Ivan the Terrible (58 page)

Diplomatic cooperation between the Tsar and the Emperor had been rendered more likely by the election of Henri to the throne of the Commonwealth, since it was known to all that France was allied in spirit with the Ottomans. The Porte, indeed, alerted to the Emperor's support of Russia, had been willing even to allow Henri of Valois to travel to Poland through Istanbul.
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After Henri's flight back to France, the Tsar and the Emperor again acted together (with the backing of the Lithuanian magnates, not the Poles). Pauli, whose actual status remains shrouded in mystery, returned to Vienna in summer 1573, while Ivan sent a courier, Skobel'tsyn, at the same time to Maximilian to confirm that ‘either our son will be in that land [Poland] or your son will be there’. In December 1574 Pauli carried a message from Maximilian to
Russia to prepare the way for a ‘great’ imperial embassy, and Ivan now began to prepare measures for the proposed alliance against the Porte by cultivating the Cossacks of the Dnieper River and urging them to ravage the Crimean lands adjoining them. Ivan's hand was strengthened by the appearance in Russia of the
voevoda
of Moldavia, Bogdan Aleksandrovich, exiled by the Turks. He was accompanied by a considerable armed force and a number of Danubian nobles. Ivan granted his kinsman a handsome appanage in Tarusa on the Oka.
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The next few months saw much coming and going of envoys to the Commonwealth until, in November 1575, the electoral
Sejm
began its sessions and listened to the various contendants: the imperial envoys, Count Hans Cobenzl and Daniel Prinz, stopping in Cracow on their way to Russia, praised the qualifications of the Archdukes Ernst and Ferdinand, their knowledge of Czech (so close to Polish) and Latin. King John of Sweden put forward the original proposal that if he were not elected then the sister of King Sigismund Augustus, Princess Anna Jagiellonka should be elected, citing as an example of a woman on the throne Queen Elizabeth of England, who had raised the kingdom of England to such heights. Anna Jagiellonka knew the language and the customs of the people. Too old for childbirth, she could appoint her nephew as her heir, the only remaining Jagiello, namely Sigismund, the son of King John III of Sweden, and of Sigismund Augustus's sister Catherine Jagiellonka (who in addition to Polish, spoke Swedish and enough Latin, Italian and German). The Turks sent an envoy advising the election of a Pole, or of Stephen Bathory, Prince of Transylvania, the Sultan's vassal, who sent a spokesman to the
Sejm
to proclaim his own merits, and who promised to keep the peace with the Turks and the Tatars and to recover from Russia the lands Poland–Lithuania had lost to her, at his expense. Finally the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso II of Este, promised to send scholars and artists to the Academy of Cracow, and to educate 500 young Polish nobles in Italy at his expense if he were elected. Ivan sent no envoys and made no offers or promises.
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Relations between Maximilian and Ivan became tense again largely as a result of the inefficiency of their envoys, Pauli and Skobel'tsyn, who were quarrelsome, and dwelt on points of etiquette such as the imperial refusal to call Ivan ‘Tsar’. The long awaited imperial embassy headed by Hans Cobenzl von Prosseck and Daniel Prinz arrived at last on the Russian border in November 1575, and in Dorogobuzh on 15 December. But the presentation of the embassy's credentials was postponed while Ivan carried out his religious duties for Advent. This perturbed the imperial envoys, who had already attended the electoral
Sejm
in Warsaw, and knew that time pressed, but they refused to open talks until they were properly received. That the Russian spokesmen nevertheless proved willing to embark on negotiations was explained by Ivan: so many people whom he suspected were merely merchants had represented themselves as his envoys in recent years that he was taking precautions in advance. Evidently Ivan had heard something about Pauli's missions, allegedly in his name, but there were other examples of such impostures.
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However the imperial ambassadors still refused to open their budgets until they had been properly received, and not until early January did the Tsar leave Moscow for Mozhaisk, possibly because Moscow was not yet a fit place in which to receive imperial ambassadors. On the 22 January 1576 the embassy was welcomed by a solemn entry into Mozhaisk, escorted by 2,000 musketeers, and the envoys were given a formal audience on the following day by Ivan, surrounded by hundreds of courtiers and ‘24 councillors sitting to his right and left’. There followed the usual inquiries after the health of their respective lords and the exchange of presents, then a lavish banquet which lasted for six hours. Ivan and the Tsarevich wore splendid robes, and jewelled crowns which they took off for the meal in order to eat more at ease. The reception of the imperial ambassadors was both lavish and magnificent.
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The Emperor asked Ivan to support the candidature of his son Ernst in Poland and to bring peace to Livonia and Lithuania. But, responding to the pleas of the Livonians at the recent Diet in Regensburg, he also demanded the return of Livonia to the Empire, thus ensuring the failure of the negotiations since Ivan expected no such demand and would not give up Livonia. The talks between Russia and the imperial envoys were not concerned only with Poland but also with the previous discussions about possible joint action against the Porte and above all with what was dearest to the papal heart, namely the conversion of Orthodox Russia to Rome. Both Cobenzl and Prinz were convinced (and tried to convince the Pope) that the conversion of Russia would not be a difficult undertaking because there were already great similarities between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, much more than between either and Lutheranism.

Meanwhile Ivan again underestimated the importance of sending his own ‘great embassy’ to Warsaw; he sent a minor envoy to talk to the Senate and to ask for a safe conduct for yet another courier, but he also addressed a series of missives to important magnates and senators in Poland entrusted to yet another envoy, Novosil'tsev, though this time Ivan did ask for a safe conduct for a ‘great embassy’. But these lowly
Russian envoys were vulnerable: hostile Lithuanian magnates easily managed to intercept their journeys, detain them and make them arrive too late in Warsaw to campaign for the election of Ivan.
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Thus Novosil'tsev was not able to distribute his missives to the important Polish magnates and Ivan's case went by default.

The Russian talks with Cobenzl in Mozhaisk went no better. The imperial envoys were not interested in securing the throne of the Commonwealth for Ivan but for the Archduke Ernst; and they insisted that Ivan surrender his claims to Livonia. They promised to make Ivan Emperor of European Turkey, and to negotiate an alliance with Archduke Ernst as King of Poland–Lithuania, together with the Emperor, the Pope, the King of Spain and other Christian monarchs in order to throw the Turks out of Europe. ‘What did a couple of cities in Livonia and Lithuania mean compared to the empire of the East?’ asked Cobenzl rhetorically. Ivan clung rather to the idea of leaving Poland to the Archduke and acquiring Lithuania and Livonia for his son Fedor but in any case all these hopes and plans for the future fell by the wayside when it was learnt that, tired of waiting, the Polish-Lithuanian senators led by the Polish primate, who supported the Habsburgs, had proceeded to elect the Emperor Maximilian II King of Poland on 12 December 1575. This spelled the end of the mission to Russia of the imperial ambassadors, who left Mozhaisk after eight days. Ivan, however, kept negotiations alive by sending his own envoys with the imperial envoys back to Vienna.
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Since Maximilian's election was contested, and not unanimous, it led to an immediate upsurge of politicking in favour of other candidates. The Polish nobles in particular refused to accept an Austrian king and gradually united around Stephen Bathory, the Prince of Transylvania, provided he married Anna Jagiellonka, who had the advantage of having inherited substantial lands and valuable goods from her mother Bona Sforza and her brother King Sigismund Augustus. Stephen Bathory had moreover recently won a substantial victory over a Turkish force which provided him with funds and enhanced his reputation.

Stephen Bathory was a typical Renaissance figure: well-educated (he had visited Padua
⁴³
), intelligent, a successful and experienced soldier, and a good linguist. He had been elected Prince of Transylvania on the death of the previous prince, Jan Sigismund Zapolya, the nephew of Sigismund Augustus II who, the latter had hoped, would one day inherit the Jagiello crowns in Poland–Lithuania, but who had died too soon. Stephen Bathory was a practising Catholic, but accustomed to tolerate other faiths in his Transylvanian principality. A Hungarian himself, he
wass anti-Habsburg, which suited the Poles. His principality was theoretically under Ottoman suzerainty, which rendered him suspect, but the Turks, after their disastrous defeat in the great naval battle of Lepanto on 7 October 1571, were turning away from the European field of expansion and therefore losing interest in the minutiae of the diplomatic world in eastern Europe. The death of Sultan Selim III in 1574 and the accession of Murad III confirmed the change of orientation in Turkish policy. The emergence of such a stirring character as Stephen Bathory among the candidates for the Polish throne was bound to galvanize the elections and he knew how to cultivate the most important political figures in both halves of the country and set about doing so.

The anti-Habsburg Poles, led by Jan Zamoyski, called a fresh
Sejm
for 18 January 1576, and in the absence of any effective opposition from Maximilian's camp, Bathory was elected and his election ratified on 1 February. So now there were two kings of the Commonwealth. But Maximilian did not appear. Preparations began at once for Bathory's coronation and his marriage to Anna. He arrived in Cracow in April and was crowned in May 1576. Ivan accepted this situation calmly. He does not really seem to have grasped that the election was final, that the Polish voters had disregarded his wishes as expressed to their envoys, and had voted without paying attention to his discussions with Cobenzl and Prinz. Moreover the weakness of Maximilian's position would render his own support more valuable to the Emperor; he might even be successful in pushing through the plan of partitioning Poland–Lithuania between the two empires.

The first envoys of Bathory, as King, to Ivan were met with contumely. The Tsar remained seated as he inquired after Stephen Bathory's health. From whom, he asked the envoys, was their Prince descended? How had they been treated in previous diplomatic negotiations, as princes of Transylvania and subjects of the King of Hungary? He did not give the envoys his hand to kiss and sent them no food from his table. And he refused to call Stephen brother since his rank was no higher than that of a Mstislavsky, or a Bel'sky or a Trubetskoi, who served the Tsar. Marriage to Sigismund Augustus's sister gave him no rights and indeed Poland–Lithuania belonged to Ivan as his patrimony (
votchina
) now that no male descendants of the Jagiellos were left.
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It has been argued that his contempt for Stephen Bathory led Ivan to regard him as a weakling, incapable of fighting to recover the whole of Livonia for Poland–Lithuania, and to believe that he would be easily outmanoeuvred in any peace negotiations which might arise.
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Bathory in turn saw that war against Russia to gain the whole of Livonia was
essential in order to consolidate his position in the Commonwealth but he needed to postpone it until he had succeeded in asserting his personal authority.

Meanwhile the Tsar continued his preparations for the implementation of the other aspect of the projected Russo-imperial alliance, namely the attack on the Ottoman Empire, and the planned assault on the Crimean Tatars with the help of the Zaporozhian Cossacks.
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Maximilian in turn prepared to summon a Reichstag in Ratisbon
⁴⁷
in November 1576 to ask the German princes for assistance in winning his Polish crown against Stephen Bathory, and he informed Ivan in September that he would shortly be sending a ‘great embassy’ to conclude a formal alliance. But the forty-nine-year-old emperor's health had begun to give way and, on 12 October 1576, he died. His son Rudolph had already been elected King of the Romans and as emperor he carried on with the negotiations with Ivan but he had no intention of embarking on a major war, which would distract his attention from his intellectual activities. Nor did he intend handing over Livonia to the Tsar, or allowing his widowed sister the Queen of France (quondam wife of Charles IX) to be married off to Ivan. The Tsar however still hoped to recruit Rudolph to fight against Stephen Bathory for the crown of Poland, to assist him in obtaining Livonia and at least, if he did not acquire Poland–Lithuania, to ensure that he did acquire the Kievan inheritance.
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In late November 1576 Ivan again addressed a letter to Maximilian (of whose death he had not yet heard) warning him to keep out of Livonian affairs, since the province belonged to him. In the Tsar's opinion, in view of the dangerous situation of Europe as a result of the elevation of Bathory, a Turkish vassal, to the throne of Poland, the minor matter of Livonia should be allowed to drop. Moreover Ivan was still not convinced that the legally elected King of the Commonwealth was not Maximilian. In his military expeditions into Livonia during the interregnum he had been careful not to touch Polish-Lithuanian occupied lands. While Bathory was struggling to impose his authority in Poland and above all in Danzig, where he had to contend with Habsburg opposition, Ivan with substantial forces and accompanied by the Grand Prince of all Russia, Simeon Bekbulatovich, had advanced against the Swedish forces in Livonia in February 1576 and occupied the port of Haapsala on the coast north of Riga (warfare in Livonia was not included in the general truce between Russia and Sweden which had been renewed for two years in 1575). Sweden was driven back almost everywhere and barely held on to Reval, which was the object of a fierce
attack in which Ivan Vasil'evich Sheremetev (minor) was killed. But the city defended itself to the point of forcing the Tsar to give up the siege in March 1577. The death of Maximilian was a blow to Danzig which lost its royal overlord and imperial protection, but the city continued to struggle against Bathory who now settled down to a siege. However at the end of 1577, the city secured reasonable terms from Bathory and swore allegiance to him,
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thus freeing him to campaign in Livonia.