Ivan the Terrible (51 page)

Again the number of victims has been much exaggerated in contemporary accounts, Giles Fletcher, for example, gives 800,000, when the total population of Moscow was about 100,000. Thousands were captured by the Crimeans to swell their slave trade, and thousands more in the towns and villages they ravaged on their return south.
¹⁸
The boyars remaining in Moscow scarcely dared to tell Ivan in Rostov of the disaster. When he heard of it he made the bitter remark: ‘They have already burnt Moscow and for ten days they did not dare tell me … that is treason indeed.’
¹⁹

Of whom was he afraid? Of the Tatars or of his people? Of the latter, states one historian, relying on the report of the envoy Giles Fletcher, that the Tsar was afraid to fight because he doubted the loyalty of his nobles and his commanders, and feared that they might hand him over to the Tatars.
²⁰
Ivan was furious at the situation into which he had been led by the ‘disloyalty and treason’ of his men, and by the poor figure he had been made to cut. ‘Seven
voevody
marched ahead of me with many men and they said not a word to me about the Tatar forces’ he exclaimed.
²¹
Needless to say there was the usual investigation under torture of those who might be responsible for the failure to warn the Tsar of the many desertions, or for allowing the main Crimean army to catch him unawares.

On 10 June 1571 Ivan was back in Moscow, and received messengers from the Khan of Crimea, who addressed him very discourteously, threatening him, demanding the surrender of Kazan’ and Astrakhan’, and payment of the tribute as of old, taunting him with running away from Moscow.
²²
Ivan felt compelled to receive the messengers politely, dressed in his shabbiest clothes as a sign of mourning; he even invited them to dine and presented them with furs. He ordered his longstanding envoy in Crimea, Afanasii Nagoy, to begin talks with the Khan, Devlet Girey, and was prepared to agree to the placing of Crimean khans in Astrakhan’ though with Russian consent. But the Khan rejected Ivan's
terms and seemed determined to continue the war.
²³
This most humiliating incident added fuel to Ivan's determination to root out the traitors in his service whom he now identified with members of the
oprichnina
. The Tsar was convinced that his separate
udel
was unable to provide him with the security he needed; first the death of his Tsaritsa Maria, and now the destruction of Moscow shattered his dependence on the
oprichniki
. The forces of the
oprichnina
had not defended Moscow, and it was M.I. Vorotynsky, a member of the
zemshchina
, who proved the most competent. Someone would certainly have to pay for such a disaster, and Ivan turned on the
oprichnina
generals, four of whom were executed in the summer of 1571 including men he had himself chosen like, Prince I.D. Temkin Rostovsky. According to Taube and Kruse, the Tsar's physician, Dr Bomelius, poisoned up to one hundred officials and officers on his master's behalf.
²⁴

These executions may also perhaps be related to rumours of a serious quarrel between the Tsar and the Tsarevich which occurred about this time and rumbled on, of which many versions survive. Tsarevich Ivan had not been granted his own territorial title and lands, as tsarevich, on his majority, unlike Vasilly III in his time. One of his serving boyars may have been murdered in the same period as Prince Mikhail Cherkassky. According to Skrynnikov a charge of treason against Ivan Ivanovich was directed by the machinations of senior
oprichniki
, above all Maliuta Skuratov, the
oko gosudarevo
, the eye of the lord in Eisenstein's film,
Ivan the Terrible
, who had become the Tsar's principal adviser in the
oprichnina
after the disappearance of A.D. Basmanov and Viazemsky. Skrynnikov describes him as the head of Ivan's secret intelligence (
razvedka
) though no such body can be found in Ivan's
dvor
. But the images of the various heads of the OGPU, GPU, NKVD, the Iagodas, Iezhovs and Berias, no doubt floated before Eisenstein's eyes while he was making his famous film in which Maliuta Skuratov plays a prominent part. The accusations of treason were mainly aimed at the remaining members of Anastasia's family, the Iur'ev-Zakhar'ins, closely related to the Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich through his mother, and to Mikhail Cherkassky, through his wife.
²⁵

The rumours of a quarrel between the Tsar and his son may have reached Poland in early 1571 through the arrival there of Schlichting. Apparently the papal nuncio, Vincenzo del Portico, in Cracow, wrote to the Pope on 3 January 1571 communicating the arrival of a man from Russia who had referred to the dispute between Tsar Ivan and his son. This might well have been Schlichting who, as secretary and confidant of the Tsar's physician, would be able to supply all kinds of private details
about the Tsar's family.
²⁶
The quarrel seems to have led to an open breach between father and son and there were reports that many leading nobles were taking sides. Skrynnikov, who tells this story, also draws on the widespread echoes of the quarrel in popular historical and folk songs about the ‘anger of the terrible one’, which led up to the eventual death of Ivan Ivanovich at the hands of his father. One of the surviving songs runs as follows: Ivan is thinking how to rid himself of treason in ‘stone built’ Moscow, and Maliuta Skuratov runs up to him and says: ‘Hail to you, Tsar Ivan Vasil'evich, you will not root out treason for centuries: your enemy [the Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich] sits opposite you.’ Whereupon Ivan orders his son to be arrested and taken to the Poganaia meadow, where all the executions had taken place in July 1570. But Nikita Romanovich, the brother of Anastasia and uncle of the Tsarevich, warns Maliuta that the morsel is not for him, and that he will be crushed. In the song, Ivan exclaims, ‘You boyars, I will boil you all in a cauldron’ (possibly a reference to the fate of Funikov on 25 July in Moscow). Maliuta Skuratov is eventually handed over to Nikita Romanovich to dispose of. In fact of course Maliuta became Ivan's principal executioner, and conducted a veritable campaign of extermination against the Iur'iev clan though Nikita Romanovich survived.
²⁷
Nevertheless, Maliuta did well out of his own marriage with a Shuiskaia and the eventual marriage of his daughter with the young and rising Boris Godunov.

Soon after the death of Maria Temriukovna, Ivan had ordered the organization of a bride-show throughout the country to find him a new wife. In 1570, members of the
oprichnina
toured the country to ‘inspect suitable young women, young and old, of high or low degree, write down their names, age and appearance’ and bring 2,000 of them to Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda. There is a certain improbability about the number – the same number, 2,000, is always mentioned, all converging in sledges or carriages on Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda – particularly as many families would do their best to evade such a dangerous distinction, if necessary by bribing the
oprichniki
.
²⁸

The description of the bride-show by the two Livonian noblemen now flies into the realms of fancy:

His physician, Dr Bomelius, who had the reputation of a magus, was present and he had to ‘inspect their urine in a glass and define and explain its nature, qualities and health’ (this was a classical method of diagnosis at the time). After this performance Ivan chose one, Marfa Sobakina, for himself, and his son Ivan chose another, E.B. Saburova. The two Livonians conclude somewhat superciliously that they did not think it necessary to describe the barbarous customs used in the Tsar's wedding having already seen and heard them at his previous wedding with Maria Temriukovna.
²⁹
It may be to events at this wedding that Polish envoys were referring when they expressed their shocked surprise at the unseemly and coarse pranks of the Tsar's jester, who crawled about on his hands and knees frightening the respectable
zemshchina
boyars by turning his naked buttocks to them.
³⁰
It was to be the shortest lived of Ivan's many marriages.

While Ivan was making up his mind which of the beautiful ladies he wished to marry he was also trying to wriggle out of the humiliating trap into which he had fallen when he fled from Moscow, and shifted the blame for the burning of the city by the Crimeans onto the shoulders of others, making it clear to the army that they could point their fingers at his generals. For a leader of the defence of true Christianity against the Moslems, his hasty withdrawal did not look too good. Several of his commanders including Prince I.F. Mstislavsky were arrested and admitted that they had treasonably assisted the godless Crimean Khan and were thus responsible for the death of many good men and the burning of the city.
³¹
But Mstislavsky was only disgraced, not executed, though he was compelled to secure guarantors who pledged their heads and 40,000 rubles. The accusations against him seem undoubtedly to have been concerted with the Tsar. They hung over his head for a few years and he was required to give fresh sureties. But he was soon given a new command, and appointed
voevoda
of Novgorod, where Ivan was now establishing his residence until the Tatar danger had been conjured
and where parts of the lands of the city were taken into the
oprichnina
.
³²

Indeed Moscow was uninhabitable. It took months to clear away the debris caused by the fire; merchants and craftsmen were imported from the principal urban centres throughout Russia; in October 1571 depopulated Novgorod had to send 100 families of merchants to Moscow. The city was laid out on a new and different plan, paying more attention to fortifications, but it took a long time to rebuild the Kremlin and the new walls.

Soon after Ivan's betrothal, Marfa began to fail; it was said that her mother had given her a magic potion to ensure her fertility. Ivan went ahead with the wedding in the hope that marriage might improve Marfa's health, and it took place on 28 October 1571 in Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda, while Ivan Ivanovich's wedding followed on 4 November. Maliuta Skuratov was the Tsaritsa's attendant with his son-in-law, Boris Godunov, who made his first appearance on a stage he was to occupy so prominently. Marfa died a few days after the wedding. This was a shattering blow to Ivan, not so much because of the loss of a beloved wife, but because obviously she had been poisoned within a fastness which he considered impregnable and where he was surrounded by his loyal servitors. The machinery of investigation was immediately set in motion and Ivan set about finding a new bride and solving the serious religious problem which now faced him: had he, or had he not been truly married to Marfa Sobakina? Had the marriage been consummated?
³³
These were problems which had to be put before a Church Council for ever since the Church Council of 920 in the days of the Emperor Leo VI it had been categorically laid down that no Christian could marry for a fourth time. (This did not stop Leo VI from marrying a fourth wife.)

The Swedish embassy sent in 1569 was still languishing in very straitened circumstances in Murom when at last, starved and ill, after fourteen months in detention, and having lost fifteen of their number to the plague, they were swept off to Klin on 28 November 1571. There Ivan awaited them with his new secretaries of the Office of Foreign Affairs, the Shchelkalov brothers, on the way to Novgorod which was to be his base for renewed war in Livonia and for the attacks he was planning to make on the Finnish coast of Sweden.
³⁴
On 9 January 1572 Ivan addressed the Swedes through the Shchelkalovs in arrogant and undiplomatic language, accusing them of failing to display proper respect to his counsellors, and demeaning his majesty by refusing to open their business to them. The insults allegedly inflicted on his envoy Vorontsov in 1568 were the reasons for their present detention in
Russia, and what was more Ivan was preparing to attack and devastate their country.

On 11 December, a Swedish courier who had been sent to join Juusten in Murom in Russia was ordered to depart for Sweden, to ‘urge the king to admit his guilt and beg for forgiveness’ and to persuade John III to send fresh envoys to Russia to entreat the Tsar not to invade Finland. On 12 January 1572 they were allowed a brief meeting with the Tsar in the street. The Swedish party fell on their knees, while Ivan gave them a complete verbal account of the past relations between Russia and Sweden, notably the way Juusten's embassy

Ivan then put forward a series of extremely offensive demands, namely that John should give up any claim to Reval, pay 10,000 Joachimsthaler in compensation for the attack on the Russian envoys, provide 200 or 300 cavalry or infantry when required, surrender any silver mines he might own along the Finnish border, and accept that the Russian Tsar should style himself Lord of Sweden. Thus far Juusten's account of the Russian demands; the Russian version puts it somewhat differently: John should send a model of the Swedish coat-of-arms which would be incorporated in the Russian royal seal – a clear acknowledgement of Russian overlordship.
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