Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/321

 Rh contained no reference to an alliance nor any special favours to be granted to the British merchants.

According to Horsey's report, Chtchelkalov and the Ambassador's other foes went so far as to plot his death, and it was only his fellow-countryman's intervention that averted this catastrophe. But this was probably a mere boast on Horsey's part. Boris Godounov was the real master at that moment, and we know—though he did it secretly, indeed—that he sent Bowes a present, and coupled his gift with assurances of his devotion. But, in spite of all Bowes' blustering talk, a town was rising up and a port was being dug on a site chosen by the Dutch, hard by an ancient monastery, on the right bank of the Dvina. This they had promised to make into a second Narva for Russia, and with their help, and no other, in the beginning, it was to become the centre of the maritime trade of the Empire, snatched, once and for all, from the hands of the British monopolists. This town was Arkhangel, where the English were only to put in an appearance at a much later date, and in quite a secondary position. In this apparently unequal struggle the victory remained with Holland, and its effects are manifest in the history of Peter the Great.

In 1838, Count Wielhorski, happening to visit Italy to collect antique works for a museum then in process of formation in Russia, believed himself to have discovered a well-executed and well-preserved portrait of Ivan, said to have been sent to London in 1570 ('Russian Archives,' 1888, i. 123). This canvas, a unique specimen of the Russian art of the sixteenth century, was then in the possession of the Russian Consul at Genoa, Monsieur Smirnov, who had bought it from a London curiosity dealer. To my great regret, I have failed in my endeavour to discover the present whereabouts of this picture, which, if authentic, would be of priceless value, both as to the history of artistic development in Russia and as to that of the curious diplomatic episode which I have just related to my readers. No authority, whether Russian or English, mentions any picture of the Tsar as having been despatched to England.

Ivan, as my readers have seen, was led to seek the English alliance, and desire it with a passionate longing, in the first place by the pressure of the internal crisis, and in the second, by that of the external one which was affecting and imperilling both his fortunes and his policy. I now pass on to the history of that closing phase of his reign.