenissima, Shevrigin, with admirable presence of mind, had composed a message from the Tsar in his own hand, and added the seal taken off a letter to the Elector of Saxony to make it convincing. In the letter, he had called himself ‘ambassador’ not courier, hence the ceremonial treatment he received in Venice (and later in Rome) as distinct from Prague. The episode is explained by the fact that Ivan at this time had no idea that Venice was an independent republic, and believed that the Serenissima was a mere province belonging to the popes, while the Office of Foreign Affairs in Moscow had no idea of the correct form of address to use to the Doge.34
Shevrigin, having dropped a few hints about how welcome trade with Venice would be in Moscow, now made tracks for Rome where he arrived on 24 February 1581. Here too he was received with great public ceremony and escorted to the Palazzo Colonna, where he was to reside, and lavishly entertained. Presumably because of the difficulty over religion, the Pope granted the envoy only a private audience, on 26 February, when Shevrigin kissed the Pope's slipper, and on his knees read out the letter from Ivan. This was couched in Ivan's usual terms, in which he described Bathory as no better than a Moslem and the creature of the Sultan. The Pope set up a commission to study Shevrigin's letter which conveyed the Russian perspective on the military situation in the east, and by implication, the Russian need for peace, and requested the Pope to send an ambassador to Moscow to discuss military operations against the Ottoman Empire and a truce between the Commonwealth and Russia. Needless to say, the Poles used their influence in Rome to counter the Russian proposals. But the Pope decided to allow discussion with Ivan on matters of religion and only afterwards to discuss possible military cooperation against the Turks.35
The Pope appointed Antonio Possevino as his ambassador.36 Possevino was a highly regarded Jesuit, experienced in international negotiations, notably in Sweden, where he had succeeded in converting John III to Catholicism. He was an able champion of the Counter Reformation, and before his departure for Russia he immediately embarked on a thorough study of all the known literature on Muscovy, notably Herberstein, Giovio, Cobenzl, whom Possevino met later in Graz and questioned about Russia; perhaps also Prinz von Buchau, and also perhaps Schlichting, a copy of whose Brief Account was now available in the Vatican in Latin.37
In the instruction prepared for Possevino, the Pope offered to negotiate a peace between Ivan and Stephen Bathory which would lead on to the alliance against the Ottomans Ivan was so keen on. But for it to be solid, it had to be agreed upon within the bounds of the Church, which alone held the key to union, the Roman Catholic Church. Let the Tsar read the decrees of the council of Florence, let him send new ambassadors to the Pope. Shevrigin could also give a positive papal reply to the Russian proposals for commercial relations between Venice and Moscow, but the ultimate aim was a crusade against the Turks and the Union of the Churches. On 27 March 1581, Shevrigin left Rome on his return journey to Russia, accompanied by Possevino.
In the interval Ivan had not only been engaged with public concerns. In the course of 1576/7, his tsaritsa, Anna Vasil'chikova, had died, and in 1578/9, he had embarked on his sixth ‘marriage’, this time with a reputedly very handsome widow of modest rank, Vasilisa Melent'eva, possibly the widow of a d'iak who had served in Livonia.38 One authority, R.G. Skrynnikov, has stated categorically that Ivan never chose a bride because he was attracted to her but that his marriages were all negotiated by powerful boyar interests at court. The one exception he admits is Vasilisa, who was reputed to be very presentable and handsome, uriadna and krasna, ‘such as you do not find among the girls, brought in for the Tsar to look at’. The marriage did not last long, for Vasilisa died the following year ‘of her own death’.39 But it coincided with the period of Ivan's greatest military successes. As usual, without mourning Vasilisa for long, the Tsar ‘married’ as his seventh wife, on 6 September 1580, Maria Fedorovna Nagaia, the niece of Afanasii Fedorovich Nagoi, who had played a prominent part in Ivan’ s counsels ever since his return from the Crimea. By this match Nagoi increased still more his weight in the boyar councils within Ivan's court. In the same year, Ivan Ivanovich, who had already been compelled to divorce two wives, chose and married a third, Elena Federovna Sheremeteva.40
Meanwhile Possevino and the courier Shevrigin advanced on Venice, where they were received by the Doge and the Council of Ten. Possevino expanded on the papal policy of war against the Porte, which met with no response from the Venetians, who had no wish to compromise their lucrative trade with the East. Shevrigin was limited to his written instructions which dealt only with trade. After a brief stay in Prague, where the Emperor Rudolph treated the mission with complete indifference, the two diplomats parted company, Possevino proceeding to Poland and Shevrigin, again avoiding the Commonwealth, travelling home by sea through Lübeck. Shevrigin was an extremely uncongenial companion for the erudite Jesuit. He was after all an uneducated man, with a certain peasant shrewdness about money, lacking all artistic susceptibility, indifferent to the glories of Rome, and according to Possevino mainly concerned with making a good bargain in the sale of the goods he had brought with him.
Stephen Bathory accepted without demur the offer of the mediation of the Pope. He had previously been sounded by the nuncio in Poland on the creation of a vast anti-Turkish coalition and showed no enthusiasm for the present plan to include Russia in the alliance. His main aim at the time was to obtain the whole of Livonia for his new kingdom (which he hoped one day to make hereditary). He provided the necessary passports for Possevino, though he had many reservations about the sudden enthusiasm of Pope Gregory XIII for Ivan IV. By the beginning of June Possevino was in Warsaw, making contacts with the Queen of Poland, Anna Jagiellonka, with the Chancellor, Jan Zamoyski and with every influential person, and then proceeded to Vilna where Bathory had his headquarters.41
It was a time when all kinds of strange rumours about Ivan's camp were swirling around Poland, to the effect that Ivan's sons were in open disagreement on policy with their father; even Fedor Ivanovich was said to have parted company with him. A nephew of Maliuta Skuratov, Daniil Bel'sky, fled to Lithuania. Prince I.F. Mstislavsky was once again disgraced, and forced to swear publicly, with his two sons, that he would not flee to Lithuania and that he would not surrender Russian towns. It was precisely these kinds of rumours which encouraged Stephen Bathory to embark on a new campaign and to refuse any concessions to Ivan. The Tsar, meanwhile, was gradually climbing down, agreeing to hand over the whole of Livonia, if only he could keep Narva and receive back Velikie Luki and a few other towns, and trying to persuade Bathory not to carry the war deeper into Russian territory.42
The King received Possevino on 17 June in Vilna43 and, already inclined to favour the Jesuits, he was won over by the obvious openness of Possevino and, particularly, by his assurances that the Pope would always incline more to a devout Catholic than to a dissident ruler with a doubful reputation. Both parties agreed to wait for the return of the envoys whom Bathory had sent to Russia recently, with his final terms. Possevino would accompany the King to Disna, a fort on the junction of the river of the same name with the Dvina, and await Ivan's reply there. The journey took nine days, during which the King, his Chancellor, Zamoyski, and the priest confirmed the extent of their agreement on most issues, and Possevino showed the papal brief to the King. In turn Bathory, the soldier, gave some very sensible advice to Possevino to the effect that Ivan would never embark on a war against the Ottoman Turks, because the distances were too great and the terrain too difficult.44
Bathory's terms were now the cession of the whole of Livonia, a substantial monetary contribution, and the destruction of a few Russian border forts.45 Ivan, through his envoys, rejected them outright. When they arrived at Disna Possevino called on the Russian envoys, where they had camped outside the Polish fort with their escort of 200 men, but they only repeated that they were bound by their written instructions. Asked why they had changed their replies, they answered: ‘A new testament replaces an old one.’ To all intents and purposes the talks broke down, since the Russian envoys were not authorized to negotiate, so Possevino prepared to leave for Moscow, for which passports had already been requested.
Meanwhile the two sovereigns took the opportunity to indulge in one more ill-tempered exchange of insults and name-calling, initiated by Ivan, on 29 June 1581. Writing as a ruler by the grace of God, and not ‘elected by a noisy assembly of men’, Ivan reminded Bathory of his past concessions and contrasted them with Bathory's utter refusal to yield any ground, in fact to negotiate; he reproached him with behaving in an unchristian manner, rejecting solutions agreed upon so that Christian blood should not be shed. Asking for indemnities, declared Ivan, was a Moslem custom, not practised between equal Christian sovereigns, even Moslems did not impose them on each other. Bathory negotiated like a Moslem, leaving no time even for Russian envoys to arrive. Bathory had broken the sworn promises to previous ambassadors, which his predecessors had made (all listed by name, going back to the days of Ol'gerd and Jagiello); he had taken Russian traitors such as Kurbsky into his service; he had seized Ivan's city of Polotsk by treachery. The Tsar accused the Commonwealth troops, with some justice, of committing atrocities on the battlefield, of disembowelling the most noble and removing their fat and bile (zhel'ch) like dogs, as though to use it for witchcraft. It was not for Christians to rejoice in blood and killing, and behave like barbarians.46
Polish arrogance seemed particularly to have outraged Ivan, and he continued to inveigh against Bathory for thirty-two printed pages.47 The most interesting aspect of this particular missive is that Ivan is already refuting the arguments that might be put to him on the Union of Churches, as though afraid of what the mediation of the Pope might produce. He states that ‘the popes and all Romans and Latins declare that the Latin and Greek faiths are the same’ as has been enacted at the Council of Florence, when Isidore was there as Metropolitan. If the Pope agrees, then there is no need for conflict between us – and presumably no need for papal supremacy, which was the sticking point.48
Bathory's reply, written by his Chancellor and confidant, Jan Zamoyski, was the most insulting letter the Tsar ever received. Zamoyski spent a week on it, and arranged to distribute it widely in Europe.49 He answered Ivan's letter point by point, mocking his so-called descent from Roman emperors from east or west, and proclaimed it useless to argue with ‘someone who did not know the laws of Christian countries, only his own wild and savage ones’. Ivan was, if anything, descended from the Greek tyrant ‘Fiest’ (Thyestes who was served his own roasted children by his brother Atreus at a banquet); Ivan had destroyed not just two children but a whole city, Novgorod, and could be compared with Cain, Pharaoh and Herod. Not only was he cruel, he was a coward, and concluded Zamoyski, ‘The poor hen, faced with the falcon and the eagle covers her chick with her wings, while you, two-headed eagle, hide yourself.’ He looked on the Tsar as Satan, the Prince of Darkness.50 And how dared he reproach Bathory with being a Turkish vassal, he who had ‘mixed his blood with that of Islam [a reference to the Tsar's wife, Maria Temriukovna], whose ancestors had licked mare's milk on the manes’ of Tatar horses, and served as mounting blocks for the khans of Crimea when they bestrode their horses!’ And Bathory repeated his dramatic call to decide the issue by single combat between himself and the Tsar. ‘If you refuse, you will prove that there is no truth in you, no royal, no manly dignity, not even that of a woman.’51
More and more convinced of Russian weakness, Stephen Bathory launched his third campaign against Russia on 20 June 1581, from Vilna, at a time when Ivan had to divert troops to defend himself against a Nogay attack. The Polish King's target now was the important and extremely well fortified city of Pskov, described admiringly by the King's secretary as: ‘A big city, it is like Paris.’52 He had an army of some 47,000 including German and Hungarian mercenaries, while the garrison of Pskov consisted of some 6,000 harquebusiers and 3,000 cavalry, and its walls extended for nine kilometers with forty towers. It was defended by Prince I.P. Shuisky, whose father, Prince P.I. Shuisky, a distinguished general, had been killed in action in 1564 at the battle of the River Ula.
Meanwhile on 21 July 1581, Possevino and his party of twelve left the Polish camp and started out on the difficult journey to Staritsa where Ivan was residing, passing through Smolensk, where Possevino had to avoid being manoeuvred into attending an Orthodox church service, though he was allowed to visit churches and monasteries.53 He was met in Staritsa with the usual ceremony and the gift of a splendid black horse, and his audience was fixed for 20 August. Escorted by service gentry in cloth of gold, courtiers and large numbers of troops, Possevino was received by Ivan sitting on a throne two feet above the ground, wearing a gold tunic artistically interwoven with jewels, rings, a silver sceptre, necklaces, one with a cross two-foot-long. On his head was a glittering jewelled tiara, somewhat larger than the one worn by the Pope. The papal gifts were then produced. They were in good taste, including a rock-crystal cross inlaid with gold and containing a splinter of the True Cross – but less apposite was a beautifully bound volume of the decisions of the Council of Florence in Greek, which Possevino thought no one at the court could read. There was also a gift for the Tsaritsa Anastasia Romanovna, since no one in Rome knew she had died long ago, and that Ivan was now on his seventh wife.
