Ivan the Terrible (43 page)

‘You wrote’, continues Ivan/Vorotynsky to Chodkewicz,

Yet later in his letter addressed to the Hetman, Ivan/Vorotynsky, rounds on Chodkewicz, that son of a dishonourable mother, pouring out venom like a scorpion for his devilish and apostate opinions, and declaims against ‘what he [Chodkewicz] had written about the division of Russia into an
oprichnina
and a
zemshchina
in his devilish letter’ which shows that

Ivan continues in this strain, at times almost dropping the pretence that he is writing in the name of Vorotynsky, and getting more and more excited at the children of dogs, who do not understand what they say. ‘You mentioned the favours bestowed on Andrei Kurbsky’, he continues, ‘a cur, like you … but if he had any sense your lord would not reward such a criminal and traitor. No wonder that having betrayed his master, and fled from the gallows, he came to your feeble-witted lord.’ He concludes his diatribe:

The replies from Fedorov to Sigismund and to Chodkewicz are much shorter and so restrained in tone that Skrynnikov, for instance, thinks that Ivan played no part in their composition.
⁴³
It is probable that they really were written by Fedorov, rather than by Ivan, or that the Tsar played a minor part in their composition. In the letter to Sigismund Fedorov points out that he is an old man, and will be no use to the King as a soldier; his legs are too weak to enable him to conduct girls to Sigismund's bedchamber, and he does not know how to play the clown. What use is Sigismund's offer to an old man like him? There are no references to religion or quotations from the Bible in Fedorov's letter which is the last of the series and is dated 6 August from Polotsk. Similarly Fedorov's letter to Chodkewicz is much more sober in character; he reproaches him for attempting to seduce Fedorov from his allegiance to Ivan, calls him ‘brother’ and ‘Lord Grigorii’, though he does use the typical Ivanian insulting language (cur, pouring out your poison like a snake). In general Fedorov speaks a little wearily about his relations with the Tsar over his lands, and warns Chodkewicz against indulging in treason in his old age. Thus unlike the other letters, Fedorov's are so normal and reasonable, so likely to be his, that they do make one believe in the possibility of the existence of a conspiracy.

It is odd that Ivan should have included an accusation levelled against him of cruelty to his nobles in the letter allegedly written by Vorotynsky to Chodkewicz, and particularly odd that he should have mentioned the
oprichnina
and the
zemshchina
seeing that he was very anxious to conceal their very existence from the Lithuanians and gave instructions to Russian envoys to Lithuania accordingly.
⁴⁴
The whole episode of the letters from the boyars is very difficult to interpret, but the possibility that there really was a ‘reverse’ conspiracy may explain why the letters were never sent to Sigismund, and may be the reason for the more restrained tone of Fedorov's letters. If the four boyars had really cooperated with Ivan in writing these letters to Sigismund, then it must have been with the intention of making clear to the Polish ruler that they did not intend to take up his apparent offers and to desert the Tsar and go over to Sigismund. If this was so it was a factor to be taken into account by all parties, Sigismund, Ivan and the boyars.
⁴⁵

Ivan's increasing disquiet emerges in a conversation with Anthony Jenkinson. The latter had returned to England, probably in October 1566, to obtain new privileges for the Russia Company and to present a request from Ivan to procure ‘for our owne vse Saphires, Rubies and apperellinge … freely to buy and export any other goods’, by which Ivan probably meant armaments, and to allow his merchants to trade free of customs dues in England – as the English traded in Russia.
⁴⁶
Jenkinson sailed again for Russia in May 1567.

Granted a very private audience on 1 September 1567, Jenkinson was taken along most secret ways in the Oprichnina Palace in Moscow, led by Ivan himself. Only one of the Tsar's advisers, Prince A.D. Viazemsky, knew of the meeting and Jenkinson brought an interpreter. Ivan ‘familiarly discoursed our meanynge unto him in such sorte that we have vsed the like familiarytye with none’.
⁴⁷
On his return to England in November 1567 Jenkinson wrote an account of this meeting, and included an explicit message from Ivan to Queen Elizabeth, in which the Tsar proclaimed his fervent desire for a perpetual friendship between their two countries, and warned her that the King of Poland was not her friend. He also told her that a Polish-Lithuanian spy had been seized (evidently Kozlov) bearing letters from Sigismund to the English merchants in Russia, urging them to assist both the Lithuanian agent, and such Russians as might declare their support for Sigismund, with money and other goods. Kozlov had admitted his treachery when he was seized and tortured to make him confess.
⁴⁸

The most secret part of Ivan's communication was an unexpected and unusual request from the Tsar for asylum in England in the event of a rising against him in Russia, and his offer to assist Elizabeth in his turn should she need a refuge against her unruly people. According to Jenkinson, Ivan urged Elizabeth ‘that yf any misfortune might fall or chance upon ether of them to goe out of their countries, that it might be lawfull to ether of them to come into the others countrey for the safegard of them selves and their lyves. And this to be kept most seacret.’
⁴⁹
One may wonder if Ivan had already received news from his embassy in Stockholm about Erik's request for asylum in Russia, for fear of his boyars.
⁵⁰

It was to his request for asylum that Ivan attached great secrecy, rather than to his express desire for a full scale offensive and defensive alliance between the two powers, which he also put forward, and which was not in itself startling, even if it was unwelcome to Elizabeth. He also wanted England to provide him with shipbuilders to build seagoing ships. For the time being, though Elizabeth was prodigal with general expressions
of goodwill towards Ivan, she attempted to evade any commitment and constantly denied to all and sundry that she supplied Russia with armaments.

Ivan made no mention to Jenkinson of the letters Sigismund was supposed to have written to the Russian boyars or of their supposed replies. He portrayed Sigismund's alleged tampering with the English merchants as a provocation (though he does not use the word) intended to create bad blood between him and the Queen and to make him believe that his nobles were betraying him.

There is no evidence, aside from Ivan's message to Elizabeth, through Jenkinson, that Sigismund had made any approach to the English community in Russia.
⁵¹
But Ivan clearly took the threat of internal disorder seriously. In the event rumours do seem to have spread within the country both as regards his intention of taking the cowl and about the possibility of his abdication in favour of his sons, even about his request for asylum in England, thus creating a climate favourable to an attempt by the aristocracy to dethrone him in favour of Vladimir of Staritsa

Discontent in Russia was now evidently rampant. The atrocities Ivan had inflicted on the aristocracy and the service gentry after the manifestation in July 1566 were compounded by the continuing turbulence in the countryside provoked by the activities of the
oprichnina
, the constant changes of landowners, moving some to the
oprichnina
, and some out of it. It is hard to imagine the impact this sizeable migration of landowners, with their families and belongings, from place to place must have had on the armed forces, the countryside and the peasantry. Kostroma was taken into the
oprichnina
in early February/March 1567. There were few princes, and approximately 745 service gentry who were born Muscovites. Yet, just as in Suzdal' some two-thirds of the landowners were moved out, leaving the land unoccupied and uncultivated, so in Kostroma about a third of them had to make way for
oprichniki
who were usually of baser birth.
⁵²
The costs of the Livonian war had been brought up at the Assembly of 1566, and those present agreed to sacrifice their lives and their property to pay for it. Taxes were increased, not only to pay for the expenses of the war but also for the costs of setting up the
oprichnina
, and for fortifying Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda, building the new
Oprichnina
Palace in Moscow and Ivan's bolthole in Vologda – all of which were to be borne entirely by the
zemshchina
⁵³
.

Military skirmishes continued meanwhile but Ivan decided to abandon the pen for the sword and made plans for a new and more
powerful campaign against Lithuania. On 20 September 1567 he left Moscow with his son Ivan, for the Trinity monastery and for the Western frontier.
⁵⁴
Vladimir of Staritsa joined the Tsar in Tver', and a large force under two of those same senior commanders who had allegedly received letters from Sigismund, namely Mstislavsky and Vorotynsky, but not Bel'sky who remained in charge of the
zemshchina
in Moscow, was due to foregather at Velikie Luki on 26 October, with the object of attacking the forts on the Western Dvina and moving on Riga.

It has been suggested that Ivan attempted a military solution, encouraged by the failure of Sigismund's – and by inference, Kurbsky's – efforts to win over the four boyars and by the boyars' letters ofrejection.
⁵⁵
Similarly, it is assumed that Sigismund had advanced his forces in order to cooperate with the Russian boyars who, he expected, would declare for him. He halted however at Radoshkovichi, a town on the border between Russia and Poland–Lithuania.
⁵⁶

Sigismund was not in fact pressing for military operations in the autumn of 1567, for he was in the throes of very delicate domestic negotiations for a constitutional union between Poland and Lithuania which he had been pursuing for some time. The King had now reached the conclusion that a closer union with Poland was necessary for the survival of Lithuania, even if the magnates were opposed to it. Quite apart from the problem of the succession which might not have been so urgent – he was only forty-nine – the burden of the war was becoming too much for Lithuania to bear both in terms of manpower and of money, and it was becoming necessary to draw upon the superior financial and above all military resources of Poland. There were considerable differences between the political, military, social and financial structures of the two parts of Poland–Lithuania, which needed to be adapted to a new, joint constitutional order. For instance, the title of prince did not exist in Poland and the Lithuanian Gediminovich princes and imperial princes like the Radziwills wanted a guarantee that their titles would survive in a new regime. At the time the great Lithuanian magnates like the Radziwills exercised far more power than their opposite numbers in Poland. They were therefore less attracted to union than the Poles, for in Poland the numerous lower nobility or gentry were in a stronger political position
vis à vis
the magnates through the Sejm and the local dietines, than their opposite numbers in Lithuania, where the only brake on royal power was the Senate, composed of the landowning magnates.

The question of religion was also divisive. The Lithuanian magnates were often Orthodox, but some, like the Radziwills, were Calvinists; the Poles were mainly Catholic, the towns often Lutheran. In addition, whether Livonia was to belong to Lithuania alone, or to both parties had also to be decided.
¹
The period of waiting in Radoshkovichi was used by the King of Poland to air and discuss the many issues which divided
Poles and Lithuanians. The Grand Principality was now faced with war in the South, against the Crimeans, and against Sweden as well as Russia in Livonia. Sigismund proceeded to render the union easier for the Poles by abandoning his hereditary claim to the Grand Principality of Lithuania, which would make the succession elective as it was in Poland, and by ceding to the Crown of Poland the Lithuanian held ex-Kievan lands of Podolia and Volhynia (whence many of the great magnates came) and the palatinate of Kiev, thus depriving Lithuania of nearly half its lands. Lithuania's need for subsidies and military help, and the willingness of Poland to provide it if its political terms were met, brought the two sides together, in spite of the objections of the Lithuanian magnates.