Ivan the Terrible (42 page)
Authors: Isabel de Madariaga
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #Eurasian History, #Geopolitics, #European History, #Renaissance History, #Political Science, #Amazon.com, #Retail, #Russia, #Biography
A distinguished Lithuanian commander, Jan Glebowicz, had been taken prisoner at the Russian conquest of Polotsk in 1563, and before he was repatriated to his country he had bound himself by a written oath to serve Ivan in future by persuading three of the great Lithuanian magnates to agree never to accept a lord from any other dynasty but the Russian, either the Tsar himself or one of his sons.
29
In May 1566, as Ivan was preparing himself for a further campaign in Livonia, a secret messenger arrived bearing a letter from Glebowicz in Lithuania to Prince I.F. Mstislavsky. He was arrested and tortured on his return journey by the Lithuanian authorities; his master, Glebowicz, denied that he planned to desert Lithuania for Russia, but revealed the terms of the oath of loyalty he had sworn to Ivan and admitted that he had agreed to urge a number of Lithuanian magnates to ‘serve’ Ivan, by persuading them that whenever they might wish to appoint a new ruler they should choose one of his – Ivan's – family, namely himself or one of his children. Glebowicz succeeded in convincing the Lithuanians that he was only thinking of what might happen after the death of Sigismund Augustus, and was acquitted of treason but this episode may have given Sigismund ideas, or led him to take up an idea possibly suggested to him by Prince A.M. Kurbsky. This was the devising of a plot to win over leadingboyars of the lands bordering on Lithuania, or Lithuanian in origin, to desert to Poland–Lithuania as Kurbsky had done, with the promise of
substantial political and social rewards. Such defections would seriously undermine Ivan's military strength by the loss of his best generals and possibly many of his service gentry who would follow their leaders.
30
At this point the story becomes almost impossible to disentangle: in the summer of 1567 King Sigismund and the Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Grigorii Chodkewicz, allegedly wrote and sent a series of letters in which they attempted to lure a number of distinguished Russian princes and boyars to desert Ivan and to join with him – Sigismund – in replacing Ivan by his cousin of Staritsa on the throne of Russia. The originals of these letters have not been found so far either in the Lithuanian or the Russian archives, but there is nothing improbable in such letters having been written by or on behalf of Sigismund. It was just the kind of plotting and counterplotting that both Ivan and Sigismund engaged in, but unfortunately there is no evidence that such letters were ever written at all. The agent allegedly carrying the letters from Sigismund and Chodkewicz, a certain Ivan Kozlov, had once been a servant of Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky; he was to travel via Polotsk, where Ivan Petrovich Fedorov was now
voevoda
, after his disgrace in the early summer of 1566. Fedorov had pressed for the liberation of Vorotynsky from captivity in 1566.
31
One of the letters, supposedly from Sigismund, was directed to him. The others were addressed to the two distinguished Gediminovichi, Prince I.D. Bel'sky and Prince I.F. Mstislavsky, and to Prince Mikhail I. Vorotynsky, now one of three senior men in Ivan's Council. The three years he had spent confined in the monastery of Beloozero (see above, Chapter IX, pp. 149–50) and the loss of much of his
votchina
land, might have turned him against the Tsar. They were all great magnates with their own military retinues. However, if the original letters from Sigismund have not been found, the replies to his letters have survived and are published in the records of the Russian Posol'sky Prikaz, or Office of Foreign Affairs.
Sigismund's alleged letters had been supported by a further set of letters to the same recipients allegedly from the Lithuanian Grand Hetman Grigorii Chodkewicz which also have not been found. The replies to letters he supposedly wrote to the four Russian boyars have also been published. All the letters were dated between 2 July and 6 August, the last being those ‘from’ Fedorov in Polotsk, dated 20 July 1567 to Chodkewicz, and 6 August to Sigismund Augustus.
A careful reading of these eight letters addressed by the Russians to Sigismund Augustus and Chodkewicz leaves one in little doubt that they were all in great part written or dictated by Ivan himself, or under his supervision. Not only do they reproduce the Tsar's language and cast of
mind as expressed in his first letter to Prince Kurbsky, they also deal with current political problems. They provide many fascinating glimpses of the mental processes of the Tsar and of the way in which Russian foreign relations were conducted. In the course of the five weeks over which the letters extend Ivan presumably worked on the different replies from his boyars, thus providing some indication of the nature of the alleged plot he was going to have to foil. He was at the same time carrying on the negotiations with Erik of Sweden for a truce.
The letters supposed to have been written to King Sigismund Augustus by the two Lithuanian princes in Russian service are almost identical. They start with an invocation to God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity which is omitted in the translations published in the Soviet Union in 1951.
32
The princes use their full titles as Gediminovich princes of Lithuania, and address the Grand Prince of Lithuania, Sigismund, as ‘brother’. In view of Ivan's obsession with the order of precedence between rulers, and in particular with the superiority of rulers by inheritance over those by election, this shows him willing to make use of the Gediminovich princes in his service to denigrate the Gediminovich Grand Prince of Lithuania and King of Poland, Sigismund, in this case hereditary but confirmed by election – and who was indeed descended from a junior Gediminovich line. The titles were used with care, Prince M.I. Vorotynsky, for instance, was not described as a Lithuanian prince – he was after all a Riurikovich, with an appanage and all its attendant privileges on the Russian borders of the Grand Principality. All four aristocrats described themselves as ‘boyars of the Council (
sovet
)’ of Ivan.
The replies from Bel'sky and Mstislavsky start off by referring to the offers said to have been made to them by Sigismund, out of his compassion for the oppression of all Ivan's people, great and small, and his disapproval for Ivan's disregard for their interests and rank:
If we [the princes] become your [Sigismund's] subjects, as you wish, our brother, you promise to show us great honour and to make us lords (
gosudari
) in your land, in every way equal to the princes subject to you, and you will return our old appanage lands to us in your grand principality of Lithuania … and you want to show this grace not only to us but also to all those we bring to you who are worthy of your service.
33
Thus far Ivan is referring to what Sigismund is alleged to have written and promised, using the King's language; but the real Ivan now takes over: ‘How could you, brother,’ he addresses Sigismund in the name of
Bel'sky and Mstislavsky ‘write like scoundrels and rascals; it is unworthy of a great ruler to create discord with such absurd letters between rulers, and when you are unable to win by courage, to overcome your enemy like a thief, seizing on him like a snake.’ But continues Ivan/Bel'sky, ‘the sovereignty of our ruler is protected by God’. He calls the messenger Kozlov a hound, wickedly oozing his poison, who had stupefied Sigismund, just like Eve. ‘Our ruler [Ivan] like a true Christian rewards his people according to their worth and service and guards his realm against all evils, punishing all evildoers.’
Ivan/Bel'sky then enters on a discussion of principle, on an argument allegedly put forward by Sigismund, which makes one regret the absence of Sigismund's ‘original letter’. In view of the lack of precision of the Russian language in the definition of abstract ideas at that time it is difficult to be certain whether Ivan, when he writes about ‘freedom’, is referring to free will in the theological sense, or to total freedom of action, the original sense of the Russian word
volia
or
volen
. ‘You wrote, my brother,’ explains Ivan to Sigismund, in the name of both Bel'sky and Mstislavsky,
that God created man, and gave him freedom and honour, but what you write is far from the truth. For God created the first man, Adam, and gave him free will (
samovlastie
) and placed a prohibition on him, he was not to eat the fruit of one tree, and when he broke this prohibition, how cruelly was he punished! This was the first loss of freedom, the first dishonour, the first fall from light to darkness … from rest to labouring for his bread, from incorruptibility to corruption, from life to death.
34
After a further discourse on biblical history, Ivan concludes that in Deuteronomy criminals were cursed unto their death, and this same truth was laid down by Jesus Christ: ‘commandment, law and the punishment of criminals’. Ivan/Bel'sky continues: ‘See you not that there never was any freedom anywhere and that your letter was far from the truth’,
35
and he concludes, ‘Was it a good freedom (
samovol'stvo
) that your lords turned you [Sigismund] into a scoundrel setting his hand to such rubbish?’
Ivan, still writing in the name of Prince I.D. Bel'sky, proceeds to justify himself by arguing that Bel'sky had a better claim to the Grand Principality of Lithuania than King Sigismund Augustus; that Bel'sky's grandfather had been forced by Ol'gerd, Grand Prince of Lithuania, to flee his land in his shirt, to seek the protection of an Orthodox ruler
[Ivan III] who had treated him very well.
36
Finally Ivan/Bel'sky suggests that Sigismund should give up to ‘us’, the Lithuanian princes Bel'sky and Mstislavsky, the Grand Principality of Lithuania and the Russian Land, ‘except for those lands which Prince M.I. Vorotynsky will ask you for, and we will live together as Jagiello lived with Vitovt’, under the sceptre of the Tsar, who is strong enough to defend us against the Turk and the Tatar and the Holy Roman Emperor.
37
The letter from Ivan/Mstislavsky is almost identical with the Ivan/Bel'sky letter, though there is one little malicious stab on a sore spot. In his attack on free will Ivan/Mstislavsky adds to what he had written in the name of Bel'sky, ‘was it a good freedom (
samovol'stvo
) that your lords (
pany
) separated you from Queen Barbara and poisoned her? And that they reproached you about her? All this is well known to us. And you yourself are always ill, and your health is now poor. All this happened to you because of the free will of your lords.’
38
Ivan/Vorotynsky's reply to Sigismund is quite different in tone. It does not address Sigismund as ‘brother’; it attaches much more importance to the role of the messenger, Ivan Petrovich Kozlov, who it will be remembered had been a servant of Vorotynsky's. It is Kozlov who had reported the various oppressive acts the princes had suffered from in Russia to Sigismund, and induced the King to feel compassion for them,
for it is inadmissible for a Christian to behave in such a way to the people entrusted to him by God. ‘For when God created Man, he did not condemn him to slavery but on the contrary bestowed all blessings on him. It was Kozlov who, like a snake, oozing poison, made you [Sigismund] believe that Mikhail Vorotynsky's father Ivan wanted to desert Russia for Lithuania. But how can this absurd, treacherous invention lead to good? How dares this scoundrel [Kozlov] lie, like a mad dog, about our deceased father? We are not traitors but the faithful servants of free, sovereign power’ (
vol'noe samoderzhavstvo
) who have received only favourable treatment from the Tsar. And if our father was disgraced (
byl v opale
) it was because of his own actions, his death came by God's will, and to punish and reward – this is a matter for the lord [a somewhat convoluted explanation of the fact that Vorotynsky's father had in fact been a traitor].
Having perused the offers from Sigismund, Ivan/Vorotynsky rejects them with contempt for the man who made them and the man who transmitted them (Kozlov),
For the free sovereignty of our great lords is not your miserable monarchy; no one tells our great lord what to do, whereas your lords tell you what to do … our rulers are placed on their sovereign thrones by the all-powerful right hand of God … You, Sigismund, have to obey your lords because you are not native rulers.
Ivan/Vorotynsky now draws on the mythical descent of the Russian tsars from Augustus and Prus, through Riurik, to the present Tsar, free to reward the good and punish the evil. Whereas Sigismund was not free in his actions because he was not a hereditary ruler but a chosen ruler.
You cannot even rule yourself, you have no heirs, who will pay for prayers for you? Your sister Anna is not married, and to whom did you give your other sister Catherine, by the plotting of your lords, was that an equal match? And see, you and your sister Catherine wanted her to marry our great lord! Could you get your own will even in such a small thing?
(Sigismund of course did not want Catherine to marry Ivan.) He, Vorotynksy, was now being offered by Sigismund more than an appanage, a vassal state, on a level with the Prince of Prussia or the Prince of Courland.
39
Ivan/Vorotynsky then lays down his terms, which are the same as Bel'sky's, though Vorotynsky specifies the towns he is to have on the Dnieper, as well as Volhynia and Podolia.
Ivan/Vorotynsky embarks on a further theological discussion (which again is not translated in the 1951 edition of the
Poslania
): ‘God is all powerful; he is not subordinate to anyone; he gave himself of his own free will to be crucified to save the world, and you [Lithuanian magnates] keep your lord in captivity – this is not an example of divine love of man but a deception carried out by Antichrist.’ Ivan then rejects the right of the Lithuanians to discuss the only begotten Son of God, and to attempt to divide the Trinity.
40
Indeed later on, Ivan/Vorotynsky exclaims: ‘is it permitted by God to establish a religion in another's lands when you do not even know religion, not only as forsworn but as an apostate?’