Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/242

218 enterprising of the two travellers, testifies to the progress made in this particular in a very short space of time. True, Pozniakov's narrative owed its principal interest to the religious element which formed its chief basis, and also to the picture it drew of the sufferings of the Christian populations under the Moslem yoke. None the less, the curiosity and sympathy it stirred are proof of an enlargement of the minds of its numerous readers. Muscovy was issuing from the lair in which she had crouched for so many years. She was venturing outside, and from without, others were beckoning and calling to her. That adventure of Hans Schlitte which I have already mentioned had another side, puzzling enough, it is true, but which seems to show that this servant, employed by the Tsar to recruit European workmen and artisans, considerably widened the. scope of his own mission (Pierling, La Russie et le Saint-Siège, i. 324, etc.). He imposed both on Charles V. and Pope Julius III., and put himself forward as an Ambassador deputed to treat for the reunion of the two Churches. Ivan was probably quite unaware of this attempt, but the Hanoverian adventurer, well recommended by the Emperor and warmly welcomed at Rome, made so much stir about it, that interest was awakened both in Germany and in Italy, and that Poland was somewhat disturbed. Thus the episode may be included in that series of gropings which were to result in the final rapprochement between modernized Russia and Europe.

Schlitte, as we know, failed even as to that portion of his mission in which he was quite straightforward, but his very failure had indirect results which served the cause. Ivan, when he heard of the treatment inflicted on his agent by the Livonians, published a ukase at and round Novgorod which forbade the sale of German prisoners in Germany or Poland; they were all to be sent to the Muscovite markets. And at the same time the Tsar commanded that all captives appearing well versed in mining operations and the working of metals should be sent to him at Moscow.

Veit Zenge, the Bavarian agent already known to us, dwells, in one of his curious reports, dated 1567, on the Russians' extraordinary facility for assimilating every element of foreign culture—industry, commerce, and art. After the taking of Narva they had at once entered into relations with the Low Countries and even with France. Once a thing was shown them, they copied it immediately, and with singular ease. Ivan did not choose this receptivity should be limited to things only. The beginning of printing—that mighty weapon of intellectual growth which the preceding century had bequeathed to the modern world—dated, on Slav territory, from