Ivan the Terrible (30 page)

The 1560s saw indeed a ‘great persecution’, as Kurbsky put it, an explosion of dissipation accompanied by intermittent bouts of cruelty and injustice, as though Ivan had been suddenly released from the immense pressure brought to bear on him by the moralizing of Sylvester and the example of the good life led by the angelic Adashev. The ‘evilinspired flatterers’ (the Iur'ev Zakhar'ins), according to Kurbsky, pointed out to the Tsar that he had been held in chains by Sylvester and Adashev, who had ruled him, telling him what to eat and drink and ‘how to live with his Tsaritsa’.
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The Tsar danced with his friends, wearing masks (a practice forbidden by the Church) and attended by
skomorokhi
,
the disreputable wandering clowns, minstrels and jugglers who entertained the lower orders.
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This too horrified the older and more conservative boyars. Prince Dmitri Obolensky Ovchinin was killed for an incautious word; he reproached Fedor Basmanov, the Tsar's new catamite: ‘we serve the Tsar in useful ways, and you in your filthy sodomitical affairs’. Basmanov complained to Ivan, who first emptied a boiling hot dish all over Obolensky Ovchinin, and then stabbed him.
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To what extent did this violent outburst, almost a change of character, arise from the psychological shock of the actual death of Ivan's wife, even if she had clearly been dying for some time? It is not merely a question of the loss of someone he may, or may not, have loved, but of someone who belonged to him, who was his. It surely led also to a renewed sense of his vulnerability, the fear induced in him by what he saw as a successful attack on someone close to him, by someone close to him, probably by means of witchcraft.

In early 1562, Prince I.D. Bel'sky, the extremely well-connected Gediminovich prince, and close relative of the Tsar's family, attempted to flee to Lithuania. He was placed under house arrest and two of his military servitors were executed. But his disgrace did not last long, and he was forced to give a collective surety bond by which the guarantors, six boyars and 119 service gentry from various parts of the country, agreed to pay ten thousand rubles should he attempt to flee again. Bel'sky himself had to swear a fresh oath of loyalty.
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By spreading the financial responsibility down into the ranks of the service gentry, Ivan was ensuring that they would keep a sharp eye on any indications of Bel'sky's disloyalty. In any case the Prince was soon released, though the guarantee continued in operation.
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The next to suffer were the two Vorotynsky brothers, Mikhail Ivanovich, the most distinguished and high ranking of Ivan's generals, who had been awarded the title of ‘
sluga
(servant) and boyar’ for his services in the conquest of Kazan', and Alexander. Mikhail was a strong, brave and very skilled general, according to Kurbsky, and the brothers were among the few survivors of the small group of ‘Upper Oka princes’ whose estates, bordering on Lithuania, were closer to appanage principalities than to those of service princes. In the summer of 1562 they had been entrusted with the defence of the Oka line at Serpukhov against the Crimean Tatars, but had been unable to force a battle on them. Serpukhov was not far from their own appanage at Vorotynsk, and as princes they had their own retinue of over one thousand men-at-arms and might therefore have seemed threatening to Ivan.
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Alexander was exiled to Galich in 1562 and made to sign a surety bond: eight
boyars, together with one hundred princes and service gentry put up fifteen thousand rubles; but the service gentry were of even lower category than those who had signed for Bel'sky, thus showing that Ivan was reaching out into even lower social classes to achieve control over the élite. Alexander brought a precedence suit before the Tsar which Ivan curtly brushed aside: ‘You deserve to stand below Prince Pronsky, and you should know your own value, and serve us according to our instructions.’ Alexander may have found this too humiliating for he soon took the cowl and died.
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Mikhail Vorotynsky, the hero of Kazan', suffered a different fate, which suggests that Ivan was still keeping some sort of control over himself and also provides an interesting sidelight on exile to a monastery. He was sent to the monastery prison of Beloozero in 1562, with his wife and two of his children, and some of the circumstances of his detention are illustrated in a report from the
pristavy
or guards who were set over him in the monastery. He was granted an annual subsistence allowance from March to March, which evidently was not punctually paid. The total for the family and their twelve retainers was ninety-eight rubles twenty-seven altyn a year (fifty rubles for the princely family, forty-eight for the twelve retainers), plus a clothing allowance of twelve rubles per person for the princes with an additional fourteen rubles seventeen altyn for servants (two men and two women). But the Prince petitioned the Tsar, through his guards, at the end of the first year, asking for clothes and underwear for himself and his family, and also for tablecloths, as he had none left, and dishes and cauldrons, since those he had were worn through and he had nothing to buy new ones with, and also frying pans, dishes and wine bowls. He also needed a pail of Bastru,
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a pail of Romanee (Spanish wine) and one of Rhine wine, one hundred lemons, three
grivenki
of ginger, two fresh sturgeons, and two fresh sterlets due to him and which he had not received, together with half a
pud
of grapes, half a
pud
of raisins and three pails of cream, more lemons, wax, saffron, pepper, cloves, four fur coats and clothes, and lengths of taffeta and other silks, because the ‘young princess has outgrown her clothes’. We do not know whether Prince Mikhail ever received the arrears of the supplies he demanded, but that he should have had the confidence to ask for them shows that his exile was not so physically oppressive as one might have supposed.
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The list is also informative about the Russian aristocratic diet.

Another magnate, more clearly associated with Aleksei Adashev (his is the only name ever mentioned as forming part of Adashev's so-called government), was also disgraced, on 29 October 1562, namely Prince
Dmitri Ivanovich Kurliatev Obolensky, who was ordered to take the cowl together with his wife and two sons. Kurbsky, who regarded him as a man of integrity and good counsel, was outraged at the forcible tonsure, calling it an unheard of crime that a whole family should be forced in this way to become religious, even though forcible tonsure was not unknown in the case of individuals.
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While the Tsar busied himself with the further organization of his private life, the war in Livonia – which had so far been primarily a war between Russia and the Livonian Order – was spreading more widely and beginning to involve all the Baltic powers. Denmark, under its new king, Frederick II, was claiming the island of Oesel.

The various Baltic maritime powers were at this time deeply divided by their conflicting policies towards Russia. All of them wanted to control trade with Russia and to prevent the import of munitions of war by the Tsar through Narva, and indeed on English ships through the White Sea. The propaganda against such a dangerous trade was directed from the Hanseatic League and the remnants of Livonia, but all the Baltic powers were convinced that Russia could only wage war against them if she received substantial cargoes of armaments, munitions and food – even salt and herrings – to keep her armies supplied and her soldiers fed. Intense pressure was brought to bear by the Livonians and the Hansa through the Imperial Diet, and by Sigismund Augustus even on Queen Elizabeth, to curtail trade with Russia. All believed that armaments were somehow reaching Ivan IV, since in German opinion the Russians were quite incapable of providing their own.

The Emperor, now Ferdinand I, supported a ban, and Sigismund Augustus informed Elizabeth of England in 1560 that he would detain ships trading with Narva, because she was bound to know that the Russians were ‘enemies to all liberty under the heavens’ and if Ivan were provided with weapons at present unknown to him he would vanquish all other nations. Elizabeth well knew how cruel and powerful Ivan was, what tyranny he used on his subjects and ‘in what servile sort they be under him’. In fact it was the duty of all good Christians not to supply the Tsar with munitions. Elizabeth of course denied that she was supplying Ivan with arms, and if she did send any, it was probably not often and not much. For in fact the Russians did not need to import arms, and most of the ships captured in the trade with Narva were carrying exports from Russia, not imports to Russia. But the whole episode is an interesting example of the use of propaganda, influential to this day, devised in this case by Russia's commercial rivals to exclude her from direct trade with the West.
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The Grand Master of the Livonian Order appealed in vain for help to all those who might have an interest in perpetuating their control of the Baltic: the Holy Roman Emperor, the Hansa, Lübeck in particular, but all were more interested in obtaining their share of Livonia. On 28 November 1561 a convention was signed between Sigismund Augustus and Kettler dissolving the Order. Kettler converted to Protestantism and became Duke of Courland, as a vassal of Sigismund's, and considerable pressure was put – unsuccessfully – on the burghers of Riga to consent to the occupation of the city by Polish forces. The final treaty ratified in March 1562 between Sigismund and Kettler still excluded Riga from Polish control, and the Commonwealth was compelled to fight for this most important and strategic port.

Meanwhile, the twenty-year truce between Sweden and Russia was going to reduce the pressure on Russia considerably, since it left Ivan to face only Poland–Lithuania. In March 1562 the existing Russian truce with Sigismund Augustus ran out, and Ivan sent a force under I.V. Sheremetev and I.M. Vorontsov and a number of Tatar princes to carry out a destructive raid on the borders between Russia and Lithuania, while Prince A.M. Kurbsky undertook a raid on Vitebsk, thus carrying the war into Lithuanian territory. Ivan himself took part in May in an unsuccessful operation which had to be cut short to cope with an attack from the Crimean Tatars in the south, concerted with King Sigismund Augustus. In August 1562, Kurbsky was wounded in a battle which Ivan later reproached him with having failed to win, and Russian forces had to give up a number of previous conquests to the Lithuanians. In September 1562 the Tsar returned to Moscow. Hostilities broke out again with the seizure by the Lithuanian General Radziwill of the Livonian fort of Tarvast, later abandoned to Ivan and razed by him.

Ivan's concerns fluctuated at this time between keeping a watchful and repressive eye on possible defections, and pursuing his military objectives in attacks which were concentrated against Poland–Lithuania and which culminated in one of the greatest Russian successes of the war, the capture of the key city and centre of communications, the one time Riurikovich city of Polotsk, which controlled the western Dvina and the road to Riga. At the end of November 1562 the Tsar in person led a vast array, said to be of some 280,000 armed men and two hundred guns, accompanied as usual by his cousin Vladimir of Staritsa, by the two baptized Tatar
tsarevichi
Alexander and Simeon (described in the chronicles as the Tsar's brothers), and by four other Tatar
tsarevichi
(Ibak, Tokhtamysh, Bekbulat and Kaibula). Stopping on the way to batter a prince Ivan Shakhovskoy to death with a mace, Ivan laid siege
to Polotsk on 31 January 1563.
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After three weeks it capitulated.

For Ivan this was not only a major military success, it was also the recovery of a
votchina
which had belonged to his ancestors, a step on the road to the recovery of Kiev, and he now added ‘Polotsky’ to his title. During the campaign the Tsar's headquarters had been in the monastery of SS Boris and Gleb, near the town, and prayers had been offered to the princely martyrs of the old Kievan dynasty. It was also the recovery of a city for the Orthodox Church, and the freeing of the cathedral of St Sophia, the source of whose cult was located in Kiev.
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Ivan promised the citizens of Polotsk personal freedom and security of their property, but did not keep his promise. He seized the property of the prominent and rich people, dispatched the bishop, many important citizens and the
voevoda
to Moscow as prisoners, ordered the Latin churches to be pulled down and the Jews to be converted to Christianity or thrown into the River Dvina to drown. He spent several days celebrating the recovery of this ancient city of his ancestors, saved – as Karamzin puts it sardonically, by its early subordination to Lithuania – from the ravages of the Mongols.
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Russian accounts stress the welcome given to Ivan as the head of the Orthodox community by the many Orthodox Lithuanians. This overwhelming Russian victory led Sigismund, fearful of a Russian advance on Vilna, to negotiate through his councillors with the Russian boyars for a truce, which Ivan granted until the end of 1563; it also led to the successful conclusion of Russian talks for a truce with the Khan of Crimea.
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So pleased was Ivan with the conquest of Polotsk that on his return to Moscow he stopped in Staritsa to attend a splendid banquet arranged by Princess Evfrosin'ya, the mother of his cousin Vladimir, and to reward his cousin, and soon after he had the joy of hearing of the birth of a son, Vasily, to the Tsaritsa Maria; thus the events after the conquest of Kazan' were repeated. (Alas, the baby died on 3 May.) Ivan then went off on an extensive tour of the lands he had confiscated from the Vorotynsky princes, and then returned to what had become a favourite residence of his, namely Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda, in the district of Pereiaslavl'. This picturesque, wooded property on the banks of the River Sera had once been a hermitage and was supplied with an abundance of hares, bears and wolves.
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It had been the happy hunting ground of Grand Prince Vasily III, who had built a palace and a church, and used it as a hunting lodge.