Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/345

 Rh denouncing both his debauchery and his bloodshed. The Tsar had reproached the King with seeking to ally himself with the Sultan. To this Batory triumphantly opposed Ivan's Marriage with a Moslem woman—the Temrioukovna Tsarina—and the customs of his ancestors, 'who licked the mares' milk off the Tartar horses' manes.' His reluctance to making any personal appearance on the battlefield was not forgotten, and that was a fair hit. 'A hen defends her chicks against the hawk and the eagle, but thou, a two-headed eagle, hidest thy head!' This last apostrophe was followed by a challenge to single combat, which my readers may think ridiculous; but such a proposal is quite within the precedents of that period. In 1561, Erik XIV. sent a similar challenge to Dudley, whom he regarded as his rival with Queen Elizabeth. And nobody expected the Tsar to take up the glove.

He never thought of it for an instant, and was more than ever driven to 'hide himself.' His treasury was empty, his country worn out, his boïars demoralized, and all his resources exhausted. At one moment, so the chroniclers assure us, there were not more than 300 men with him at Staritsa. Yet, convinced that Batory's next blow would be struck at Pskov, he contrived to throw a strong garrison, the flower of his troops, into that town. It was well provisioned and supplied with powerful artillery. The Tsar could rely on its keeping back the Poles for a considerable time, and under the walls of the town, even if no relieving army was there to confront him, Batory would meet Moscow's most formidable ally in every one of her wars of defence: winter was close at hand. Possevino had not been in time to stop the King's departure, but the King's campaign had been begun too late.

He had been obliged to spend the whole spring parleying with his Diet. 'The King has given all he can out of his own pocket,' cried Zamoyski to the deputies. 'What more do you expect of him? Would you have him flay himself alive? He would do it readily enough, if any alchemist had discovered the secret of making gold out of human skin!' When he had contrived to squeeze out subsidies for another year, and that only on condition that the war was brought to an end, the collection of the taxes voted was very much delayed. The King pawned the crown jewels, got 50,000 crowns from the Duke of Anspach, and as much from the Elector of Brandenburg, and started. But at Disna a fresh hitch occurred. The troops were as slow about coming in as the taxes had been.