The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький

Konstantin Ostrojhski was despatched against the enemy with a force of 30,000 men; a force which, though numerically far weaker than that at the disposal of Vasili, was better equipped, better provided with artillery, and, above all, better generalled. In the latter department the Moskovites sustained a severe loss by the defection of the unstable Glinski, who, disappointed in his expectation of obtaining the government of Smolensk in return for services rendered, made arrangements for deserting to the cause of his former sovereign. Sigismund was not loth to receive the strayed lamb back to his fold, but a misfortune, in the shape of a well-mounted band of the Grand Prince’s troops, overtook the transient pan before he had reached the Polish lines. Vasili rewarded his treason with rigorous imprisonment, deeming, perhaps, that he would be more valuable as a hostage than as a corpse. The two armies now faced each other from either bank of the Dniepr; the Russians were about 80,000 strong, and had, in addition to superiority of numbers, the further advantage of being on the defensive. This advantage, however, was thrown away by the inaction of the Moskovite voevodas, who stood helplessly looking on while Ostrojhski threw a bridge across the river and safely brought over his heavy artillery. 1514On the 8th September118 at Orsha, on the left bank of the Dniepr, was fought a terrific battle, in which the hordes of Moskovy went down in hopeless rout before the well-armed knights and well-served artillery of the Polish-Lit’uanian army. Allowing for exaggeration, the losses on the side of the vanquished were enormous. Sigismund, in the exultant letters he despatched to Pope, Cardinals, and the Doge of Venice, announcing the victory, estimates the Moskovite slain at 30,000, and particularises a large number of distinguished prisoners.119 The disaster to the Moskovite arms roused the spirit of the Polish faction within the walls of Smolensk. The time-serving Bishop, who had been largely instrumental in the surrender of the town to Vasili, flattered himself that he might again dispose of its destinies, and, with the connivance of several boyarins, sent an invitation to the Polish general to come and possess himself of the place. The Moskovite voevoda, a member of the princely family of Shouyskie, was not, however, a quantité négligeable in the city, and the wily ecclesiastic’s schemes were sharply checkmated. When Ostrojhski came before the gates of Smolensk he might mark a grisly row of corpses strung up on the battlements, the centre of interest for flapping bands of crows and daws; these were the bodies of his luckless co-operators, who had been seized and executed by order of the governor, with the exception of Varsonof, whose equally guilty but more holy person was secured in a prison. The Polish hetman, thwarted in his hopes of peaceable possession, was likewise unsuccessful in an attempt to carry the city by assault, and the brilliant victory of Orsha had no more substantial result than the re-occupation of a few border posts.

      1515

      The death of Mengli-Girei and the accession of his son Makhmet to the Krim khanate, scarcely affected the relations between Moskva and the Horde, for the new Khan’s influence had for some time been dominant. Neither Vasili nor Sigismund could count on the support or even the neutrality of the Tartar chief, who took advantage of the hostility between Lit’uania and Moskva to ravage the lands of each with perfect impartiality. Another shift in the political balance deprived the Grand Prince of a more exalted though equally unreliable ally; a new family compact had been patched up between the Kaiser and the Kings of Hungary and Poland, and Maximilian was now as anxious to compose the quarrel in the east as he previously had been to inflame it. The continued successes of the Turks could not fail to inspire uneasiness in a prince who was scheming to acquire a preponderance in the lands of south-east Europe, and the Emperor wished to engineer a powerful alliance, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Polish, against this undesirable neighbour. The idea was obviously unworkable as long as Moskva hung threateningly on the Polish flank, hence the solicitude which the Habsburg felt to bring about a peace between the two Slav powers. For this end an Imperial ambassador, one Sigismund, Baron von Herberstein, left Germany at the end of 1516 on a mission of mediation to the Moskovite Court, where he arrived in April the following year, after a heroic journey over innumerable lakes and marshes “slippery with snow and ice,” over frozen rivers, and, towards the end, across ice rendered rotten by melting snow-water; much of the “way” lying too through a country desolated by skirmishing bands of Poles and Russians. 1517The chances of successful negotiation were not improved by an autumn campaign which Ostrojhski carried on, with disastrous result, in the district of Pskov; the small burg of Opotchka, valiantly defended by Vasili Saltikov, held out for fifteen days against the vigorous assaults of Polish, Lit’uanian, and Bohemian troops, and was eventually relieved, on the 18th October, by two converging Moskovite forces which drove Ostrojhski off the field. Notwithstanding this side-play the Polish envoys had joined Herberstein at Moskva, and were seeking to arrange a peaceable understanding between the Grand Prince and their master. Each side put forward absurdly unwarranted claims—Vasili, for instance, stipulated for the cession to Moskovy of Kiev and Polotzk, among other places, while the Poles demanded, in addition to Smolensk, a half-share of Novgorod, Pskov, and Tver. The real bone of contention was Smolensk, and as neither party would bate their pretension to the possession of that city, the negotiations came to an abortive end in November.

If Herberstein’s efforts for the termination of the war were not crowned with success, his long and arduous journey was in other respects by no means barren of result. It is mainly owing to observations made on this, and on a subsequent embassy, that a picture has been preserved of the life at that gloomy Court, which was partly Asiatic, partly Archaic European.120 In the Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, Maximilian’s ambassador set forth to the western world his experiences in the remote and desolate region beginning to be known as Muscouvie, much as an explorer in a more travelled age would retail the account of his wanderings in Central Africa. The Moskva of Vasili Ivanovitch was a curious compound of primitive Russian squalor, Byzantine splendour, the rude hospitality of feudal Christendom, and the dark and tortuous restraint of an Oriental capital. The state banquets, or rather the solemn and awful occasions when the Grand Prince invited the foreign ambassadors to dine with him and his dvoryanins (courtiers), are good examples of the conglomerate of ceremonial, simplicity, and patriarchal domesticity which obtained at the Moskovite Court. The Grand Prince and his brothers with the highest boyarins sat together at one table; at another, opposite, sat the distinguished guests of the evening, while round the hall were ranged tables for the remainder of the company. Bread was solemnly served out from the Prince’s table to such as he wished to compliment, and the feast invariably opened with the consumption of brandy and roast swans. The dishes were borne in and out by servants sumptuously attired, and in addition to brandy, mead, beer, and Greek wines were served in goblets which, like all the other appointments, were of pure gold. In such ponderous dissipations, in occasional coursing matches in his hare preserves round Moskva, in watching his foreign gunners exercise their skill with the heavy uncouth field-pieces at stated periods, and of course in elaborate religious ceremonies, did the Gosoudar of all Russia fill up the round of his private existence. The coursing seems to have been as cautious and “safe” as the Moskovite state-policy. “When the hare shows herself, three, four, five, or more dogs are slipped, and set after her on all sides; and when she is taken, there is loud hallooing, as if they had taken a large wild beast.” “Moreover, about an hundred men stood in long array, one half of whom were dressed in black, and the other in yellow; not far from them stood all the other horsemen, to prevent the hares from running through and escaping.”121

While the Imperial negotiations had been dragging out their span of stately uselessness, Vasili had effected a diplomatic stroke on his own account. The Grand Master Albrecht, despairing of receiving adequate support from the Emperor, in his present frame of mind, against the aggressive policy of the Polish monarch, turned his eyes towards the schismatic heretic who was playing so large a part in the affairs of east Europe. The common bond of hostility to Sigismund drew together the interests alike of Grand Prince and Grand-Master, and the plenipotentiary of the latter, Dietrich von Schönberg, was able to conclude a close alliance between Moskva and the Prussian section of the Order. 1517Various causes contributed to delay the threatened struggle between Sigismund and the knights; chief of which was the restraining influence of the Kaiser, whose narrow family