Fearful Majesty

by Benson Bobrick

  Nevertheless, Philip denied all the allegations, and once again reminded Ivan, in front of the assembled dignitaries: “Your high earthly rank has no control over death, which sinks its invincible teeth into everything. And remember that each person must answer for his own life.”16

  Sentence was passed against him in his absence on November 7. The tsar had wanted him burned at the stake as a heretic, but the clergy successfully united in pleading for his life. However, Ivan was determined to make his deposition as grotesque as possible – perhaps in revenge for the public embarrassment he had suffered at the trial. On the following day, as Philip stood at the altar of the Cathedral of the Annunciation preparing to celebrate his final liturgy, Alexei Basmanov burst in with Oprichniki and loudly proclaimed the verdict from a scroll. Seizing him, they stripped him of his clerical vestments, and roughly buttoning him up in a tattered sackcloth robe, dragged him out of the cathedral and threw him onto a sled. Over the next several days he was transferred from monastery to monastery, ever farther from the capital, until he was finally sequestered in a dungeon at the Otroch Monastery in Tver, where Maxim the Greek had once languished for twenty years.

  Philip’s fortitude immediately gave rise to miracle tales. “And some who went into the dungeon,”17 wrote Kurbsky, “say they found him freed from his heavy bonds, and standing with his hands raised, singing divine psalms; and all his fetters lay on one side. Then Ivan ordered a wild, half-starved bear to be let into his cell and locked in, and on the following morning came himself and had the cell unlocked, hoping to find him eaten by the beast, but again he was found whole, standing in prayer as before.”

  Such tales became ever more precious to the people as the role of the Church declined. “Where is my faith,” Philip had asked, “if I am silent?” But after him the Church was silent for a very long time.

  * * *

  * Whose last name, appropriately, translates as “dirty.”

  * * *

  29

  The Great Messenger

  IN ENGLAND, ELIZABETH had been pondering Ivan’s last letter, as “St. Peter’s Day next” came and went. Ivan had kept the pressure up. Though he continued to exclude all but the English from his White Sea port, he lent new encouragement to various renegades at Narva, where the two men sent out to manage the Russia Company office – Ralph Rutter and Thomas Glover – had begun, in collaboration with a certain John Chappel, to trade privately and undersell their own collective. To justify themselves, they denounced the company “as a close and oppressive monopoly,”1 and Ivan’s advisers, taking up the tune, denounced its merchants as “most greedy cormorants.”2 Alarmed, Elizabeth despatched two emissaries to arrest the mavericks, but the Russians arrested them instead in protest against Elizabeth’s neglect of Ivan’s request for an alliance.

  Ivan’s tactics had their effect. Elizabeth relented and sent the “great messenger” Ivan had asked for in 1567. That messenger was Thomas Randolph, a professional diplomat who for several years had coordinated her Machiavellian policy at the Scottish Court.

  Randolph’s mission was to placate and mislead. He was to assure the tsar of his authority to discuss any subject, and to offer him sanctuary in England, but to refuse the reciprocal offer of refuge in Russia as unnecessary, for “we have no manner of doubt of the continuance of our peaceable government without danger eyther of our subjects or of any forren ennemys.”3 As for “any such legue as is called offensive and defensive,” he was told to “pass those matters with silence,”4 pretending that Jenkinson had never conveyed the request to the queen. Finally, he was to negotiate only “for privilegs to the benefit of our merchants. That is our speciall cause of sendyng you thither.”

  To make out the capable Jenkinson as the bearer of a garbled message on matters of such import was not a sound foundation stone for the embassy. And how was Randolph to pass over in silence what Ivan was bound to bring up?

  Nor was he helped much by the personnel he brought along. There were “several gentlemen” who had signed on, “desirous to see the world,” and for his personal secretary he had engaged the poet George Turberville, who was utterly bored and resentful, and wrote long verse letters home to friends in rhymed poulter’s measure (a kind of doggerel) in which he venomously disparaged every conceivable aspect of Russian life.5 Thus, for example,

  Drink is their whole desire, the pot is all their pride,

  The sobrest head doeth once a day stand needfull of a guide...

  Perhaps the muzhik [peasant] hath a gay and gallant wife

  To serve his beastly lust, yet he will lead a bugger’s life.

  The monster more desires a boy within his bed

  Than any wench, such filthy sin ensues a drunken head.

  The woman to repay her drowsy husband’s debts

  From stinking stove unto her mate to bawdy banquet gets.

  No wonder though they use such vile and beastly trade,

  Sith with the hatchet and the hand their chiefest gods be made. 6

  Fortunately, Randolph also had with him two “trusty wyse” merchants, Thomas Bannister and George Duckett, to advise him on commercial affairs.7 Those affairs were then in a precarious state, which the Russia Company blamed on Elizabeth’s cautious diplomacy. To drive the point home, it furnished Randolph’s ship with rancid provisions, “beere starke sower” and “water so ewle as none could be wurse.”8

  But the voyage was savory compared to the world into which Randolph was about to disembark. Arriving at St. Nicholas in late July 1568, he reached Moscow on October 15, shortly after Philip’s deposition. En route, he wrote to Lord Burghley:

  Of late [the tsar] hathe beheaded no small number of his nobilitie, cawsinge their heads to be layde in the streats to see who durste beholde them or lamente their deaths. The Chanceler [Chelyadnin] he cawsed to be executed openlye, leaving nether his wyff, chyldren or brother alive. Divers other have byne cutt in peeces by his comandemente.… I intende to be wyth hym so sone as I cane speede as I maye… the soner to be owte of hys Countrie whear heads goe so faste to the potte.9

  That was not to be easy. Ivan was angry, placed Randolph under house arrest for several months, and had his diplomatic correspondence opened, read, and tendentiously translated by the English traitor Ralph Rutter, who also screened Queen Elizabeth’s replies. Of Rutter and Glover, Randolph remarked: “In the worlde I am sure ther are no worce excepte that you rake hell to seeke men to serve you;”10 but they had powerful allies. A strong anti-English faction was ascendant at court, and “maynie practyzes are made agaynst us,”11 he advised Lord Burghley, “with as myche cunninge workinge as yf all the divles in hell were confederate to overthrowe and drive us owte of thys country.” About the only sign that the English were not in complete disfavor was a rumor that Ivan was thinking of putting together an English bodyguard – according to “talke in Mosco by men in ther cuppes.”12

  Randolph finally met with the tsar on February 29, 1569, and to his astonishment was received in a friendly manner, as if nothing were amiss. Apologizing for not feting him at a banquet (“I dine not this day openly for great affaires I have”13), Ivan referred him to the “Long Duke” (either Vyazemsky or Nikita Romanovich), with whom Randolph conferred.

  A few days later the Long Duke came to him in the middle of the night, furnished him with some sort of disguise, and led him to “a place farre off”14 where he spoke with Ivan secretly almost until dawn. The next day the tsar departed for Alexandrova Sloboda, “the house of his solace.”15

  Randolph conferred again with Ivan in Moscow in mid-April, and then in June followed him to Vologda, where apparently in return for vague (or not so vague) promises of an alliance he obtained a confirmation of all previous commercial privileges the Russia Company had enjoyed, plus the right to mine for iron at Vychegda, to mint coin at Moscow, Novgorod, and Pskov, to expand their facilities at Narva, and to build a new ropewalk at Vologda. The tsar also accepted all company property and personnel into the Oprichnina – thu
s placing them under his protection.

  These gains were not as solid as they seemed. Randolph’s remonstrances with the tsar about Rutter and Glover had been to no avail, and no sooner was he out of Ivan’s sight than he was told by court Anglophobes to be out of his quarters within three days – “much soner then I cowlde, and was threatened to have my baggage throwen out of doores.”16

  Meanwhile, Bannister and Duckett in going over the company accounts had found evidence of “very lewde and untrew praktises,”17 and advised Lord Burghley that had they not come to Russia when they did “the holle trayde had bene utterlye overthrowen.”18 Nevertheless, they believed the trade could be rebuilt and the company itself, gratified too by Randolph’s efforts, furnished his return voyage with “good beveraige and bysquyte,”19 as he embarked at the end of July with Andrey Savin, the new Russian ambassador to England.

  * * *

  30

  Muscovy’s Neighbors Regroup

  DESPITE HIS UNCOMPROMISING objectives in the Livonian War, Ivan, caught up in his eroticized bloodbaths, had been unable to take advantage of the disarray of his Baltic adversaries whose energies had also been drained by their own domestic troubles and the Northern War. And now that window of opportunity was about to snap shut. Sweden was moving obscurely toward a repudiation of its Moscow alliance (before it could be consummated), Poland and Lithuania inexorably toward union. The Northern War itself was drawing to a close. And the Ottoman Empire was turning its fearsome gaze to the north.

  Erik’s mental disintegration had been apparent for some time. Nor, of course, can it be blamed directly on Ivan. If somebody at court so much as smiled or whispered or cleared his throat, Erik was sure he was being ridiculed; he cast his horoscope repeatedly: it predicted his assassination; he attributed every military setback to the treachery of his commanders, and executed two members of his bodyguard for sorcery: he discovered treason everywhere. As often as Ivan withdrew to his Sloboda, Erik secluded himself in his castle outside Stockholm, and paced back and forth in vengeful agitation through the gloomy halls.

  To keep his own rebellious nobility under surveillance Erik also established Sweden’s first secret police. Whereas the tsar looked to men like Skuratov and Gryaznoy, Erik relied on Joran Persson, a parson’s son and clerk, who had been educated by Melanchthon in jurisprudence at Wittenberg. Persson coordinated Erik’s network of spies and bent the law of Sweden to accommodate his sovereign’s fears. For example, since only those sentenced to death could be tortured, even misdemeanors were designated capital crimes (subject to commutation) so that any prisoner could be racked for information about conspiracies.

  While Erik’s brother, Johan, languished in prison, the king fixed his primary suspicions on Nils Sture (grandson of the popular former regent Sten Sture), and astrologically confirmed his threat to the crown. Arrested and led through Stockholm in a mock-triumphal procession – as Chelyadnin had been placed on the Russian throne – Nils in his humiliation aroused such popular indignation that Erik (who had ceased to know his own mind) released him and appointed him to a top post. Then, just as suddenly, he rearrested and imprisoned him in Uppsala Castle with his father, Svante, and other nobles implicated in a plot. On May 24, 1567 (shortly before the arrival of the Russian embassy to extradite Katerina), Erik entered Svante’s call, fell on his knees, and implored his pardon. A few hours later, with “his hat pulled down low over his brow,” he returned, went directly into Nils’ cell, and stabbed him in a frenzy with a dagger. Running out, he began shouting incoherently, changed into a peasant’s costume, and at nightfall was discovered wandering, quite alone and distracted, through the woods on the edge of town.

  During Erik’s convalescence, government ground to a halt, with a disastrous effect on military operations. The Danes advanced on all fronts, and Rantzau, with a small but picked army, marched from Smaland all the way to Skenninge, burning cities in his wake. Then Varberg fell. The Riksdag urged Erik to free Johan, but the king, in his delirium, was convinced his brother had already deposed him. When Johan was ushered into his presence, each insisted on kneeling to the other in a scene of painful and absurd confusion.

  Insurrection was inevitable. Johan and a cabal of powerful nobles renounced their oath of allegiance, as a rising began in the South and spread through the central provinces to the gates of Stockholm, which were flung open to the rebel army on September 28, 1569. A few days later, Johan was crowned, Erik imprisoned, and the residence of the Muscovite ambassadors was sacked.

  The coup in Stockholm paved the way for a settlement of the long-drawn-out Northern War. All the participants were financially exhausted, and because Johan and Sigismund had many interests that seemed to coincide, peace between Poland and Sweden was swiftly restored. A year later, by the Treaty of Stettin on November 30, 1570, Sweden’s war with Denmark was also brought to a close. Both kingdoms renounced claims to each other’s territory and agreed that Livonian territory now in their possession was eventually to be returned to the German emperor once he had paid for the expense of its defense against Moscow. This was a face-saving device. Everyone knew the emperor’s coffers were empty. The treaty confirmed the status quo.

  In Poland-Lithuania, a new age had also dawned. Just as fear of the Teutonic Knights had once prompted their dynastic union 200 years before, so in the struggle with Muscovy the constituent parts of the loosely knit kingdom coalesced into a more permanent bond. The developing denouement was unmistakable. By the end of 1568, there was a broad consensus that a constitutional union was imperative, especially (since Sigismund had failed to produce an heir) with the impending demise of the dynasty itself. Yet its consummation was arduous. The Polish Diet insisted on the complete incorporation of Lithuania into Poland; in Lithuania the gentry favored parliamentary union, but the lords sought an arrangement that would keep the autonomy of the grand duchy intact.

  Nevertheless, in late December 1568, a joint diet was convoked at Lublin to decide the issue. The Lithuanians expected concessions; the Poles, gratitude. Above all, the Lithuanians resented the desperate position in which they had been placed – in part by the crafty policies of the king who in his capacity as grand duke of Lithuania had committed that division of his realm to the defense of Livonia, without a similar commitment from the Poles. In the words of one lord: “When we left for the diet, the Muscovites were at our back. Yet we had wanted to join with you in love.”1 By mid-February, negotiations had collapsed; whereupon the king, unwilling to see his great life’s work thwarted at the eleventh hour, autocratically decreed on March 5 (in his capacity as grand duke of Lithuania) that the two Lithuanian provinces of Volynia and Podlyashie (with strongly pro-union populations) were now “Polish.” This changed everything. Rather than see Lithuania absorbed into Poland piecemeal, the dissidents capitulated, and on July 1, 1569, the Act of Union was sealed. Henceforth, Poland and Lithuania were to constitute one commonwealth, state, and people, with one currency and foreign policy, ruled by one sovereign, to be elected by a joint assembly of the united nation. That assembly was to meet in Poland, where the king would also be crowned. Though he would no longer be separately installed as grand duke of Lithuania, he would retain the title, while the Lithuanians were to enjoy some measure of autonomy in the preservation of their own law, administration, and army. Thus was the Rzeczpospolita or Commonwealth born. And at the time it appeared to herald the creation of a vast new eastern empire.

  The Ottoman Empire was not pleased by this development, but in its own way, too, felt obliged to respond to the recent growth of Russian might. On the face of it, at least, the Turks had little to fear. Under their most potent sultan, Suleyman the Magnificent, who in 1520 had succeeded Selim the Grim, their domains had spread southward into Egypt, eastward through Baghdad and Tabriz to the Caspian Sea and Persia, and westward into the heart of Europe, along the Balkan Peninsula. In 1521, they had encircled Belgrade, bombarded it with heavy cannon from an island in the Danube, and eventually reduced it by mines. In
1522, they had secured a beachhead on the Mediterranean, at Rhodes, despite the island’s heroic defense by the Knights of St. John. Corsairs took Tunis and Algiers and raided as far north as the British Isles. In 1529, the Turks advanced across Hungary to besiege Vienna itself, and though twice repulsed forced the German Empire to accept a partition of Hungary. This led directly to the fall of Moldavia, and in 1538 the transformation of Wallachia into a vassal state.

  Thus, by 1569, the sultan’s dominions stretched from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean; and as bombastic as his title read – “Shadow and Spirit of God amongst men, Monarch of the terrestrial orb, lord of two continents and of two seas, and of the east and west” – it was accurate enough as contemporary titles went.

  Concurrently, however, Muscovy had become a great northern Russian state, then an empire, and after the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, extended its influence along the northern shores of the Caspian Sea to the River Terek and into the north Caucasus. Scattered Tatar tribes such as the Circassians had come under Russian domination, and the Little Nogays, allied to the Ottomans, had been driven to the right bank of the Volga, toward the shores of Azov. In 1559, Ivan had singed the sultan’s beard with raids into the Crimean peninsula and at Azov at the mouth of the Don; and in 1561 had confirmed his allegiance with the Circassians by marrying the daughter of their chieftain. In 1567, he made a direct bid for authority in the region by building a fortress, garrisoned and equipped with artillery, on the River Terek, on the borders of Turkestan.

  The Turks, hitherto preoccupied with their Persian and Balkan campaigns, were aroused. At the sultan’s court, various Tatar exiles, especially the ousted grandees of Kazan and Astrakhan, agitated for recovery of their homelands, while Muslim merchants and pilgrims complained that the Russians interfered with the route through Astrakhan to Mecca. For the sultan as Caliph or Defender of the Faith, this was a significant issue, together with the religious persecution Tatars were said to be suffering in the occupied lands. Finally, the Turks regarded the Crimea, apparently now threatened, as an indispensable source of men for their campaigns, grain, condiments and slaves for their economy, and as a buffer state between themselves and the growing Slavic dominions to the north. Though Suleyman the Magnificent had repeatedly deferred the “Moscow” question, in 1566 it came to the fore when he was succeeded by Selim II the Sot.