Ivan the Terrible (83 page)

45
See Donnert,
Der livländische Ordensritterstaat und Russland
, pp. 236ff.

46
Tolstoy,
England and Russia
, p. 34, 10 April 1567. There is some confusion about the date of Jenkinson's visit and whether he made one journey or two to Russia in 1566/67. See articles by H.R Huttenbach, ‘Antony Jenkinson's 1566 and 1567 missions to Muscovy from unpublished Sources’,
CASS
, vol. 9, no. 2, Summer 1975, pp. 179–203. Huttenbach argues that Jenkinson returned to England in autumn 1567, before the sea route became impossible and sailed again to Russia in the spring. He bases his case on the supposed existence of a missing letter from Queen Elizabeth which can only be fitted in by postulating an unmentioned journey by Jenkinson. On the problem of dates see also note 7 above.

47
This interview is not mentioned in any of the contemporary dispatches because its subject was so secret, and it is referred to for the first time in a personal note sent by Ivan to Jenkinson's interpreter, and later himself an envoy, Daniel Sylvester, printed in Tolstoy, op. cit., pp. 179ff. No. 39 and No. 40, dated 29 November 1576.

48
Likhachev and Lur'e,
Poslania Ivana Groznogo
, pp. 417ff, at p. 422, from Prince I.D. Bel'sky. According to Jenkinson, Tolstoy, op. cit., p. 26, and to the Polish chronicler Martin Belskii, Kozlov was seized and impaled. Zimin,
Oprichnina
, pp. 267–8.

49
Tolstoy, op. cit., p. 38, Jenkinson, November 1567; Ivan expected to hear Elizabeth's reply by St Peter's day (29 July or another St Peter?).

50
See above, pp. 213.

51
Sigismund had written to Elizabeth directly to explain his interference with navigation to Russia, not only because of its effect on him but because it affected religion and the whole of Christianity. See Tolstoy, op. cit., pp. 30–3, three letters of 13 July 1566, 13 March 1568 and 6 December 1569.

52
Soviet historians e.g. Zimin, reject the assertion that the service gentry taken into the
oprichnina
were of baser birth, but both Staden and Schlichting assert that they were men of little substance and no personal qualities. Staden was a German and not precisely savoury.

53
S.A. Kozlov and Z.V. Dmitrieva,
Nalogi v Rossii do XIX veka
, St Petersburg, 1999, conveniently sums up taxation policy (pp. 28ff).

54
Donnert, op. cit., pp. 236ff.

55
A Russian embassy to Poland–Lithuania and a Polish-Lithuanian embassy to Moscow had continued useless discussions on terms for a truce, which are recorded in
SIRIO
, 71, pp. 521–54 and 554–63. Donnert, op cit., at p. 236, argues that the fact that his boyars refused to go over to Sigismund was considered by Ivan as a great victory over Kurbsky's treasonable efforts to win over Russian nobles to Sigismund's side.

56
It is near Minsk, and now in Belarus.

1
See H.E. Dembkowski,
The Union of Lublin – Polish Federation in the Golden Age
, Columbia University Press, New York, 1982, pp. 82ff. and for the financial burden on Lithuania, pp. 119ff.

2
Ibid., pp. 117ff.

3
See e.g. Staden,
Land and Government
, pp. 20ff, where the chronology is all wrong.

4
SIRIO
, 71, p. 563. Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 316, suggests that the real reason for the withdrawal was news of a new plot in the
zemshchina
, led by Fedorov, which Ivan had received. Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 317, also mentions the plotting of the boyars, declaring that some thirty committed themselves in writing. See also Floria,
Ivan Groznyi
, p. 218.

5
Zimin,
Reformy,
pp. 277–9.

6
Ibid., Staden,
Land and Government
, pp. 19–20.

7
Schlichting, quoted from Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 317. Schlichting's dating of the event to 1567 is correct. He also suggests that the conspiracy was betrayed by Vladimir of Staritsa himself, who obtained the names of the conspirators from Fedorov, and the other boyars and passed them on to Ivan. See also Floria,
Ivan Groznyi
, p. 217.

8
Staden,
Land and Government,
pp. 21 and 24

9
Zimin,
Oprichnina
, p. 274, note 1.

10
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora,
pp. 308ff and 319. Schlichting states that the great Russian nobles were completely disunited and that Staritsky, Mstislavsky and Bel'sky asked Fedorov for a list of the conspirators on the grounds that others might wish to join, and then handed it over to Ivan. Indeed. Skrynnikov suggests that this was a
provokatsia
by Ivan, deliberately making use of Staritsky to ensure betrayal of the plot. See Schlichting, ‘News from Muscovy’, pp. 271–2 and Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, pp. 222–3, note 59.

11
Graham's note 61 on Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 223.

12
Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 223.

13
But did Kurbsky get his information by reading Schlichting's account in Poland, or even personally from him?

14
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 325. Skrynnikov argues that the Church Council was not supported by the Boyar Council.

15
Ibid., pp. 325–6.

16
Ibid., p. 324.

17
Taube and Kruse, ‘Poslanie loganna …’, pp. 39–41. The authors accuse Ivan of having the sixteen-year-old wife of his brother-in-law, Mikhail Temriukovich Cherkassky and her six-month-old son killed, laying the bodies in the yard of his palace where her husband was bound to pass by her body every day, but his dating seems rather unlikely. On 19 July 1568 Ivan sent his henchmen to collect as many women and girls as they could, of all classes, throw them into waggons and remove them from Moscow (probably to Aleksandrovskaia Sloboda); he then chose a few for himself and left the others to his
oprichniki
, and for six weeks he roamed around Moscow, burned and killed animals and everything that breathed. The women had to run around naked after chickens and were then shot. When he had finished with them, they were put back in the waggons and those who had survived were sent home to their husbands. There are echoes here of the harassment of Fedorov's lands and people, and a number of fantasies seem to have been merged together. But for once a date is given.

18
See Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora,
pp. 529ff., for a list of the killed which includes many retainers of Fedorov. Some were killed with swords or an axe; the lower orders were blown up with gunpowder. See also Taube and Kruse, ‘Poslanie loganna …’, pp. 40–1.

19
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 337. This was the end of the Cheliadnins.

20
Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, pp. 224ff and see note 67; Taube and Kruse (p. 40) report that Ivan ordered his brother-in-law Mikhail Temriukovich Cherkassky to cut up his treasurer Khoziain Iur'evich into little pieces together with his wife and sons and two daughters, and to leave them lying in the open. (This sounds like a confused echo of the tale that Mikhail Temriukovich's wife and daughter were killed and left lying in the open.)

21
Staden confirms Schlichting's and Kurbsky's account with the addition that the naked peasants’ wives were ‘forced to catch chickens in the fields’ (p. 21). One is sometimes led to wonder whether Staden read Schlichting's ‘A Brief Account’, and particularly whether Kurbsky had access to it in Lithuania in view of the similarity of their reports. But the
Sinodiki
do confirm much of what they write. See above all the careful summary by Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, pp. 529ff, where he gives three accounts of the extermination of Fedorov's people, and places Fedorov's death on 11 September 1568. Those killed are not always mentioned by name, but just lumped together as e.g. ‘twenty of Fedorov's people’; in a number of cases their nameless wives and children are included. Many had their hands cut off and presumably died as a result, since on 11 September 1568 twenty-six people are stated in a
Sinodik
to have died as a result of this amputation.

22
On the white cowl, see Chapter IX.

23
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora,
p. 327, quoted from the life of the Metropolitan Filipp, dating from the 1590s and written in the Solovki monastery. See ibid., p. 324 and n. 159
.
Archbishop German Polev of Kazan’, who had once protested to Ivan about the
oprichnina
was one of the few to support Filipp. Zimin,
Oprichnina
, p. 250.

24
Roberts,
The Early Vasas,
p. 239, footnote. However, according to Russian accounts their envoys were manhandled and robbed in Sweden.

25
Ibid., pp. 236ff.

26
SIRIO
, 129, pp. 164 and 197.

27
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 352 who argues that this enabled Ivan to benefit from the capital of the English company for his
oprichnina
activities. There is no evidence of such investment in Russia by the Russia Company and it seems highly unlikely.

28
Morgan and Coote,
Early Voyages,
I, p. xlix.

29
Tolstoy,
England and Russia
, p. xxiii; it is possible that Ivan may also have been affected by the calumnies circulated in Moscow by interlopers against the agents of the Russia Company.

30
Ibid., pp. 43 and 44ff., 26 June 1568, delivered February 1569.

31
Ibid., pp. 68, the Tsar to Elizabeth, 20 June 1569; pp. 71ff., contemporary translation into English of Ivan to Elizabeth of 20 June 1569.

32
Willan,
The Early History of the Russia Company
, p. 104.

33
Ibid., pp. 107–9; Morgan and Coote, op. cit., II, p. 184.

34
Willan, op. cit., pp. 112ff; Morgan and Coote, op. cit., II, pp. 280–3 and Tolstoy, op. cit., pp. 74ff. It is not clear whether Savin negotiated only with the Russia Company or also with the English government. Ivan was worried about the accuracy of the translation of documents from English in the original which he insisted on, into Russian, and there was correspondence on the question between Cecil and the Russia Company, Tolstoy, op. cit., pp. 82–4. The draft treaty and the permission to the Russia Company were both written in Russia and carried to England by Savin (ibid., p. 90).

35
Floria,
Ivan Groznyi
, p. 260.

36
Kurat, ‘The Turkish Expedition to Astrakhan' in 1569’,
SEER
, 40, no. 94, December 1961, pp. 7–23. See also for the Turkish background, A. Bennigsen and C. Quelquejay, ‘L'expédition turque contre Astrakhan en 1569’,
Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique
, 8, Paris, 1967, pp. 427–46.

37
There was also a plan to cut a canal at Suez (Kurat, ‘The Turkish Expedition to Astrakhan' in 1569’, p. 13, note 27, from the Ottoman Archives).

38
Floria,
Ivan Groznyi
, p. 262.

39
The tribute continued to be paid until the reign of Peter the Great.

40
Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora
, p. 355.

41
In contemporary German flyleafs and brochures Staritsky is often called the Tsar's brother; so he is in Russian sources because in Russian a cousin is a ‘brother of second birth’ (
dvoiurodnyi brat
). Ivan can thus be accused of fratricide. See A. Käppeler,
Ivan Groznyj im Spiegel der ausländische Zeitschriften seiner Zeit. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Westlichen Russlandsbilde
, Bern and Frankfurt am Main, 1972. Vasily Vladimirovich Staritsky died in 1574.

1
See above, Chapter IX.

2
According to some authors, after the fall of Sylvester and Adashev.

3
Staden,
Land and Government
, pp. 17–18.

4
See Dembkowski,
The Union of Lublin
, and particularly Chapter IX, pp. 175ff. Titles were also reaffirmed. There were no Polish princes, but the Lithuanian Gediminovichi, like the Riurikovichi, were all princes.

5
To use Bogatyrev's word.

6
See above, Chapter IX, pp. 155–6.

7
Staden, op. cit., p. 32.

8
Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 258.

9
SIRIO,
129, pp. 124ff.

10
See Skrynnikov,
Tsarstvo terrora,
p. 363, who observes that the figure of 90,000 is given in the text of Taube and Kruse edited by Roginski, but the more accurate edition is that of G. Hoff, published in 1581 in Germany which I have not been able to consult.

11
A particular form of corporal punishment used to force debtors to pay their debts.

12
Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 236 and see Taube and Kruse, ‘Poslanie Ioganna …’, p. 49 and Floria,
Ivan Groznyi,
pp. 240ff.

13
Floria,
Ivan Groznyi
, p. 240. Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 236.

14
Floria,
Ivan Groznyi
, pp. 43–5. I have drawn extensively on Skrynnikov, Floria and on the German witnesses, Staden, Schlichting (in Hugh Graham's translation and notes) and Taube and Kruse in this account.

15
Skrynnikov points out that Kurbsky was also highly regarded in Vienna at this time and was negotiating with Maximilian II through the Abbé Cyrus for a Russo/Habsburg alliance against the Porte. Nothing came of it. See Ia. S.Lur'e, ‘Donesenia agenta Maksimiliana II abbata Tsira o peregovorakh s A. M. Kurbskim v 1569’,
Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1957,
Moscow, 1958, p. 456.

16
Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 238; Zimin,
Oprichnina
, p. 300, note 4. Floria,
Ivan Groznyi
, p. 242, adds that new evidence of the events in Narva has recently been found in a German pamphlet, apparently by an eyewitness.