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

      CHAPTER VII

       THE LAST OF THE PALEOLOGI AND THE FIRST OF THE AUTOCRATS

       Table of Contents

With the accession of Ivan III. to the throne of Moskva, Russian history takes new shape and direction. This dark, watchful, brooding kniaz was but the continuator of a dynasty of like princes “of gloomy and terrible mien, whose foreheads were marked by the seal of destiny.”91 “Time and circumstance and opportunity paint with heedless hands and garish colours on the canvas of a man’s life; so that the result is less frequently a finished picture than a palette of squeezed tints.”92 Time and circumstance and opportunity gave Ivan the title of Great, and his principality an importance it had never before enjoyed. That he made the most of his possibilities will not be denied, but in the nature of things this might scarcely have been otherwise. The whole character of the man dovetailed into the part he was required to play.

The growth of Moskovy had been marked by a life-struggle with three hostile factors—internal disruption, the aggression of the Horde, and the aggression of the Lit’uanian Princes; the first had been nearly stamped down by the forerunners of Ivan, circumstances enabled him to deal successfully with the two latter. The Golden Horde had already, in the reign of Vasili, fallen apart into independent khanates, that of Astrakhan representing the parent branch, while those of Kazan and of the Krim Tartars bordered the grand principality on the east and south respectively. The latter khanate was wedged in between the lands of Astrakhan and Lit’uania, and Ivan was able to turn its resources to good account against both these neighbours, as a counterpoise to the concerted action which they were ever ready to take against him. With the Kazanese he carried on, in the early years of his reign (1467-69), a scrambling war, in which, if his armies more than held their own, he personally showed little courage or determination. Possibly, however, he was reserving himself for the inevitable struggle with Novgorod, on the result of which indirectly hung the question whether Vilna or Moskva should be the centre of the Russian state. “Under which King?” was undisguisedly the issue which was before the Novgorodskie at this juncture, and the answer threatened to be unfavourable to Moskva. For once the faction motives that agitated the citizens of the great republic are plainly understandable: on the one side was hostility to the growing and griping power of the Grand Prince, and a desire to seek the protection of Kazimir and the spiritual guidance of the Metropolitan of Kiev; on the other, aversion to a foreign suzerainty and a heresy-tainted Church. Since Olga had lighted the torch of Christianity in the land, since Anastasie of Galitz93 had furnished an illumination of a different nature, women had rarely mingled in the national politics, and “cherchez la femme” would scarcely hold good with regard to Russian troubles. Now, however, at the head of the Lit’uanian-leaning faction appears a woman, one Martha, widow of the posadnik Isak Boretzki, and mother of two of the city notables. The encroachments of Vasili on the liberties and domains of the republic had thoroughly alarmed the citizens, and Martha’s party had little difficulty in rousing a spirit of defiance towards the new Prince, who was held to be of weaker fibre than his father. An alliance with Kazimir was openly projected, and the Moskovite agents were treated with studied disrespect. Ivan expostulated, the Novgorodskie persisted. Still expostulating, the Grand Prince set in motion a formidable array of troops; Pskovskie, Moskovite, Viatkian, Tverskie, and Tartar contingents converged on the lands of the republic, defeated and drove in the forces sent against them, and hemmed the city in on every side. Ivan, breathing peace and goodwill, wound his coils slowly round his prey, and waited. Want, the old enemy of Novgorod, began to fight against the Boretzki faction; “Ivan is at our gates, and your Kazimir, where is he?” demanded the “younger folk,” the first to feel the pinch of famine. Couriers had been sent to invoke the assistance of the King of Poland, but the Land-Master of Livland had turned them back. And this mild-mannered Grand Prince, still breathing goodwill, had taken to cutting off the heads of the most notable of his prisoners; among others, one of Martha’s sons had been so treated. Clearly this was not a man to be trifled with; the city capitulated. 1471Bitter were the terms to which the Novgorodskie had to submit: a fine of 15,000 roubles, the surrender of several contested dependencies, the payment of a tribute to Moskva, an engagement to hold no intercourse with the King of Poland or the Metropolitan of Kiev or any of the Grand Prince’s enemies, the annulment of the acts of the Vetché, and the recognition of Ivan as appeal judge in their civic litigation. Velikie Novgorod had found her master.

The next and most important event of an important reign was produced by an outside circumstance. The tidal wave of Islam which had swept over the cradle of the Orthodox faith, had also cut short the sphere of Papal influence, and threatened to make still further inroads on the Catholic lands of South-Eastern Europe. As Venice mourned her damaged trade so Rome sighed over her abbreviated authority and diminished Peter’s Pence. Pope after Pope cast anxious eyes around the sovereigns of Christendom to discover a possible champion against the Turk; but the days of the Crusades were over. One card there remained for the Vatican to play. Brought up in dependence on the Papal Court, and in conformity with the Latin faith, were the heritors of the dead empire; Sophie Paleologus and her two brothers, children of Thomas, brother of the last Emperor, were, body and soul, at the disposal of the Pope (Paul II.). Of the young Princes obviously nothing could be made, but by proclaiming Sophie as heiress of Constantinople a husband might be found for her who would be willing to break a lance with Mahomet for the possession of his wife’s inheritance. Ivan of Moskva, whose remote ancestors had turned their eyes so persistently towards the Tzargrad, seemed a likely candidate for the hand of the orphan exile, and an embassy from Paul sounded the Grand Prince on the subject. Ivan, whose first wife, Mariya of Tver, had died in 1467, lent favourable ear to the suggestion, and matters were satisfactorily arranged between the high contracting parties. The question of religion does not appear to have been raised as an obstacle, either by Paul or Sixtus IV., who succeeded to the Papal throne while the negotiations were proceeding. Whether Ivan’s ambassadors threw dust in the eyes of the Pontiffs, whether the latter hoped to win him, by means of his bride, over to the Latin faith, or whether the driving out of the Turk was for the moment more important than the genesis of the Holy Ghost, it is difficult to determine, but the betrothal was accomplished with the full blessing of the Church. Of Sophie the information available is curiously unequal, detailed on some points, vague to blankness on others. That, according to the chronicles, she charmed all beholders with her presence—a habit common with princesses—must be dispassionately compared with a contemporary Italian account, which likened her to a disgusting mountain of fat. That she left the Eternal City under the wing of the Pope’s legate; that she passed through Viterbo and Sienna; that the council of the latter city voted, by 124 voices to 42, fifty florins to defray the cost of her reception; that she made her way through Bologna and Nürnberg to Lubeck, and thence by sea to Revel; that she was well received at Pskov, and also at Novgorod, at which place the old bell of Yaroslav might yet salute the honoured guest; all this may be gathered from the records of the past.94 Reared amid the warm and stately cities of Italy, with fond remembrance of the lost glories of Constantinople, there was much that must have seemed strange and wild, perhaps desolate, in the long sledge journey through the unending snow-choked forests towards Moskva; Moskva, which, even in its winter mantle, would compare but meagrely with most of the cities the traveller had passed through. For in those days and at that moment, with its cathedral in ruins, its buildings insignificant, and its limits eked out with meadows and copses, the capital of the grand principality did not make a very brave show.95 The solemnity of her reception was marred by an awkward incident, which showed that, however the case might be at Rome, inter-Christian bitterness still ruled strong at Moskva. The legate, it was understood, not content with flaunting his scarlet robes in the face of the Orthodox, intended to have the Latin Cross borne before him into the city. Should such things be? Ivan held high counsel with