Filaret was strongly committed to a revanchist campaign to recover the western Rus' territories that had been lost to the Commonwealth during the Troubles. Regaining control of Smolensk was especially important to him, for its massive fortress commanded the main road from the frontier to Moscow. The first few years of his government produced no opportunity to undertake this, however; reconstruction had to take priority, there was some opposition to a war of revanche in the Ambassadors' Chancellery, and Filaret was as yet unable to get assurance that Sweden and the Ottoman Empire would join Muscovy in coalition against the Commonwealth. After their defeat at Chocim (1621) the Ottomans had negotiated a peace with the Poles and were making some effort to restrain the Crimean khan from raiding Commonwealth
| Map 21.1. Russia's western borders, 1618 |
territory; Gustav Adolf was interested in alliance with Muscovy, but on terms of commercial concessions too high for Moscow to pay.
But by the end of the decade opportunity had finally presented itself. Gustav Adolf's war against the Poles had ended in an armistice, the Dutch and French having pressed him to sign a peace at Altmark (i629) so he would carry his war into northern Germany instead. But to be free to concentrate his forces in Germany Gustav Adolf now needed a guarantee that the Poles would not breaktheir armistice and drive his garrisons out of Livonia and Ducal Prussia. A Muscovite invasion of eastern Lithuania to reconquer Smolensk could provide the diversion needed to prevent this.
In 1630 Monier, Gustav's ambassador to Moscow, negotiated a commercial agreement of great potential benefit to the Swedish campaign in Germany: Sweden would be given the right to purchase duty-free 50,000 quarters of Muscovite rye annually, for resale at Amsterdam; given that war had disrupted the traditional pattern of the Baltic grain trade, this would yield Sweden a considerable windfall; and in return Sweden would export arms to Muscovy for its invasion of the Commonwealth. The Monier Agreement paved the way for an active Swedish-Muscovite alliance. By i632 this alliance had expanded into a tentative broader coalition with the Ottomans and Crimean Tatars. Filaret's campaign to recover Smolensk thereby became part of a more ambitious coalition war conducted simultaneously on the German, Hungarian and southern and eastern Commonwealth fronts.[55]
In i630 the Muscovite government began issuing large cash bounties to hire mercenary officers in Sweden, the Netherlands and Scotland to train a new foreign formation force (inozemskii stroi) in the new tactics used so effectively by the armies of the United Provinces and Sweden. Six regiments of infantry (soldaty), a regiment of heavy cavalry pistoleers (reitary), and a regiment of dragoons (draguny) were formed from Muscovite peasant militiamen, cossacks, novitiate middle service class cavalrymen and free volunteers from various social categories. These regiments would comprise about half the force operating in the Smolensk theatre in 1632-4. Unlike the traditional formation troops the new regiments were outfitted and salaried at treasury expense - at very considerable expense, in fact, the cost of maintaining just 6,610 soldaty in 1633 exceeding 129,000 roubles.[56] Such a heavy investment in units of European type was necessary, though, because the recent Polish-Swedish war had given the Commonwealth reason to begin expanding and modernising its own foreign formation (cudzoziemski autorament).
The death of Sigismund III in April 1632 was followed by an interregnum which Filaret thought would last at least several months and provide a window of opportunity for war to recover Smolensk. Filaret therefore launched an invasion in August 1632, sending M. B. Sheininto Lithuania with 29,000 men. By October Shein had managed to capture over twenty towns and place Smolensk, his main objective, under siege. But then the Russian offensive stalled. Muddy roads delayed the arrival of Shein's heavy artillery. Wladyslaw IV finally took the throne in February 1633 and immediately began assembling an army of 23,000 men to relieve Smolensk. Because Shein's troops had neglected their lines of circumvallation Wladyslaw's army was able to surround them and place the besiegers under siege in August 1633. In January 1634 Shein sued for armistice in order to evacuate what was left of his army. As Moscow had not authorised this, and because a scapegoat was needed for the collapse of the campaign, the boyar duma charged Shein with treason and had him beheaded.[57]
Continuing the war against the Commonwealth was unthinkable now. The war's chief architect, Patriarch Filaret, had died in October 1633; Gustav Adolf had fallen at Lutzen in November 1632 and Swedish forces in Pomerania were now left more vulnerable to a Polish attack; help from the Ottomans could no longer be expected, for internal revolts and war with Persia had prevented the sultan from carrying out the invasion of Poland scheduled for spring 1634. Above all Muscovy again faced a major threat from the Crimean khanate - not so much from Khan Janibek Girey as from certain Crimean Tatar beys and mirzas hungry for plunder opportunities after several years of harvest failure, heavy inflation, and civil war in Crimea. In the spring and summer of 1632 some 20,000 Tatars ravaged southern Muscovy. In 1633 they came in even greater strength - over 30,000 strong - and this time circumvented the fortifications of the Abatis Line and crossed the Oka into central Muscovy, taking thousands of captives in Serpukhov, Kolomna, Kashira and Riazan' districts. This invasion may have contributed to Shein's defeat at Smolensk by provoking mass desertion by those of his troops whose home districts had come under Tatar attack.
The Ambassadors' Chancellery and boyar duma had already decided to seek armistice in November 1633. But Shein's capitulation at Smolensk made it impossible for them to demand that the Poles should evacuate Smolensk and Dorogobuzh as the price of peace. The armistice signed at Polianovka on 4 June 1634 therefore left the Smolensk, Chernigov and Seversk lands in Polish hands. Filaret's project of recovering the western Rus' territories had failed. For Muscovy there was some partial compensation in Wladyslaw IV's agreement to abandon his claims to the Moscow throne, but it was no longer realistic for Wladyslaw to pursue these claims through war.
The Crimean khanate and the Don cossack host
The peace established by the Polianovka Treaty was undisturbed for two decades. Resumption of war between the Commonwealth and Muscovy was deterred by both sides' recognition that their simultaneously reformed military establishments had put them at rough parity; and after 1634 Wladyslaw IV was preoccupied with Sweden, cossack unrest in Ukraine, pay arrears in his army and his magnates' fears of royal military absolutism.
After the Polianovka Treaty Muscovy could no longer expect active support from Sweden. The cheap Russian grain exports Gustav Adolf had counted on to help subsidise Swedish operations had been cut back; Wladyslaw IV was freerto concentrate his forces against Swedish garrisons on the Baltic coast; and meanwhile most of Sweden's allies against the German Empire were suing for peace with Ferdinand II. Oxenstierna therefore had begun withdrawing Swedish forces from Germany in anticipation of a Polish or Danish attack somewhere on the Baltic front. Queen Christina's other regents were even more alarmed and made several important concessions, including Swedish evacuation of Prussia, in order to obtain a truce with the Commonwealth (the Treaty of Stuhmsdorf, 1635).
55
B. F. Porshnev,
56
A. V Chernov
57
For accounts of the Smolensk war see E. D. Stashevskii,