Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/326

 302 Meinert (Geschichte des Kriegwesens, i. 370), dates from the beginning of the fifteenth century, at least. It may be, as one of the King's biographers—Albertrandi—asserts, that the Polish army owed him improvements in heavy ordnance, and in its cavalry armament and equipment. More certain titles to fame are the remodelling of the Cossack military system, undertaken during his reign, the raising of a Royal Guard in 1576, and the embodiment, in 1578, of a regular infantry, recruited on the King's own lands. To these local forces Batory added a strong contingent of foreign troops—Hungarian infantry and German cavalry—and thus effected, in the land of his adoption, the revolution which had already modified the bases of military power and the very art of war in Western countries. He endowed Poland with a standing army, equipped and drilled after the European model. And specialists consider the three campaigns, in the course of which he penetrated into the very heart of Muscovy, both well conceived and skilfully carried through, in spite of some failures and weaknesses of detail. Those who have endeavoured to minimize his personal share in them have not been particularly successful. He may not have proved himself a commander of overwhelming talents, and the tactics Ivan adopted may not have given him any opportunity of proving himself one. His real merit lies in the fact that he was a man who knew how to lead, who had the gift, the instinct, the genius of command; and the method he employed to ensure himself every possible advantage in the duel he foresaw to be inevitable between Poland and her Muscovite neighbour may be considered a masterpiece.

Both opponents showed equal resolution in the combat. Up till the moment of Maximilian's death, Ivan clung obstinately to the plan sketched out at Mojaïsk, and sent courier after courier to Vienna. When that event took place, the Tsar dismissed the two Ambassadors Batory had despatched to his Court, one after the other, in his endeavour to gain time, cut short all negotiations by putting forward impossible demands, claimed Kiev, after he had asked for Vitebsk, and would shortly have claimed Warsaw, and turned his mind exclusively to the pursuit of the advantages he had already gained in Livonia.

In March, 1578, he agreed to another three years' truce; but this suspension of hostilities did not extend, of course, to territories on which either party was at home, and both believed themselves to be at home in Livonia. Further, Ivan arbitrarily inserted a clause forbidding the Poles to interfere in Livonian affairs, into the Russian text of the treaty.