Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/210

 186 conclude a treaty of peace and claim the return of Esthonia to its legitimate owner, had opened negotiations with the Bishop of Oesel, Johann von Münchausen. This was his answer to the supplications of the unhappy Livonians, who had not failed to knock at that particular door on their own account. Christian died, and an understanding with his successor was all the more easily arranged. Frederic II. had a brother, Magnus, a lad of twenty, and old enough to claim his share of the inheritance, Schleswig-Holstein. Either spontaneously or incited by Christopher von Münchausen, the Bishop of Oesel's brother, a most enterprising man, the King was inspired with the idea of offering the following compensation to his younger brother. Johann von Münchausen, who had no right whatever to do it, sold his bishopric for the sum of 30,000 thalers; the Dowager Queen of Denmark, Dorothea, advanced the money, and in April, 1560, Magnus landed at Arensburg, the castle of which place was made over to him by the episcopal bailiff, and a certain number of Livonians joined him there. Christopher von Münchausen had already, and on his own authority, assumed the title of the King of Denmark's lieutenant in Esthonia, Garria, Oesel, and so forth. Magnus, whose career was to be a most extraordinary one, and who was the finished type of the adventurer of those days, was soon to call himself King of Livonia.

Thus was prepared the confused and mighty conflict which was to hold the future of the countries affected, and the chances of the various competitors, in suspense for over twenty years. And thus, too, Sigismund-Augustus' hand was forced, and he himself driven to act sooner than his natural wisdom would have dictated. In August, 1560, Nicholas Radziwill, 'the Black,' appeared at Riga with a Polish army, and, tearing off every veil, demanded the cession of the whole of Livonia, with the secularization of all the territories on the right bank of the Dvina and their direct annexation to Poland.

Kettler's fellow-countrymen have looked on him as a traitor. In all probability he was only an unlucky player of the game. He had striven to find an ally; but, as a certain writer has asserted, in justification of Sigismund-Augustus, nobody can ally himself with a corpse. And Fürstenberg's unlucky successor certainly exhausted every means of resistance and every form of delay. It was not till Poland appealed, at the close of this fateful year, to the altered circumstances and the necessity of fighting three enemies instead of one, that he was forced to give in. On March 5, 1562, having, in his quality of Master of the Teutonic Order, recognised, by a document dated November 21, 1561, the union of Lithuania and Livonia, and accepted the possession of Courland and some neighbouring