Ivan the Terrible (54 page)

The generals who had been victorious in summer 1572 over the
hordes of Devlet Girey did not enjoy their status for long. Vorotynsky and Odoevsky were sent south to man the frontier on the banks of the Oka river against a possible resurgence of the Crimean army. It did not come but in May or June 1573 the two generals together with a third distinguished military figure, the boyar Mikhail I. Morozov, were executed in mysterious circumstances. Vorotynsky had had a chequered history: not only had he already once been disgraced in 1562 and lost his ancient appanage lands on the Lithuanian border (though he was granted different lands when he returned to favour in 1566)
¹³
but he had also been one of the princes involved in the mysterious episode of the letters allegedly written to Sigismund Augustus, in 1567, coinciding with the treasonable plot attributed to Ivan Fedorov, letters which the Tsar had possibly drafted himself in the name of his boyars.
¹⁴
Though he had been mainly responsible for the decisive Russian victory over the Crimeans in 1572, Ivan clearly did not trust Vorotynsky, and perhaps did not like him. His appanage had provided him with an income but also with a substantial retinue of service gentry. He was apparently an imposing figure and a respected military commander, responsible for devising the efficient system of frontier guards which protected the Russian borders against deserters and immigrants. After his great victory, Ivan restored to him the title of
sluga
or servant of the Tsar which he had borne as had Ivan Petrovich Fedorov in his time, and he became leader of the Boyar Council, while Mstislavsky was temporarily discredited for having admitted to betraying Russia to the Crimeans in 1571.
¹⁵

Some time in spring 1573 the three commanders were arrested. Morozov was executed at once in Moscow together with his wife and two sons.
¹⁶
Kurbsky, writing in the 1570s, states that a servant of Vorotynsky's had denounced his master to Ivan, saying that he wanted to bewitch the Tsar and accusing him of procuring whispering women to cast a spell over him.
¹⁷
Vorotynsky had replied with dignity: ‘I have not learned, oh Tsar, nor have I received the custom from my ancestors, to practise magic and to believe in devilry.’ Whereupon he was tied to stakes, and roasted between two slow fires, then after this lengthy ordeal in which Ivan himself is said to have taken part, he was removed to the prison in the monastery of Beloozero, expiring on the way. Odoevsky was tortured in a different but equally horrible way and died at once. V. Veselovsky suggests that they were charged with some offence againstmilitary directives.
¹⁸
Other reports suggest that they had been in touch with the Crimeans in order to betray Russia. And there is evidence of a constant flood of denunciations from servants or bondsmen, obtained
under torture directed by Ivan himself, charging these three distinguished warriors against the Crimean Tatars with having secretly indicated to the enemy the way to elude the Russian troops. That the denunciations were made after Ivan had already executed his generals did not deter the Tsar from pursuing his inquiries.

Kurbsky states that Ivan was moved by the desire to abolish the appanages and confiscate the wealth of these boyars, and this seems the most probable explanation for these executions though not for the cruel forms they took. They may well have been connected with Ivan's ultimate policy of eliminating any trace of ‘appanage’ holdings, particularly on the Lithuanian border. Bel'sky's appanage had been confiscated when he had attempted to flee to Lithuania in 1562 but he had been saved by the intervention of Metropolitan Makarii, and by a substantial collective surety. When he died, with all his family, in the fire in Moscow all his lands were escheated to the Crown. The far wealthier Mstislavsky was persuaded – or perhaps volunteered – to be put forward as the scapegoat for the defeat of the Russian army by the Crimeans in 1571. The collective guarantees for him were signed by the whole of the Holy
Sobor
, and 274 service gentry of various ranks. At any rate Mstislavsky did not suffer for his intrepidity which was widely known.
¹⁹

However there is another element to this mysterious incident. For some time Dr Eliseus Bomelius had been acquiring a great influence over the Tsar. Kurbsky follows his account of the death of Vorotynsky with a diatribe against the practice of magic in the Tsar's family, going back to his father Vasily III and that ‘law-breaking wife of his [Elena Glinskaia]’ who sought wicked magicians everywhere to render them fertile, sending hither and thither for sorceresses, to Finland and among the wild Lapps, and he condemns this sinful behaviour, for ‘there are no spells without denial of God and without agreement with the devil’.
²⁰
By coincidence, it was on 11 November 1572 that a brilliant star, a supernova, suddenly appeared in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and sent the whole world of astrologers rushing for their stargazing instruments. The star was visible in London to John Dee and in Denmark to Tycho Brahe, and no doubt in darkest Russia it would shine with great brilliance. Bomelius was, of course, an astrologer and he would be asked to interpret the meaning of this apparition for a public which believed in magic and witchcraft.

The references to witchcraft might be regarded as inventions of the prejudiced Kurbsky were there not other sources which mention the extent of the influence of Bomelius on Ivan and the prevalence of rumours of sorcery at court. Horsey calls Bomelius a ‘cozening imposter, doctor of
physic in England, a rare mathematician, magician’; Ivan had inquired of him ‘What years Queen Elizabeth was of, what likely of success there might be if he should be a suitor unto her for himself.’ He was ‘much disheartened because he had two wives living … but presently puts his last wife into a nunnery to live there as dead to the world’.
²¹

Horsey is slapdash and haphazard; he confuses dates and often fantasizes. Yet there is usually a kernel of truth in what he reports and these words may have some truth in them. It is generally assumed that Ivan never aspired to the hand of Elizabeth herself but only – and that was in the 1580s – to the hand of a relative of hers. Yet there are obscure references in the reports of Anthony Jenkinson in the 1560s to the intensely secret matters (see above, Chapter XVI, p. 273) he was reporting on, which may possibly have included a marriage proposal to Elizabeth herself at a time when Ivan was actually a widower. After all, Ivan ‘magnified himself, his person, his wisdom, greatness and riches above all other princes’, why should he not, like Erik XIV of Sweden in his time, offer for the hand of the sole reigning queen in Europe? This is a much more convincing secret matter than an alliance or an offer of mutual refuge in each other's country in the event of risings against them. And in October 1572 Ivan had got rid of his new wife, Anna Koltovskaia, by sending her to a convent, as Horsey reports.

Both the Tsar and the magnates of the Commonwealth had had time to reflect on the problems which might arise as a result of the death of Sigismund Augustus. The Lithuanian magnates still favoured Tsarevich Fedor, but some of them feared that the Polish nobility might make their own independent approach to Ivan himself. The various groups in the Commonwealth were divided not only by social and religious background, but by the future status of the Ukrainian lands which Sigismund Augustus had ceded from Lithuania to Poland in 1569, and which the Lithuanians wished to recover. Much of the manoeuvring was carried out in secrecy, because under the terms of the Union of Lublin, election to the Lithuanian grand princely throne implied a future election to the royal Polish throne.

Ivan reacted cautiously at first, fearful that election to one throne only might lead to war, but he expressed the desire to continue the talks.
²²
Whereupon towards the end of February 1573 a new Lithuanian embassy, led by M. Haraburda, arrived in Novgorod in response to the Tsar's request, with a safe conduct from Ivan. The Lithuanian magnates, well informed about Ivan's activities in Russia through their diplomatic connexions, constant contacts with Russian émigrés, notably Kurbsky, and the extensive range of pamphlets and broadsheets published in
Germany on the sufferings of the Livonians (and the Russians), were horrified at the thought of a tyrant like Ivan on the throne of Lithuania. It is around this time that Kurbsky's
History of the Grand Prince of Moscow
was written, as part of the prince's own campaign against Ivan.
²³
The Lithuanian magnates now decided to propose that Tsarevich Fedor should be immediately adopted as heir and should occupy the Lithuanian throne (the Union of Lublin was frequently disregarded at this time); the Tsar himself and both his sons should swear, in writing, to observe the Lithuanian liberties and a perpetual peace should be signed between the two powers to secure which the Russians would have to cede Novgorod and return Polotsk and Smolensk and a few other places to Lithuania. The Tsar should endow the future King of the Commonwealth with a suitable number of goodly properties, and the future Russian ruler of Lithuania would also have to convert to Catholicism.

In talks with the Tsar the suggestion of a separate election to the grand princely throne was dropped, but Haraburda underlined the difficulties that would face Ivan as ruler of both Russia and the Commonwealth. He would need to travel constantly between them; justice would be suspended in the Commonwealth for long periods, since courts could not sit in the absence of the King; treason might break out behind his back when Ivan was out of Russia, and it would be difficult for him to hold on to distant lands like Kazan' and Astrakhan'. And in any case he could not be crowned until he had been converted to Catholicism. Hence the best Russian candidate would be Tsarevich Fedor whose absence from Russia would not affect its government.

The Lithuanians clearly conceived that the projected union between Lithuania and Russia would endow Russia with lands (i.e., the whole Grand Principality of Lithuania) for which Lithuania should be compensated with lands ceded by Russia. They were in fact ultimately striving to avoid the union of the two crowns under one effective ruler and believed that they had ensured it by the choice of the inadequate Fedor, who at that time was in any case only sixteen (b. 1557).
²⁴
There does not seem to have been any very intensive discussion of the nature of the political union between the two powers which would inevitably follow on the choice of a ruling sovereign, like Ivan, and a neighbour at that, as King of Poland–Lithuania, a problem which would not arise in the case of mere princes like the Archduke Ernst of Habsburg or Henri de Valois, whose name had now entered the lists, or indeed of Tsarevich Fedor of Russia. Haraburda again succeeded in negotiating a further prolongation of the truce between the two powers, which suited Ivan
who was still energetically pursuing his vendetta against John III of Sweden.
²⁵

But these conditions put forward by Haraburda, speaking for the Lithuanian magnates, came as a shock to the Tsar.
²⁶
In reply, he declared that he saw no point in reducing the lands of what was to become his own Crown by ceding Russian lands to himself as the new King of Poland–Lithuania, particularly if the Commonwealth might not continue to belong to his dynasty, or be joined with Russia in an elective monarchy. In any case Fedor was too young to reign alone and Ivan did not propose to let him go. In one of his fits of arrogance, Ivan declared:

Reverting to one of his ancient grievances Ivan continued: ‘if the lords of the council in the Commonwealth want our friendship let them first of all write out our Tsarish title in full, because we have inherited this title from our ancestors, and did not take it from strangers’. Ivan now insisted again that if Fedor should die and leave heirs they should inherit Lithuania and Poland, and if Fedor did not have children, Poland and Lithuania should remain with his, Ivan's, dynasty – in this running counter to one of the basic tenets of the Polish-Lithuanian constitution, namely the right to elect their King. As regards a perpetual peace between the two realms, it could be arranged on the following conditions: Polotsk and its surroundings and Courland would go to Lithuania, and Livonia, including Riga, to Moscow, with the frontier on the Dvina.
²⁷

Should the Commonwealth elect the son of the Holy Roman Emperor, continued Ivan, we are prepared to live with him as with our son Fedor. But I know, Ivan told the Lithuanian envoy Haraburda, that some in Poland wish me to be King. Haraburda again pointed out the difficulties of journeying from country to country, and the problems of joint defence. On the next day, the Tsar repeated that he would like to reign over all three states, spending some time in each of them. The
Commonwealth would have to accept the titulature proposed by Ivan, namely first the kingdom (
korolevstvo
) of Moscow, then the crown of Poland and the Grand Principality of Lithuania which would stand as one and defend themselves against all enemies; and Kiev was to be ceded to Russia and be added to the Tsarist titulature, in the correct place, before Vladimir.
²⁸
As ruler, Ivan would be called ‘by the grace of God, Lord, Tsar and Grand Prince Ivan Vasil'evich of all Rus’ and of Kiev, Vladimir, Moscow, King of Poland and Grand Prince of Lithuania, Grand Prince of Russia, of Great Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan', and Astrakhan', followed by a list of the Russian, Polish and Lithuanian provinces (
oblasti
) according to their seniority, and Polotsk and Courland would be joined to Lithuania, while Livonia would go to Russia. There was also the ticklish problem of precedence should Tsarevich Fedor be elected to the throne of the Commonwealth. Where would he stand in relation to his father the Tsar of Russia? Who would take precedence?