Ivan the Terrible (25 page)

Russian trade with the East benefited greatly from the conquest of Kazan', which was soon followed by the conquest and annexation of Astrakhan' on the Caspian Sea. The Russians had abandoned the old Tatar city in favour of a new fortress further downstream which was fortified by earthworks and defended by a well-armed garrison. A monastery was built nearby to care for the spiritual health of the Russian residents. The outcome of conflict between two factions among the Nogais led to one recognizing Moscow and the other supporting the Ottoman Turks. In 1556 Russian forces overthrew the Khan and annexed Astrakhan', bringing Russia physically nearer to the Porte, which began to show an interest in defending the area against the miscellaneous raiding of Don Cossacks, Dnieper Cossacks under Prince D. Vishnevetsky, in alliance with Ivan IV, and various Circassian tribes.
⁴²
The whole of the Volga was now in Russian hands and they controlled the trade through the Caspian.

Russian trade with the West was considerably hampered because its routes lay through potentially hostile territory, namely Poland–Lithuania and Livonia, with in the background the potential threat from Sweden, and further west the costly procedure of paying the Sound tolls to Denmark and then facing the obstacles to Russian trade created by the members of the Hanseatic League. Freedom of trade was becoming of more importance to Russia because of the increasing need for munitions and the wherewithal and skills to manufacture them. Not only might Russia have to pay tolls, but the passage of goods might be totally prohibited, just as the passage of Russian envoys to Western countries to pursue diplomatic negotiations and the passage of skilled craftsmen could be totally prevented.
⁴³
Similarly, Ivan wanted safer communication with the West, though there is no evidence of a particular interest in the sea as such, and he was anxious to recruit technicians from
abroad. Their passage could be obstructed, as in the well-known incident of the recruiter Hans Schlitte.

Schlitte was a merchant from Goslar, in Saxony, who traded on a large scale with a governor of Pskov. But the Russian's enterprise foundered, and he ended up under arrest in Moscow and was eventually executed. Schlitte persuaded the Emperor Charles V in autumn 1549 to give him a recommendation to the Tsar so that he could endeavour to recover his confiscated gold by promising to procure for Ivan skilled craftsmen who could cast heavy guns, and to provide instructors in their use. Schlitte proved so convincing that Ivan, in turn, gave him a recommendation to the Emperor Charles V, and the enterprising merchant converted this document into a credential, which presented Schlitte as an accredited agent of Ivan's. The whole episode became more and more mystifying, as it became involved with Charles V's hopes for the conversion of Russia and the efforts of the spokesmen for Livonia earlier, at the diet of Augsburg in 1547, to oppose the sale of any armaments to Russia. Lübeck was now also roped in to frustrate Schlitte's plan to supply Ivan with armaments, by preventing the embarkation of the large numbers of people he had recruited, while the Livonians tried to intercept them at sea. Schlitte was arrested for debt in Lübeck, and appealed to the Emperor, whereupon the Grand Master of the Livonian Order also appealed to Charles, who now supported the Grand Master on the grounds that Schlitte had not acted on behalf of Ivan but on his own. The whole story is both confused and ridiculous, and its ripples went on well into the 1570s.
⁴⁴

The rulers of Livonia were among the most determined in barring Russian access to the West through their lands, and they warned the Emperor Charles in 1551 that all the Tsar's neighbours went now in fear of him and bent their heads to him and that the Livonians dreaded to be brought under his
grausame Gewalt
(cruel power) and to be compelled to change their religion; and if craftsmen and artists were allowed to stream into Russia, they would be followed by thousands of evil Anabaptists, Sacramentists and others expelled from the German lands. For the time being Ivan contented himself in 1554 with a renewal of the existing truce with Livonia on payment by the latter of the tribute allegedly due to Russia since 1503, including the arrears, and the restoration of the Orthodox churches destroyed, together with the Catholic churches, by Lutheran fanatics in Livonia. The negotiations were carried out by Aleksei Adashev and Viskovaty. Trade was to be free for Russian imports and exports, but the Livonians still refused to allow the free passage of foreigners into Russia.
⁴⁵

Ivan's interest in direct communications and trade with western Europe was strengthened by the totally unexpected arrival on the shores of the White Sea, in summer 1553, of an English sea captain, Richard Chancellor, seeking a northern route to the Indies. The expedition had been financed by a group of English merchants, with government approval, and bore a letter from King Edward VI addressed to ‘all kings, princes, rulers, judges and governours of the earth’, in the hope of discovering a new, northern sea route to the Indies, free from Spanish and Portuguese control. Three ships were commissioned, but two were lost at sea.
⁴⁶
Chancellor, with the
Edward Bonaventure
, made land near the mouth of the Northern Dvina river in the White Sea, on 24 August 1553, where local fishermen informed him that he was in the dominions of the Tsar of Russia. The northern route to Russia was not unknown, but Chancellor was the first Englishman to arrive in Russia by it, and he was eventually met by Russian officials (
pristavy
) and escorted to Moscow in November. Chancellor's letter from Edward VI opened the way for him in Moscow, and when he left for England in February 1554, he had secured Ivan's consent, in a letter addressed to Edward, to more English ships visiting his ports, and the Tsar had declared his willingness to open negotiations for the regulation of trade between the two countries.

From the very beginning Chancellor viewed the inhabitants of this strange land as ‘the barbarous russes’, though he was in many ways less prejudiced than later English envoys from the Russia Company. He had travelled in the Middle East, and possibly France, and was less supercilious than most Protestant Englishmen. He provided the first, and in many ways the most perceptive and sympathetic, of many accounts of Russia as seen by Englishmen, as well as information about Russian products, weights and measures, and trade. His description of northern Russia is in striking contrast to the devastation recorded by Giles Fletcher thirty years later.

Chancellor was impressed by the size but not the beauty of Moscow, and he thought poorly of the Kremlin, where the public buildings lacked the external ornamentation and internal decoration customary in Tudor palaces. But when he was finally received at court, he realized that finery in Moscow was worn, not hung on walls. The hundred courtiers who welcomed him were all dressed in cloth of gold to their ankles, while in the actual presence chamber Ivan was seated on a high throne with a ‘diadem or crown of gold, appareled with a robe all of goldsmith's work’ and a sceptre inset with precious stones, surrounded by his principal officials and members of his council, and flanked by two men who were
probably Aleksei Adashev and Ivan Viskovaty, the two men in charge of Russian foreign relations with the West at this time. Chancellor was deeply impressed by the riches and the majesty of the Tsar, and after the usual formal exchanges, he withdrew into an adjoining chamber where he was looked after by Aleksei Adashev before proceeding to a banquet in the Golden Chamber starting as usual with roast swan.
⁴⁷
Ivan was now clothed in a robe of silver and wearing a different diadem. The food was served on golden dishes, the tablecloths were spotless, and in the middle of the room there was a ‘mighty cupboard’ with the most elaborate display of gold and silver plate. Chancellor was also struck by the fact that Ivan greeted all his guests and nobles by name when he served each one with bread.
⁴⁸

Like Christopher Columbus, Chancellor started out to find one place and found another, in his case Russia. But trade was the immediate object of the English Company of Merchant Adventurers which sponsored his voyage, and Chancellor made the best use of his opportunities. When he reached home, however, the letters he carried, addressed to Edward VI, were delivered to Queen Mary I. From Ivan's point of view, Chancellor's landfall in the White Sea showed that direct access to the West could be opened, dangerous for sailors, but only liable to political interference by sea from Denmark–Norway. Access to the Holy Roman Empire, Italy and the West would remain precarious.

As usual there is no agreement among historians about what Ivan intended to do after the conquest of Kazan' and Astrakhan'. Was his first assault on Livonia in 1558 part of a campaign to acquire an opening on the Baltic, as is usually maintained, or was it merely an effort, at a time when he was strapped for cash, to collect tribute allegedly due to him from part of Livonia, namely the city of Dorpat?
¹
Or was he hesitating between the Livonian option and a push to conquer the Khanate of Crimea, put an end to Tatar slave raids into Russia and perhaps acquire an outlet to the Black Sea? There is no evidence but his deeds.

Russian negotiations with the Livonian Order usually took place between Novgorod and the Order, or between Pskov and the Order or in the form of a treaty between the bishop of Dorpat and Pskov. Negotiations took place in Novgorod or Pskov, not in Moscow.
²
Livonia had been disrupted by religious and political conflict for some time, and the province was open to invasion from all sides. Authority was now divided between the remnants of the Teutonic or Livonian Order headed by Prince Wilhelm von Fürstenberg, the Archbishop of Riga and the leaders of the major commercial cities like Riga, Reval, Narva and Dorpat, now mainly Lutheran, who did not all view Russia with the same distrust. In Dorpat, for instance, many Russians had been settled for some time as traders or craftsmen, and there had even been an Orthodox church for them, which had allegedly suffered from vandalism during the religious turmoil in the province. Other cities were still closely linked with the German towns of the Hansa.
³

Ivan's broader aims were quite clear: uninterrupted access to the West via a Baltic port would create a direct commercial link all the way from the Baltic to the Caspian, now that Kazan' and Astrakhan' were in Russian hands. Imports from the West, particularly of arms and military supplies, were ever more necessary now that Russia was embarking on
hostilities with Western powers, requiring a more sophisticated type of armament. At present Russia's only outlet on the Baltic was the shallow and unsatisfactory port of Ivangorod, built over against Narva. The benefits to be drawn from the northern route explored by Chancellor could not yet be assessed. Frontier disputes between Russia and Sweden in Karelia had been settled by a truce of sixty years concluded in 1510.
⁴
Recent conflicts with Livonia over Russian trading rights and the free passage of craftsmen and supplies to Russia had been temporarily shelved by means of a five-year truce between the two sides in 1550. But in 1551, long before the expiry of the truce, the Livonian towns again obstructed direct Russian trade relations with the West, forcing the Russians to trade only through Livonian merchants. War was not yet implicit in the situation, but a pretext now existed.

In further discussions in 1554, Ivan IV reminded the Livonian envoys that, from the Russian point of view, the Order was in Livonia only on sufferance, and that if they did not comply with his demands, the Tsar would come for them in person. Russian diplomacy, in the persons of Aleksei Adashev and Ivan Viskovaty, now produced ancient claims to Russian suzerainty over the city of Dorpat, which had paid a tribute to Pskov of one mark per adult male dwelling in the city and its surroundings, or about six thousand marks, as far back as the time of Ivan III, when Pskov was an independent city republic.
⁵
The Livonians climbed down and agreed that all males in the bishopric of Dorpat would pay the agreed tribute by 1557, and they consented to allow Russians to buy all the goods they needed in Livonia except armaments, and to permit the passage of craftsmen. In the event, when the Livonian envoys arrived in Moscow early in 1557 they brought no money, and were sent packing by Ivan.

In the meantime a glimmer of light showed in the West, where Chancellor had returned to England with news of his auspicious reception in Moscow and of the permission given by the Tsar to open up trade between the two countries on very favourable terms for English merchants. Edward VI had been succeeded by Queen Mary and King Philip, who now granted a formal charter to the Russia Company. The company decided to send Chancellor back to Russia to attempt to establish trading relations on a stable footing.
⁶
Anglo-Russian trade could now become independent of the Danish-imposed Sound tolls,
⁷
the Hansa and the interposition of middlemen.

Events in Livonia developed in parallel with events in Kazan', where the Russian forces were still deeply engaged in mopping-up operations. Moreover, until Russian relations with the Khan of Crimea and the
Grand Prince of Lithuania–King of Poland were established on a firm basis, Ivan could not afford to advance deep into Livonia. But in 1557, the pacification of Kazan' and the conquest of Astrakhan' seemed relatively complete and many detachments from the various local tribes around Kazan' joined the Russian armed forces drawn up on the Livonian border. In the meantime yet another Livonian embassy arrived in Moscow in December 1557, again without any tribute money.

A little while earlier, in 1555–6, a feint, or possibly a more determined, operation had been launched in the south against the Khan of Crimea, now a vassal of the Ottoman Sultan, who had not recognized Ivan IV's newly proclaimed sovereignty over Kazan'. Its leader was Prince Dmitri Vishnevetsky, the Orthodox Lithuanian magnate whose base was in the Ukraine, around Kiev and the lower Dnieper, and who offered to cooperate with Russia. To what extent it was an independent undertaking and to what extent it was ordered by Ivan as part of a general strategic plan is difficult to establish. In military sorties of varying success, acting together with Cossack detachments which were beginning to acquire consistency, Vishnevetsky harassed the Crimeans, occupying the island of Kortitsa in the rapids of the Dnieper, which was later to become the headquarters of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. This led to a formal breach between the Khan of Crimea and Russia.
⁸