Ivan the Terrible, page 62
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.
CHAPTER XV Armageddon
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.
17 According to Staden, Land and Government, p. 32, many oprichniki went north as far as the White Sea and requisitioned the daughters of rich merchants and peasants in the name of Ivan. One may wonder if this is not rather an attempt to fulfil orders from the Tsar to arrange a bride-show for him after the death of Maria Temriukovna.
18 R.G. Skrynnikov, Oprichnyi terror, Leningrad, 1969, pp. 27–30; Zimin, Oprichnina, pp. 300ff.
19 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 369.
20 Staden, Land and Government, p. 121.
21 Skrynnikov, Oprichnyi terror, p. 374, Karamzin, Istoria, VIII, notes, p. 103, note 485, gives various versions and dates for the death of Kornily, one of which says that Ivan himself beheaded Kornily having met him outside Pskov.
22 Skrynnikov, Oprichnyi terror, p. 375 rejects the influence of Nikola on the Tsar, and attributes the escape of the city to the fact that Ivan had already before removed several hundred families and distributed them in various towns. But the legend of Nikola lived and thrived in the Chronicles of Pskov.
23 SIRIO, 71, pp. 630ff. The envoys were given a banquet at which Mikhail Temriukovich was present on 7 May (pp. 639–40).
24 Zimin, Oprichnina, p. 432, note 2.
25 SIRIO, 71, p. 677.
26 Skrynnikov, Oprichnyi terror, pp. 395–6.
27 Zimin, Oprichnina, p. 436.
28 See below, Chapter XIX, p. 319.
29 Not all the documents have survived, and I am relying here on V.A. Tumins, Tsar Ivan's Reply to Jan Rokyta, Mouton, The Hague, 1971, and L. Ronchi de Michelis, Ivan il terribile – Jan Rokyta, disputa sul protestantesimo, Claudiana editrice, Turin, 1979. I see no reason to assume that either of them hoped to convert the other. See Tumins, op. cit., p. 479 for the translation into English of the report by Rokyta on Ivan's questions and Rokyta's replies.
30 Parfeny Urodivy is the name under which the Canon of the Dread Angel, attributed to Ivan himself was written and circulated. See below, p. 319.
31 Tumins, op. cit., p. 15. Ivan was in a hurry to get rid of this embassy which was holding up his projected executions held on 25 July 1570.
32 Ibid.
33 Willan, Early History of the Russia Company, p. 112.
34 Tolstoy, England and Russia, pp. 85–6. It should be noted that the spelling of the English letters follows no rules.
35 Ibid., p. 85, 6 May 1570.
36 Ibid., pp. 90ff., no. 25, 18 May 1570, no. 26, same date. The letter is endorsed as seen by Elizabeth's councillors, who sign it on the back, and sealed with the privy seal. The translation by Daniel Sylvester is also sworn to be a true copy.
37 Ibid.
38 Dictionary of National Biography. It is also possible that Bomelius got into trouble with the medical establishment in Cambridge, still strongly opposed to Paracelsian medicine.
39 Skrynnikov, Oprichnyi terror, p. 399.
40 Käppeler, Iwan Groznyi, p. 128.
41 Skrynnikov, Oprichnyi terror, p. 430; Shcherbachev,' Kopengagenskie akty otnosiashchiesia k russkoi istorii', in Soobshchil Yu. N. Shcherbachev, Chteniya, II, p. 34.
42 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, p. 258.
43 They both appear in a Sinodik; according to Schlichting, Tret'yak's wife was summoned before Ivan, who ordered his retainers to strip her; they then tied a rope around her and dragged her off to the river to be drowned. Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 253.
44 On his disagreement with Sylvester in 1553, on religious grounds, see above, Chapter VII, p. 12.
45 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, pp. 248–9 quotes a letter from Ostafy Volovich, a Lithuanian magnate, in which he states that Viskovaty had always been unfriendly and difficult to deal with.
46 See above, Chapter VII, p. 112.
47 Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, p. 272, and H. Graham's comment in note 207.
48 According to one historian, Funikov had been the last to swear allegiance to the baby Dmitry in 1553; he might also have been incriminated by Prince S. Rostovsky, under torture. Was there indeed a link between the executions of 1570 and the appearance of loyalty to the baby Grand Prince in 1553? See Filiushkin, Istoria odnoi mistifikatsii, pp. 79–81. And was there a later link between the publication of A. Malein's translation into Russian of Schlichting's account in 1934, and the onset of the Stalinist terror?
49 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, pp. 248–9. See also p. 251 on popular legends of common people standing up against the Tsar's terror.
50 Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, pp. 259–50.
51 SIRIO, 71, p. 747.
52 Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, 261–2. There are various descriptions of the execution of Viskovaty, each more horrible than the last.
53 Schlichting gives a total of 122, Staden, 130, the Piskarevsky Chronicle, PSRL, XXXIV, 120. See Skrynnikov, Oprichnyi terror, p. 403.
54 Taube and Kruse (op. cit., p. 51) agree on many things with Schlichting in their description of the horrors of 25 July in Moscow.
55 Zimin, Oprichnina, p. 437.
56 The deaths can most conveniently be followed in the study of the Sinodik in Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 529 and 540ff.
57 Dr Arnold was a Belgian physician who came to Russia under English auspices. He is known under various names, often as Dr Arnold Lindsay. H. Graham, introduction to Schlichting, News from Muscovy, pp. 206–7.
58 Schlichting, ‘A Brief Account’, pp. 240–1, notes 116 and 117 by Hugh Graham. Floria accepts Staden's account that Viazemsky died in prison in chains (Ivan Groznyi, p. 35) so does Skrynnikov (Oprichnyi terror, p. 405); Graham says that he was alive in 1594/5.
59 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, p. 253. These were not public executions.
60 Skrynnikov, Oprichnyi terror, pp. 376–7.
61 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, p. 253.
CHAPTER XVI Foreign Policy and the Tatar Invasions
1 Roberts, The Early Vasas, pp. 255–6.
2 H.F. Graham, ed. and tr., ‘Paul Juusten's Mission to Muscovy’, Russian History, 13, no. 1, 1986, pp. 41–92. Juusten also reports that ‘Some 11,000 girls beautifully dressed and adorned (as we were told) came to Novgorod and after 25 October set out for Moscow escorted by some thirty-four persons’. Graham considers the number too high even for Ivan's lust, but this is obviously a reference to the organization of a bride-show, after the death of Maria Temriukovna, which took place on 12 June, while the Swedish embassy was in Novgorod. The figure is clearly wildly exaggerated, but to my mind it always is, and 11,000 may be an echo of the virgins of St Ursula in Juusten's mind. The usually mentioned figures, 1,500 or 2,000, come from a foreign source, Herberstein, who is probably mistaken, and every one else has copied him. This ties in with a report from Staden (see below, Chapter XV, note 18).
3 Ibid., p. 64, note 58 for the official report by the envoy V.M. Vorontsov in Moscow of the efforts made by Duke Karl to stop the looting of their property and to compensate them.
4 T. Chumakova, ed., Ivan IV. Sochinenia, St Petersburg, 2000, pp. 116–18.
5 SIRIO, 129, p. 190.
6 Graham, op. cit., pp. 71ff.
7 Roberts, op. cit., pp. 256.
8 Tolstoy, England and Russia, no. 28, pp. 106ff., no. 28, p. 110. It has been suggested that Ivan is referring to Elizabeth menstruating but the original Russian text does not bear out that suggestion. ‘Boorish’ is the translation made in England for the Russian muzhichii.
9 This was made clear later in May 1575, ‘Instruction to Mr Sylvester’, Tolstoy, op. cit., no. 38, pp. 160ff.
10 Roberts, op. cit., pp. 252ff.
11 Both Skrynnikov and Floria report on the scandalous behaviour of the Russian oprichnina troops in Estonia during the siege of Reval.
12 See above, Chapter IX. It is impossible to determine the date of this execution, but it is attributed by Taube and Kruse (op. cit., pp. 39–41) to 1568. See also Zimin, Oprichnina, pp. 460–1. Skrynnikov (Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 543 and 545) includes Mikhail Cherkassky's name in the Sinodik, in an undated paragraph, under the heading ‘executions in the oprichnina’, and again in the year 7060 (1571).
13 Floria, Ivan Groznyi p. 267; Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 425, 433–4 and 543. Mikhail Cherkassky figures in the Sinodik probably because Ivan discovered that the rumour about his father was not true. Skrynnikov states that he was shot by oprichniki between 16 and 23 May 1571. Taube and Kruse (op. cit., p. 54) say that he was impaled. Zimin, Oprichnina, pp. 460–1 suggests that Ivan got rid of Mikhail's wife and son as the latter might have been a rival for the throne of Russia as the nephew of a tsaritsa, indeed of two tsaritsas, Anastasia and Maria. Seeing that two of Ivan's sons were living this seems to disregard any hereditary claim.
14 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 434.
15 Zimin, Oprichnina, p. 453; Staden (Land and Government, p. 77) says that 30,000 Nogais were in Devlet's army.
16 Taube and Kruse, op. cit., p. 52. In general the Tatar armies evaded pitched battles and preferred skirmishes, advances and sudden withdrawals.
17 Horsey, Travels, p. 272.
18 S.M Seredonin, Sochinenia Dzhilsa Fletchera kak istoricheskii istochnik, St Petersburg, 1891, pp. 75–6. Giles Fletcher was sent as English ambassador to Russia in 1588. See his Of the Russe Commonwealth, p. 65, ob.
19 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo Terrora, p. 427.
20 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, 264; Fletcher, op. cit., p. 65; Floria agrees with Fletcher.
21 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 426.
22 According to another account Ivan received the Crimean envoys in shabby sheepskins and explained that the Crimeans had left him too poor to pay tribute. Ibid, p. 426. (See also the agreement with the Ottoman Turks, above, Chapter XIV, p. 239 and L. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1997, p. 50.)
23 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 446.
24 Zimin, Oprichnina, p. 462.
25 Ibid., p. 432; see also Taube and Kruse, op. cit., p. 22 who point to Ivan's new doctor, Bomelius, as the instigator of the new terror. See also ibid., Roginski's, introduction, p. 22. There is a rumour that Ivan poisoned Maria who, it will be remembered, died on 6 September 1569. There is possibly here again a connexion with rumours that Ivan was then contemplating marriage with Elizabeth, and she would certainly not have accepted if he were married. See Calendar of State Papers, Elizabeth 1566–8, no. 2414, Randolph to Cecil, 12 August 1568.
26 It may well have been at this time that Portico commissioned a Latin translation of Schlichting.
27 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 431–2; B.N. Putilov and B.M. Dobrovol'sky, eds, Istoricheskie pesni XIII–XVI vekov, Moscow, 1960, p. 655. M. Perrie, The Image of Ivan the Terrible in Russian Folklore, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 209ff. where translations of two versions are published, with a very perceptive commentary.
28 Taube and Kruse, op. cit., p. 55. Staden has an obscure and undated report of oprichniki being sent out to ‘requisition the daughters of all the rich merchants and peasants in unfortified settlements, pretending that the Grand Prince wanted them in Moscow. If a peasant or a merchant gave money, his daughter was excluded from the list as though she were not pretty’ (Land and Government, pp. 32–3).
29 Taube and Kruse, op. cit., p. 55.
30 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 431.
31 Mstislavsky was denounced by a Tatar tsarevich in Russian service who had attempted to desert to Devlet Girey. Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, p. 429.
32 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, pp. 267–8.
33 It is likely that it had, as the whole point of holding the wedding when Marfa was ill was that semen was regarded as a cure for female ailments (not only in Russia).
34 Graham, ‘Paul Juusten's Mission’, Russian History, 13, no. 1, 1986, p. 78.
35 Ibid., pp. 76ff., and notes, and SIRIO, 129, pp. 216–18; see also Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 445–6.
36 Graham, ‘Paul Juusten's Mission’ pp. 81ff. See also S.N. Bogatyrev, Pavel Juusten, Posol'stvo v Moskoviu, 1569–1572, Helsinki, 2000, pp. 153ff. Before Juusten returned to Stockholm the Shchelkalovs and one of the boyars inquired of him about the age and appearance of John III's remaining sister, Elizabeth, and suggested that the new Swedish envoys should bring a portrait of her when they came.
37 Morgan and Coote, Early Voyages, II, pp. 297–8.
38 See account in R. Hakluyt, The Discovery of Muscovy, 1589, Cassell, London and New York, 1904.
39 Tolstoy, England and Russia, pp. 148ff., for the Russian text dated 20 August 1574 which refers back to 1570; at p. 150: ‘a ty to delo polozhila na svoikh boyarakh a sama esi dlia devecheskogo chinu togo dela ne delala’. English text pp. 153ff.
40 Morgan and Coote, op. cit., II, pp. 335–8.
41 Tolstoy, op. cit., pp. 128ff. and 140ff.; Willan, Early History of the Russia Company, pp. 117ff. R. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations of the English Nation, II, Dent, 1936, pp. 136ff., dated after July 1572. Jenkinson had also raised a number of specific problems of the Russia Company (unpaid debts, arrests of interlopers, compensation for losses in the fire of Moscow). Not all were granted and in any case they were left for discussion with the secretary.
42 Willan, op. cit., pp. 123ff. These were probably Scotsmen.
43 Skrynnikov, Sviatiteli i vlasti, pp. 247ff.
44 Taube was given a barony. Was he the ancestor of the legal historian?
45 A.M Kurbsky, Correspondence, p. 243.
46 Likhachev and Lur'e, eds, Poslania Ivana, p. 193.
47 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 456–7. Staden, Land and Government, p. 35.
48 Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 436–7.
49 Dembkowski, The Union of Lublin, pp. 197ff.; Floria, Russko-Polskie, pp. 46–7.
50 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, p. 275. Solov'ev, Istoria Rossii, III, p. 703. There is some doubt whether Ivan actually fulfilled these requirements, which were in any case lifted while he was on campaign. But see also A. Possevino, The Moscovia of Antonio Possevino, SJ, tr. H. Graham, University of Pittsburg, 1977, p. 48, who states that Ivan was no longer taking communion in 1582 as he was under a penance imposed on him for marrying four times. Karamzin says Koltovskaia was the daughter of a merchant, but this is denied by other historians who say she was the daughter of a minor noble.
51 Floria, Ivan Groznyi, p. 282. Ivan had sent an envoy to Constantinople in April 1571, making certain concessions to Turkish demands and demanding in return that the Crimeans should cease attacking him. A Turkish reply was received in December 1572, in which the Sultan demanded the cession of Astrakhan' to him, of Kazan' to the Khan of Crimea, and that Ivan should become the Sultan's vassal. It came too late.
52 Staden, op. cit., p. 53.
53 R.I. Frost, The Northern Wars, 1558–1721, Longman, London, 2000, p. 50.; for a description see Skrynnikov, Tsarstvo terrora, pp. 447–8, and Floria, Ivan Groznyi, pp. 281ff.
54 Ibid., pp. 282–3.
CHAPTER XVII The End of the Oprichnina, and the Succession to the Polish-Lithuanian Crown
1 S.B. Veselovsky, ‘Dukhovnoe zaveshchanie tsaria Ivana, 1572’, in Issledovania po istorii oprichniny, Moscow, 1963, pp. 302ff.
2 See below for a fuller discussion. Zimin, Oprichnina, pp. 478ff. points out that Ivan IV thought he had completed the unification of Russia and therefore no longer needed the oprichnina. Zimin censures Ivan for building the unity of Russia on the bones of so many of its people, mired in despotism and violence. On centralization see, for instance, award of an appanage to Bogdan Aleksandrovich of Moldavia when he was expelled from his throne by the Ottomans in 1574.
