However, this was the deceptive weakness of a no-man's-land situated between several strong predators, all of whom coveted its ports, its wealthy cities, and its first-class fortresses; all waiting for one of the others—the stupidest—to take the initiative. For the very fragmentation and decentralization of Livonia were, paradoxically, its main strength. It had no one nerve center at which to strike. Each fortress had to be conquered separately, and there were hundreds of fortresses. A war could not be brought to an end either by a swift attack or by a pitched battle; Livonia was a hopeless quagmire, capable of absorbing the bones of a whole generation of would-be conquerors. The one who struck first not only risked losing prestige by openly taking on the aggressor's role, but would also unite against himself a strong coalition of other predators, who would reap the spoils at the expense of the first under the guise of justice. This was why to act against the Livonians was equivalent to acting against Europe—Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, the Hanseatic cities, and the emperor who stood behind them. Under the conditions of the sixteenth century, this signified a world war.
Ivan III would rather have left to someone else the dubious pleasure of beating his head against the impregnable walls of Riga and Revel', and then taken the choicest morsel from the paws of the exhausted victor. He prepared for his descendants territorial positions suitable for just such a strategy. The only Livonian prize that really interested Muscovy was the first-class port of Narva, situated at the mouth of the Narva River, on the other bank of which Ivan III had providently built a Russian city named for himself (Ivangorod), and the taking of Narva was a question of one good bombardment, of one frontal attack (as happened on May 11, 1558). It was not necessary to challenge all of Europe and involve oneself in a twenty-five-year war—the more so since Muscovy was absolutely unprepared for such a war.
"Among the . . . Lithuanians, not to speak of the Swedes, it was easy to note a greater degree of military skill than among the troops and generals of Muscovy ... in almost all of the major confrontations with Western opponents on an open field, the Muscovite troops lost. . . . Tsar Ivan understood this excellently, if not better than anyone else," admits S. M. Solov'ev.[123] "The feudal militia of the Muscovite tsar could not hold their own in hand-to-hand combat against the regular armies of Europe. It was necessary to seek an enemy on their own level, such as the Crimean and Kazan Tatars," M. N. Po- krovskii confirms.[124] More surprisingly, R. Iu. Vipper, too, says the same thing: "In the conquest of the Volga region, the Muscovite mounted armies were engaged in battle with troops like themselves, and used extremely simple strategy and tactics. It was quite another matter to fight a Western war, where they had to confront the complex military art of the commanders of European mercenary armies: the Russian troops were almost always defeated on the open field."[125]Even S. V. Bakhrushin, who composed a no less triumphant hymn to Ivan the Terrible and the Livonian War than Vipper, admits with a sigh that "Russia in the sixteenth century was not yet prepared for a solution of the Baltic problem."
In the light of this unanimity, the conclusions which the fans of Ivan the Terrible draw from their premises seem quite insane. "One is therefore the more struck," Bakhrushin exclaims, for example, "by the penetration with which Ivan IV perceived the basic vital task of Russian foreign policy, and concentrated on it all the powers of his state."[126] Evidently the tsar consciously threw "the greatest empire in the world" into an obviously doomed adventure—or, as Vipper expresses it, "into the abyss of extermination"—merely in order to demonstrate his perspicacity to posterity. By involving the country in a national catastrophe, it seems, he demonstrated his statesmanship, and, Bakhrushin asserts, "anticipated Peter, and showed considerably more political penetration than [his opponents]."
6. The Last Compromise
"And again and again we importuned the tsar and counselled him either to endeavor to march himself or to send a great army at that time against the horde [i.e., the Crimea]," writes Andrei Kurbskii. "But he did not listen to us, for his flatterers, those good and trusty comrades of the table and the cups, his friends in various amusements, hampered us while helping him; and in the same way, he sharpened the edge of the sword for his kinsmen and fellows more than for the heathen."[127]
The Government of Compromise understood that its life was at stake. For if even later historians knew that "in almost all of the major confrontations with Western opponents on an open field the Muscovite troops lost," this must have been all the more striking to the participants in these confrontations. And they could by no means be consoled by abstract considerations to the effect that their tsar was preparing to demonstrate his penetrating genius to posterity. For them the "turn on the Germans" meant, quite simply, disaster. And there is a reason to think that the tsar, too, understood this perfectly. Even in the years of the Oprichnina, he exclaimed in a letter to Kurbskii: "How can I not remember the endless objections of the priest Sil'vestr, of Aleksei [Adashev], and of all of you to the campaign against the German cities. . . . How many reproachful words we heard . . . from you, there is no need to recount in detail!" Further on, the tsar frankly admits: "Whatever bad thing happened to us, it was all became of the Germans" (he is speaking of the bitter conflict and confrontation which had arisen in the government over his decision to "turn against the Germans").
Apparently the government was trying to present the tsar with a fait accompli: it began a war in the South as early as 1556 with the Crimean expedition of the d'iak (civil servant, secretary) general Rzhevskii, who traveled down the Dnieper all the way to Ochakov, defeated the Tatars, seized their cattle and horses, and got away safely. The effect was electric. For the first time, the Tatars had been paid back in their own coin. Devlet Girei, who had been preparing to move against Moscow, immediately beat a retreat, and even agreed to release the Muscovite prisoners taken in the previous year's campaign. It was now that the tsar was "importuned and counselled . . . again and again" that the time had come for a new Ugra. But Ivan IV wanted to make war on Europe and not on the Tatars. And apparently he found strong allies in the Muscovite establishment, and perhaps in the government itself. At the begining of 1558, Adashev seems to have decided on a compromise: he tried to make war on two fronts. Despite the fact that, contrary to the traditional methods of Ivan III, no diplomatic or political preparations had been made for a war on Livonia, troops were dispatched against both Livonia and the Crimea.
After taking Narva, however, the Russian generals in Livonia halted their advance. "I had to send letters to you more than seven times before you finally took a small number of people and only after many reminders captured more than fifteen cities," Ivan the Terrible complained indignantly afterwards. "Is this a sign of your diligence, that you take cities after our letters and reminders, and not on your own initiative?"[128] At the first opportunity, when the king of Denmark offered to act as intermediary, Adashev petitioned for a truce with Livonia and got it.33
In the South, reminders and letters from the tsar were unnecessary. The war developed spontaneously there, and new allies joined in unasked—the Cossacks, refugees from Central Russia who wandered over the endless "Wild Field" and spent their energies and enterprise in banditry. Not only the Don Cossacks were involved. Hearing of the unexpected new prospects, the "chief of the Ukraine" and leader of the Dnieper Cossacks, Prince Dimitrii Ivanovich Vishnevet- skii made an appeal to the tsar, declaring that he would be willing to repudiate his oath to Lithuania and enter Ivan's service if he were allowed to lead the Crimean campaign. A chain reaction developed. Not even waiting for the tsar's approval (he would never receive it), Vishnevetskii took the Tatar city of Islam-Kermen' by storm, and carried off its cannons to the camp which he had built on the island of Khortitsa in the Dnieper. Two Circassian princes in the service of Muscovy took two more Tatar cities, and the khan proved powerless to recover them. His attempt to storm Khortitsa ended, in S. M. Solov'ev's words, with his "being forced to retreat with great shame and loss."34 In the spring of 1559, at the very moment of the truce with Livonia, Danilo Adashev, Aleksei's brother, seized two Turkish ships at the mouth of the Dnieper, made a landing in the Crimea, laid waste the settlements, and freed the Russian prisoners—and again the khan was unable to do anything about it.35