Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/233

 Rh needs be in Poland if he was to continue to be Tsar of Muscovy? Batory was very soon to prove himself more pliable, but Batory had no boïars to govern, nor had he to support the principle of absolute power in his own country, nor uphold his claim to the Empire of all the Russias in the face of these very Poles. In spite of certain incoherences peculiar to his mental constitution and his natural temperament, the conduct of the conqueror of Polotsk and the head of the Opritchniki is easily understood—and justified.

None the less, the election of Henri de Valois was a sharp blow to him. Apart from that friendship with the Porte, the nature and consequences of which he was apt to exaggerate, this event upset the political chess-board, on which his moves were already difficult enough, and on which fresh complications were soon to arise. John III., isolated by the rupture of the family bonds which had insured him the Polish alliance, but released, at the same time, from the considerations they had imposed on him, was seeking an agreement with Spain, while France, which dreamt of checking this latter Power by the help of Denmark, of establishing her own protectorate over Livonia, and cutting off the trade of the Low Countries with, the Eastern markets, showed herself inclined to support Frederick II. in stronger measures yet. When this hope failed her, she was to endeavour to find the same support and make the same bargain in Stockholm, through the marriage of one of the Valois Princes to a Swedish Princess (Forsten, 'The Baltic Question,' i. 624, from the Copenhagen Archives).

Ivan's judgment of the situation and the way he faced it prove his possession of close insight and all the qualities of a great politician. At that moment Poland did not count. The new King had work enough to do in getting settled on his throne, and the commander of his troops in Livonia could not muster 200 horses, and was waiting in vain for the payment of a draught for 3,000 florins (Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte Livlands, Riga, 1847–1858, iv. 178, etc.). The Tsar, thoroughly well-informed and quite collected, hurried on, choosing as his first task that of crushing the Swedes in Esthonia. The Poles' turn was to come later, and meanwhile, though he did not fail to move his troops about threateningly on the disputed frontier, he agreed to prolong his truce with the new King, and was playing the kindly friend, when the flight of Henri de Valois once more destroyed all his plans.

Everything had to be begun over again. Ivan could not turn his back on the new election, all the more so as Poland and Lithuania were sure to play the game which had already answered their purpose so well with him. And the business