Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/347

 Rh of the accuracy of our modern statistics. As to the Polish army, more exact data can be had from the Treasury accounts, which I have already consulted. They give us 21,102 men, about half of them infantry—or only 18,940, according to another calculation—as having been under Batory's orders, together with some 10,000 Lithuanians.

It was a small army to undertake the siege of a town 'like Paris.' Heidenstein, the official historian of the campaign (on the Polish side) does mention the 24,000 splendid horses that defiled before the astonished eyes of the natives of the town. But he must have seen double, just as Ivan saw triple, and more, when he complained that 'Batoura' had armed 'all Italy against him.' At the date mentioned by Heidenstein there were only 6,469 Polish and 674 Hungarian cavalry in Batory's camp, and all Italy had sent him was a few engineers, just as France had sent him one or two officers, like that Captain Garon of whom Piotrowski tells us, 'a little man, a good musician, and very brave,' who went, 'dear frog!' and measured the town ditches with his sword. A Gascon this, no doubt—a valiant soldier, we may be sure!

But he could not suffice to capture a first-class fortress which seemed resolved on a desperate resistance. We may even doubt, considering the means Batory had at his disposal, whether he really proposed to lay a regular siege. His artillery did not reach a total of more than twenty guns, and his supply of powder was to fail after the very first week. The King probably reckoned on his cavalry to enable him to cut the town off, and so reduce it by hunger. But he himself was no better prepared for a winter before the walls of Pskov. He had been obliged to spare the nerves of his army, which would have taken fright at the sight of the necessary supplies, the tents and the provisions. And lack of money had combined with the lateness of the date on which he had begun his campaign to upset his plans and throw his calculations out. The game in which he had risked his stake was a most dangerous one, indeed. But his own genius and the forward impulse imparted by his previous successes were strong chances in his favour, and were destined, in fact, to decide the issue of the struggle.

It is not easy to reconstitute the history of this struggle, even, and perhaps especially, from that moral point of view in which its chief interest resides. The Russian and Polish authorities, though they agree as to its details, are in perpetual disagreement as to its essence, as to the attitude of the combatant parties, and the general features of their battles. While one side declares a most important part was played by the sorties made by the besieged, the other asserts that the garrison was