Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/219

 Rh master, by which means you might make sure of keeping Poland as his vassal, and becoming, like myself, the subject of the best of masters!' The text of the other answers may easily be divined. They are curious specimens of the learning the Terrible knew how to apply to the service of his spite, calling his adversaries Sennaherim and Navkhodonosor (sic), and of that Oriental infatuation by which he was occasionally inspired.

At that moment the Tsar felt the wind was veering round in his favour; and, indeed, Erik had come back to the charge, and seemed inclined to give in altogether, provided Ivan left him free to settle his own account with Poland. He was even ready, if we may rely on Dahlman (Dissertatio de occasione fœderum regis Erici XIV. cum Russia, Upsala, 1783), who had access to the original diplomatic documents, to give up Catherine herself.

As early as in 1566, the King, we are told, invited deliberation as to the granting of this concession to the Tsar; and when his counsellors refused to agree to it, he instructed his envoy, Gyllenstjerna, to hold out till the very last, but yield the point if the alliance could not be had on any other terms. This information appears all the more likely to be true because it seems less possible, considering the circumstances, that Gyllenstjerna can have dared, this time, to exceed his powers. Now, on February 16, 1567, at the sloboda of Alexandrov, where the Opritchnina began its bloody orgies, the Swedish plenipotentiary certainly did sign a treaty of alliance, all the clauses of which were explicitly made to depend on this condition. Ivan joined his fate with that of Sweden, on the basis of the uti possidetis in Livonia and freedom of the contracting parties as regards future conquests (except Riga, which the Tsar reserved for himself); he promised his intervention in favour of a reconciliation between Sweden and Denmark and the Hanseatic League, and his armed assistance if his intervention failed. But all this only if Catherine's person was given up to him. The whole treaty was to be annulled if the Princess were to die, and the execution of the final clause thus to become impossible.

The admiration with which this diplomatic document has inspired certain Russian historians is not very easily justified. Ivan provided liberally for himself; the retention of Riga in Russian hands was the death-blow of the Swedish Revel, and deprived Poland of her best reason for disputing the possession of Livonia with her two rivals. The eventual support of the Russo-Swedish coalition by the Hanse towns also insured the undoubted inferiority of the Polish-Danish alliance. But Ivan, not content with these advantages, made them all depend on