Fearful Majesty

by Benson Bobrick

  The outbreak of the Livonian War and the Russian capture of Narva had intensified the outcry. It was said in Germany that the arms Elizabeth was buying on the continent were not for her own defense but for reshipment to the tsar. She could scarcely afford to see her continental sources dry up, and (in a letter to the Hamburg Senate, May 6, 1561) denied this “on her royal word.”6 On July 7 she gave identical assurances to the Emperor Ferdinand. Anything to the contrary, she insisted, was “grounded uppon untroth.”7

  But arms (and armament experts) certainly had been shipped, and Elizabeth’s official export ban was meant fundamentally to prevent unauthorized merchants from pursuing such commerce on their own and thereby unduly complicating her foreign policy.

  On the continent, Elizabeth’s roving ambassador, William Herlle, tried to explain what was going on. Some of his explanations were amazingly far-fetched. For example, despite the now-regular commercial traffic between England and Russia by the northern route, he swore that the principal aim of the voyages remained to reach Cathay, with the port of St. Nicholas serving as but “a harbour midway.”8

  The war of words continued. In 1565, Elizabeth promised Frederick of Denmark that English vessels to Muscovy carried only what weaponry and supplies were required for their own defense; but Sigismund August quite saw through her game. And on July 13, 1567, he called her to account. Even if she sent only technicians, he pointed out, “still by their labour… everything which can be used in war of which [the Muscovite] has hitherto been ignorant, will be manufactured in that barbarous empire.”9 And he warned that the fate of “the whole Christian commonwealth” was at stake. In mounting frustration he began to outfit warships at Danzig and hired a squadron of privateers to enforce a blockade of Narva. On March 3, 1568, he again urged Elizabeth to understand that Russia was not just “the temporary enemy of our kingdom,” but “the hereditary foe of all free nations,”10 and then in an astonishing letter dated December 6, 1569, sternly rebuked her with his most sweeping indictment of her policy yet:

  We know and feele of a surety, the Muscovite, enemy to all liberty under the heavens, dayly to grow mightier by the increase of such things as be brought to the Narve, while not onely wares but also weapons heeretofore unknowen to him, and artificers & arts be brought unto him: by meane whereof he maketh himselfe strong to vanquish all others. Which things, as long as this voyage to Narve is used, can not be stopped. And we perfectly know your Majesty can not be ignorant how great the cruelty is of the said enemy, of what force he is, what tyranny he useth on his subjects, and in what servile sort they be under him. We seemed hitherto to vanquish him onely in this, that he was rude of arts, and ignorant of policies. If so be that this navigation to the Narve continue, what shall be unknowen to him? Therefore we that know best, and border upon him, do admonish other Christian princes in time, that they do not betray their dignity, liberty and life of them and their subjects to a most barbarous and cruell enemy, as we can no lesse do by the duty of a Christian prince. For now we do forsee, except other princes take this admonition, the Moscovite puffed up in pride with those things that be brought up the Narve, and made more perfect in warlike affaires with engines of warre and shippes, will make assault this way on Christendome, to slay or make bound all that shall withstand him: which God defend.11

  Thus did Russia’s great confrontation with the West begin, and ideas formed then seem almost to have been cast and set in a mold. “Evil Empire” speeches belong to a long tradition, and Sigismund’s admonition remains the progenitor of all such diatribes. Roughly speaking, its point of view has animated the case against making Western technology available to Russia up to the present day. Every Baltic nation at the time shared Poland’s views. The Russian potential was obvious – as it had been to Chancellor, for example, even before the Livonian War.

  Not surprisingly, some of the English experts suffered qualms. One such was Humphrey Locke, an outstanding military engineer, who had come to Russia to make his fortune. But when he saw what a tyrant Ivan was, he wrote frankly to Lord Burghley, “I could do for the Emperour such things, and make him such engynes for his warres, that he might therebye subdue any prynce that wold stand against him, but the goods is evil gotten, and that proffyt precipitates a man down to hell.”12

  Whether or not Elizabeth gave much weight to such opinions, or believed the king’s apocalyptic admonitions, it is hard to say. But she felt she could not afford to give up the Russian trade.

  The conferences with Savin, in which some of the queen’s Privy Council took part, lasted from July 1569 to May 1570. The English insisted on their right to determine the justice of any war before committing their nation to it, and on their obligation to seek an end to hostilities by negotiation before resorting to force. Savin “insisted on the literal transcription of the convention demanded by the tsar, not considering it compatible with the dignity of his sovereign that the justice of his acts should be questioned by Elizabeth.”13

  In the end, she sent Ivan two letters (both dated May 18, 1570) – one a formal reply to Savin’s embassy, the other secret, which she sealed with her private seal. In the first, in return for his commercial “favour,” she ambiguously agreed to make common cause against “common enemies,” and pledged England would “not ayde, comfort, or suffer anie person or potentate to offend you or your countries, that we maie to our power and by justice with reason staie or impeache.”14

  In her secret communiqué, “whereunto none are privie but our most secreite councell,”15 she reiterated her pledge of refuge and promised him decent maintenance in her realm, but said nothing about reciprocal asylum for herself; and instead of Jenkinson, she dispatched Daniel Sylvester as her new ambassador.

  HISTORIANS HAVE GENERALLY exclaimed over the character of Ivan’s demands in derisive amazement. Without denying his presumption, several things go a long way to explain their curious place in diplomatic history. To begin with, Ivan’s proposal that he and Elizabeth hold friends and enemies in common takes its phrasing from traditional Russian interprincely agreements between equals. Second, there was a notably recent precedent for such an arrangement – in the treaty which the sultan had concluded in 1536 with his “good friend” Francis I, Catholic king of France. That treaty included secret mutual-defense clauses and built on another negotiated in the previous year which bears a remarkable resemblance to the trade agreement England and Russia would later establish between themselves. (The treaty of 1534 had permitted the French to trade on privileged terms throughout the Ottoman Empire, with the Turks enjoying reciprocal privileges in France. It also granted the French merchants religious liberty and “recognized as valid within the Empire the jurisdiction of French consular courts, with a Turkish obligation to carry out consular judgments, if necessary by force.”) It is not impossible that Ivan, who monitored Turkish policy closely, modeled his arrangements with the English on Turkish policy toward the French. The French, it is true, never enjoyed a monopoly comparable to what the English received from the tsar, but neither did the sultan expect as much in return. Should not Ivan get more? He knew the Narva trade had been a boost to the English economy; that the northern trade, by fostering seamanship and the English merchant marine, had accelerated the development of the English Navy, which he had also furnished with cable and masts; and that the trade to Persia (on which the English mistakenly continued to pin great hopes) had already resulted in spices superior to those supplied by the Portuguese. One English lord went so far as to predict that Persian silk would revolutionize the clothing industry, and “gretely sett a worke the subjectes of this realm.”16 Given that naval and economic strength were both indispensable to Elizabeth’s long-range hopes of withstanding an assault from Spain, all this puts Ivan’s requests for armaments in a more equable light. Moreover, his offer of refuge to Elizabeth (generally ridiculed by historians) was not just a face-saving device. Frankly, only a profound disregard of Elizabethan history can so construe it. For though the queen was to prove, in the
end, a sturdy, well-beloved, and long-lived monarch (despite Essex’s rebellion, which was still ahead of her), Ivan may be pardoned for wondering in 1567 whether her hold on the throne was secure. Chancellor had arrived at the Russian Court in 1553 with a letter from a young Protestant king Edward VI (whom Ivan had been told was in good health), but returned two years later in 1555 with a letter from the Catholic monarchs Philip and Mary. The next envoy arrived with a letter from Elizabeth, who had ascended the throne in 1558. Doubtless Ivan (who quizzed foreign diplomats closely) had also learned of the brief and tragic reign of Lady Jane Grey. Now, whether or not he supposed Edward had been poisoned, he knew for certain that in a mere five years two monarchs had gone to the scaffold, England had officially changed its religion twice, had been horribly torn by civil war, and had crowned four heads of state. Was this a stable realm? Moreover, it was just at this time that Elizabeth’s assassination began to be a topic of earnest and sometimes open discussion in the Catholic courts of Europe, even as she was facing domestic rebellion fomented by Catholic extremists in the north: the “Rising of the Earls” of 1569 was just on the horizon, followed by “Dacre’s Rebellion” – both instigated by the Catholic nobility. After 1570, only Sir Francis Walsingham’s remarkable network of spies would repeatedly save her from assassination. All things considered, Ivan’s proposal must have seemed a pretty fair offer to him, timely and just; and this may explain why he reacted with such bitter humiliation when she turned him down.

  Ivan was so angry and disappointed that he wrote Elizabeth a letter (dated October 24, 1570) probably unlike anything else she was ever to receive. He reviewed the whole history of Russian-English relations, which he depicted as one-sided – Russian generosity repeatedly met by English ingratitude – and doubted that Jenkinson had ever conveyed his original message to her. He also claimed she had reneged on Randolph’s promise of alliance. Then he “got personal”:

  And how manie lettres have beene brought to us hither, and not one lettre that hath beene sealed with one seale, but everie lettre hath had a contrarie seale, wich is no princelie fashion…. And wee had thought that you had beene ruler over your lande, and had sought honor to your self and proffitt to your Countrie, and therefore wee did pretend those weightie affaires between you and us. But now wee perceive that there be other men that doe rule, and not men, but boors and marchaunts, wich seeke not the wealth and honnor of our maiesties, but there own proffitt of marchandize. And you flowe in your maydenlie estate like a maide.17

  And seeinge it is so… those bowrish Marchaunts that... but doe seeke their owne wealthes, they shall see what traffique they shall have here; for our cittie of Musko, before their traffique to it, hath not greatly wanted Englysche commodities…. And all those priviledges wich wee have given aforetime be from this daie of none effect.

  Such a letter could probably not have gotten past Ivan’s Foreign Ministry had he not recently liquidated its most outstanding personnel.

  IVAN’S SOMETIME CONTEMPT for the “bowrishnes” of merchants was disingenuous. He himself was the principal merchant of the realm, and had first choice of all imported goods, though he personally did not engage in trade. Moreover, the power of the merchant class and its influence on government policy was considerable. Its interests had been prominently weighed in all of Ivan’s wars; “merchants of credit” had formed part of the welcoming committee at the Kremlin in 1555 for Chancellor, Killingworth, and Henry Lane; reciprocal free-trade agreements had been sought with Sweden in 1557, and with Denmark in 1562; leading wholesale merchants (or gosti) enjoyed a greater status under the law than a courtier or junior boyar (as measured by beschestie fines); and the gosti were the only elite Ivan’s abdication rescript of 1564 did not indict. In 1566, they had comprised about 20 percent of the delegates to the Zemsky Sobor, and as a class had been relatively spared by the Oprichnina terror.

  Though it is said that commerce between Russia and England never amounted to much, for reasons Elizabethan historians might wish to explore, the queen went to extraordinary lengths to keep it up. Not only had she begun to risk her own supply of arms on the continent, but little by little she began to yield to Ivan’s will. When she learned that Ivan had revoked all of the Russia Company’s privileges and confiscated and impounded all its goods, she decided after all to send Jenkinson back. He left in June 1571 with a letter that accredited him as ambassador to “treat very fully all things”18 including “the greatest and most secret affairs,” and in another letter she bent over backward to interpret Anglo-Russian relations in the happiest light. With dignity she defended the use of her private seal “on which are carved the arms and emblems of the Kingdom of England”19; affirmed that Jenkinson had been a faithful envoy between them; doubted that Savin had fully conveyed to the tsar what he had been told; and assured Ivan with pride: “No merchants govern our country, but we rule it ourselves, in manner befitting a Virgin Queen, appointed by the great and good God; nor was ever better obedience shown to any Prince than to us by our people.” As for the trading privileges Ivan had recently revoked, she hoped they would soon be “royally restored as they were royally given,” and as proof of her countrymen’s readiness to serve his interests, reminded him that they had “lately seized the King of Polands piratical ships called freebooters, and delivered them into your hands.” As for things “necessarie for warre,” she said that despite pressure from other powers to desist, the English had “exported merchandize, and every kind of thing to your Empire, to conciliate your goodwill, which we do not allow to be exported to any other Princes in the world.”

  To put such a revelation in writing suggests how far she was prepared to go.

  Overall, she urged Ivan to see the recent strain in their relations as having been due to a misunderstanding, and through Jenkinson to suggest that a de facto alliance between the two powers was already in effect. But when Jenkinson disembarked at St. Nicholas on July 26, 1571, he was immediately advised that his life was in danger and that Ivan’s “displeasure was such that if ever I came into his countrey againe, I should loose my head.”20 Bravely, he proceeded to Kholmogory, only to be quarantined there for several months by another outbreak of plague.

  And there he also learned of an even more frightful calamity.

  * * *

  34

  “A fearfull reveng and spectacle to al generacions”

  SINCE THE BEGINNING of the Livonian War the Crimean Tatars had raided Russian territory every year except 1566; and even during a relative lull in the fighting in the West, the empire had remained vulnerable to attack from the south. Perhaps the Chosen Council had been right after all. Russia had been fighting on the wrong front.

  Devlet Giray, the Crimean khan, had long contemplated a mighty revenge on Moscow. Though his sphere of influence had been considerably diminished by the loss of Kazan and Astrakhan, he had effectively defended Crimean power in the Steppe, and now the terrible internal decomposition of Muscovy at last gave him a chance to strike back.

  The old Oka defense line was obsolete; the new forward line was not only full of gaps, but some of its stronger links had long been neglected during the war. From bitter experience the Muscovites knew what to expect, but most of the veteran civil servants who might have initiated remedial action were dead.

  Time was running out. Late in 1570, intelligence reports from the Crimea suggested renewed conscription on a large scale. In September, a scouting party of 6000 Tatars ominously tested Russian frontier defenses and plundered with impunity a town within the outer line. On January 1, 1571, Ivan appointed Mikhail Vorotynsky (perhaps his finest remaining commander) to head a commission on military preparedness in the South. A number of garrison officers and other personnel concerned in regional defense were summoned to Moscow, formulated several decrees, and appealed to the Duma to act on their recommendations without delay.

  Vorotynsky proposed a largely revamped front line extending from the Lithuanian border all the way to the Volga south of Kazan. New
towns would have to be built to bind the chain of fortifications together, with seventy-three observation posts divided into twelve chains. No post was to be more than two days’ ride from the next, and once Tatars were spotted, smoke signals and outriders were to spread the alarm. Special trails were to be cut through wooded areas for Russian patrols.

  Though these recommendations were promptly accepted, in April, before they could begin to be implemented, Devlet Giray appeared at the head of 40,000 Tatar cavalry on the Russian frontier.

  Much to Ivan’s exasperation, Devlet’s onslaught coincided with the collapse of Magnus’ eight-month siege of Reval. Having pitched his camp before the city on August 21, 1570 (about the time that the plague was beginning to strike the Russian interior), Magnus had promised everything under the sun to get its garrison to surrender. Then he began to batter its walls with artillery. Assault after assault was repulsed, as the Swedes kept the city resupplied by sea. Poland stood with Sweden in this battle, and Magnus got no help from the Danes. On March 16, 1571, he withdrew in humiliation. Taube and Kruse, who had accompanied him as advisers (and may have proposed the “Magnus arrangement”) judiciously fled to Dorpat rather than return to Ivan to explain. Subsequently they escaped to Lithuania, where they wrote their memoirs.

  Magnus stumbled back to Moscow to find his fiancee, Evfimia, dead from poison, and Ivan frantic to meet the Tatar advance.

  As Devlet’s army galloped north, a combined Russian force of 50,000 assembled to meet it. The Zemshchina regiments, under Ivan Belsky and Ivan Mstislavsky, “moved vigorously to close the fords at Serpukhov,”1 as the tsar with the Oprichnina army followed behind. Belsky was stationed at Kolomna, Mstislavsky at Kashira, Vorotynsky at Serpukhov. In overall command, after the tsar, was the Circassian Mikhail Cherkassky.