Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/235

 Rh to him. Great was the surprise of the preparatory Diet of Stezyça (May, 1575) to behold nothing but a mere courier from the Tsar—a courier, too, who had nothing to offer, nor even a promise to make. Better things were hoped for at the Diet of Election in November. The Primate Uchanski, head of the temporary Government, who had been so won over to the Russian candidature that he had furnished Ivan with copies of letters to be addressed by him to the chief magnates, was quite sure the Tsar was going to announce himself a convert to Catholicism. Deputies and senators were scanning the horizon, and sending out couriers to meet the Muscovite mission and the brilliant proposals and splendid largesse it was certain to bring with it. A bitter disappointment! With the decisive hour came a solitary letter from Ivan, couched in haughty terms, and announcing for a later date an embassy of moderate rank, as was befitting, seeing there was no monarch to whom it could be accredited.

What had been happening at Moscow? The embassy in question, which had been despatched in the month of August, 1575, under the leadership of Lucas Zakhariévitch Novossiltsov, had orders to appear before the Diet. Its instructions were to press Feodor's candidature, and support it by promises of money and honours to be distributed among the chief nobles. But it had halted on its way, delayed by the Tsar's order. It had occurred to Ivan, at the same time, to send a confidential man, Skobeltsyne, to Vienna, and commission him to sound the Emperor as to an agreement between the two Powers concerning the Polish-Lithuanian inheritance. As the conditions of the Tsar's candidature for the vacant throne were not such as he would have desired, as neither the Lithuanians nor the Poles seemed to be bringing him the crown on a golden charger, Ivan made as though he would let them have their way, but fell back meanwhile on another idea, already discussed several times and in various quarters—that of a partition of the escheated inheritance. The Emperor's son Ernest was one of the candidates; let him take Poland, and the Tsar would withdraw his own candidature and take Lithuania. Skobeltsyne came back empty-handed: the Vienna authorities believed their cause in Poland safe. But Ivan had since heard that the Emperor regretted his reception of the Russian envoy, and that an Imperial mission was on its way to Moscow. It was for the issue of this negotiation that Novossiltsov must wait.

And this time, by too easily concluding that things really unaffected by his absolute power would bow to his will, Ivan thoroughly missed his calculation. The Diet did not wait. In September, 1575, the Sultan pronounced against any Mus-