Ivan the Terrible (49 page)

While the Tsar was still busy with the Commonwealth embassy and his correspondence with Elizabeth, Magnus of Denmark arrived in Moscow on 10 June 1570 with the approval of his brother, the King of Denmark, and was ceremonially welcomed as King of Livonia. He took the oath of allegiance to Ivan as his overlord and received from him the corresponding charter for the hereditary vassal kingdom of Livonia, in what Ivan termed his patrimony, but which had still to be conquered. These lands comprised ex-Russian, Polish and Swedish conquests in Livonia, and included Riga, which was to all intents and purposes a free
city at the time. The new kingdom was to enjoy extensive commercial privileges within Russia for its cities, and a great deal of autonomy, since Russian officials and tax collectors were to be excluded from the land, and Magnus was to commit himself to give modest military assistance to Russia if Ivan himself went on campaign. The kingdom was also to ensure free access for Russian imports and exports to and from the West, Ivan's main object. Magnus's betrothal to the eldest daughter of Vladimir of Staritsa, Evfimia, then still only twelve years old, took place and he was crowned with the crown of Livonia. The treaty between Magnus and Ivan was signed by an
oprichnik
, and by a member of the
zemskii
administration, the
d'iak
V. Shchelkalov, who was already beginning to ascend the ladder to power.
³⁹
In order to win over his new subjects, Ivan declared that he was himself of German origin (the myth of his descent from Prus, the brother of Augustus Caesar), that he liked Germans and wanted to marry his daughters to German princes (he had no daughters at the time). He ordered the release of German prisoners-of-war and the repatriation of Livonian citizens from Dorpat. (One must remember that ‘Germans’ at this time meant mainly Livonians to the Russians.)

The new King Magnus of Livonia left Moscow on 6 July to embark on the conquest of Reval with 15,000 rubles and 20,000 Russian soldiers at his disposal.
⁴⁰
In what appears to have been a temporary fit of anger with his sons Ivan even went so far as to promise Magnus the succession to the throne of Russia, humiliating his sons and his people, ‘whom he would trample under foot’.
⁴¹
But the blandishments of Kruse and Taube did not have the desired effect on the inhabitants of Reval, who mindful of the fate of Novgorod, of which they were well aware, having many connexions with the city, determined to cling to their actual Swedish overlord. They defended the Swedish garrison by pouring water on the battlements which froze to a smooth surface, rendering it impossible for the invading Russian forces of Duke Magnus to climb up.
⁴²
They were finally relieved by the Swedish fleet, so Magnus's realm had still to be conquered.

Meanwhile Ivan still did not think he had uprooted all the offshoots of treason which in his view infected the whole of Russian society and which stretched from Novgorod to Moscow. Against a background of increasing poverty, scarcity and even famine among the people, he continued to seek out any evidence of opposition or treason. The recent diplomatic bickering with the Commonwealth embassy, and the unsatisfactory response from the Queen of England may have reminded the Tsar of many past mortifications. Schlichting provides a horrifying
picture of the sadistic and cruel pastimes to which Ivan seemed addicted in 1570 on his return from Novgorod to Moscow, once the Lithuanian embassy had departed on 3 July 1570 and Magnus on 6 July. Archbishop Pimen and hundreds of other Novgorodians suffered the tortures of the damned in Moscow and Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda, with Ivan occasionally taking part. Inevitably some were unable to hold out, and denunciations multiplied. The victims were sped on their way by those waiting in the wings to inherit the positions and the wealth of the disgraced and killed. Viskovaty's brother, Tret'iak, suffered and was killed (with his wife) at the beginning of July, for taking part in the alleged Novgorod conspiracy.
⁴³
His brother could do nothing to save him.

Ivan Mikhailovich Viskovaty,
de facto
the head of foreign affairs for many years, may have brought to a head the suspicions nurtured by the Tsar against his old friends in the
zemshchina
, his brothers-in-arms (and in love, in the case of Fedor Basmanov) in the
oprichnina
, his servants in the government of the country and in the Boyar Council. Viskovaty had been a loyal servant of Ivan's throughout his life including the crisis over the succession of the baby Dmitri in 1553.
⁴⁴
Throughout many of the succeeding years he had been the head of the Office of Foreign Affairs, and took an active part in all the negotiations with Sweden, Lithuania and Denmark, where he spent some time on a mission in 1553. Though no longer the
d'iak
in charge of foreign affairs (in the
zemshchina
) he was now the keeper of the privy seal (
pechatnik
) and his influence on the formation and execution of foreign policy remained dominant. Most authors agree that he was among those who preferred war in Livonia over war in the south, against the Crimeans, which of course meant that he was fulfilling Ivan's wishes; on the other hand he gave a somewhat confused separate opinion at the
Zemskii sobor
of 1566 which may have aroused Ivan's suspicions. The Lithuanians certainly believed that he was opposed to them.
⁴⁵
However, there were a number of occasions when Viskovaty had spoken out against policies favoured by Ivan, notably on the painting of icons.
⁴⁶

It seems that it was the
d'iak
Andrei Iakovlevich Shchelkalov who built up the case against Viskovaty and Funikov behind the scenes. Now, in mid-July 1570, the two Viskovaty brothers were accused, in the account of the investigation of the Novgorod affair, of having joined with the Novgorod plotters to destroy the Tsar and pass the realm to the Prince of Staritsa. In what seems to have been an incredibly courageous, indeed foolhardy attempt to influence the Tsar, Viskovaty, apparently during an interrogation some time after his arrest, begged him not to
shed so much blood, not to exterminate his nobility. Who would choose to live in his realm, to fight for him, if he continued to destroy such numbers of brave men? Ivan replied:

But Viskovaty and Funikov were not the only targets.
⁴⁸
The heads of many other
prikazy
such as the
prikaz
of landed estates (
Pomest'nyi
), the principal office of revenue (
Bol'shoi Prikaz)
, the office against brigands (
Razboinyi Prikaz
) were all rounded up.
⁴⁹
When, where and how the victims were arrested and tortured and where they were kept is not known.

Behind Ivan's savagery there lay a determined push by the members of the
oprichnina
, both aristocrats and service gentry, to eliminate the old princely families, leading boyar families and the leading
d'iaki
, in charge of the government offices and of the administration of the
zemshchina
. There was also a secret vendetta against some of Ivan's original servants in the
oprichnina
, such as Prince A.D. Viazemsky, and the Basmanovs.

The final scene was dramatically enacted on 25 July 1570: ‘on the feast day of St James the Apostle’ Ivan's executioners prepared the public square, the Poganaia meadow, with twenty huge stakes driven into the ground, joined by transverse beams, and supplied with cauldrons of cold and boiling water. The Tsar then appeared, on horseback, dressed all in black, fully armed, and carrying a bow and arrows and an axe, and escorted by 1,500 mounted
strel'tsy
(musketeers). Schlichting, who was an eyewitness (as were the Livonian nobles Kruse and Taube), describes how some three hundred nobles, in various stages of disintegration, prostration and decrepitude, crawling on their broken legs, were brought before Ivan and his sixteen-year-old son, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich. ‘Seeing the people were frightened and unwilling to behold a scene of such dreadful cruelty’, wrote Schlichting,

Vasily Shchelkalov now appeared with a long screed listing the charges. The first to be accused was Viskovaty, who as late as 12 July was recorded as still negotiating with the Lithuanian envoys with the rank of Keeper of the State Seal.
⁵¹
He was charged not only with intriguing with Lithuania but with the most unlikely accusation that he had been secretly intriguing with the Ottoman Turks and the Khan of Crimea, inviting them to attack Russia. As he read out each charge Shchelkalov struck Viskovaty on the head with a stick, or whip. The executioners tried to persuade Viskovaty to admit his crimes and beg for mercy, but he denied his guilt, and loudly put himself in the hands of God who would judge both Ivan and himself in the next world. ‘You lust to shed my blood, go ahead and drink your fill of the blood of an innocent man. Accursed be you, bloodsuckers, and your Tsar’ were his last words. Strung up between the stakes, Viskovaty was cut to pieces. Maliuta Skuratov cut off his nose, another cut off his ears, and at last another, named Ivan Reutov, cut off his privy parts, whereupon he died. But Ivan, suspecting that Reutov had done this out of pity, to hasten his death, shouted to him ‘You too will soon have a drink out of the same cup from which he is drinking.’ (In fact luckily for him Reutov died of the plague.)
⁵²

It was now the turn of Funikov, the treasurer, who also hardily proclaimed his innocence and said that ‘the tyrant's soul would suffer if he killed guiltless men’. Ivan replied: ‘I have not caused or instigated your death nor am I responsible for it. Your associate, to whom you listened [Viskovaty] is the entire cause of your ruin. Even if you had not committed any crime you acted in concert with him, and so you both must die.’ Funikov was slowly killed by being doused alternately with icy and boiling water. Several other heads of
prikazy
followed, in some cases with their wives and children; Grigory Shapkin, together with his wife and two children was beheaded by a Prince Vasily Temkin, an
oprichnik
, who laid their bodies at Ivan's feet. Lev Saltykov, who had distinguished himself so greatly in the sack of Novgorod was killed. A total of 116 victims were dispatched in various ingenious ways,
⁵³
some
having their ribs torn out, others flayed alive or impaled until finally an old man who could barely walk tottered up. Ivan ran him through with a spear, then stabbed him sixteen times and had him beheaded, before at the end of four hours, he had had enough and withdrew to his palace.
⁵⁴
In the words of the Russian historian A.A. Zimin, ‘The Russian capital had seen many horrors in its time. But what happened in Moscow on 25 July, in its cruelty and sadistic refinement, outdid all that had gone before and can perhaps be explained only by the cruel temperament and the sick imagination of Ivan the Terrible’.
⁵⁵

The reprisals were not yet quite over. In the following days, some fifty to seventy prisoners brought from Novgorod were dealt with, together with some eighty of their wives and children.
⁵⁶
It was evident that the
oprichniki
were being torn apart by their own rivalries, by the prevalence of denunciations of all kinds, and by changes in Ivan's policies in regard to the Staritsky family since the engagement of Duke Magnus to Vladimir's daughter, and by Ivan's own growing distrust of his henchmen. It is around this time that three of the highest ranking members of the
oprichnina
disappeared in circumstances which are not clear but which suggest that they had shown lack of sympathy with Ivan's policies, and in particular that they too had perhaps been involved in plots to hand Novgorod over to the King of Poland–Lithuania and had tried to control Ivan's excesses. According to Schlichting, Prince Afanasii Viazemsky had been a leading light in the
oprichnina
since its foundation, a man so close to Ivan that the Tsar would take medicine from no hands but his. Schlichting, who was in service with Ivan's Belgian physician, Dr Arnold (aka Dr A. Lindsay) would be likely to know this.
⁵⁷
But Viazemsky, in common with the two Basmanovs, seems to have opposed in his heart of hearts (if he had one) the planned destruction of Novgorod. Some
oprichniki
were themselves beginning to think that Ivan was going too far, and there is a suggestion that Viazemsky attempted to warn Archbishop Pimen. Denounced by a client of his, one Lovchikov, for having leaked the Tsar's decision to destroy Novgorod, Ivan ordered Viazemsky's servants to be killed, whereupon the Prince concealed himself for a few days in the house of Dr Arnold (where Schlichting may have seen him). But Ivan succeeded in laying hands on him and submitted Viazemsky to the special daily beating inflicted on debtors,
pravezh
, to extract all his wealth from him, until his body swelled up and he turned to denouncing others in order to bring his torment to an end. At this point in the tale, Schlichting fled Russia and took refuge in Lithuania so that he was unable to provide an eyewitness account of Viazemsky's
eventual fate. The German now offered his services to Sigismund Augustus.