Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/349

 Rh When the end of October came, cold and fever were decimating the ranks of the Polish army. There were not more than forty horses in any squadron, so Piotrowski tells us, and the Lithuanians were beginning to talk of taking their departure. Batory had to call their leaders together and harangue them. Things grew worse when the King thought it his duty to proceed to Warsaw to persuade the Diet to make another effort. A fresh assault, delivered on November 3, after the expected convoy from Riga had arrived, was no more successful than the first; the guns were dismounted from the batteries, and peace awaited more confidently than ever. The chief command was now in the hands of Zamoyski, and the most recent Polish historians have delighted to exalt his merits to the detriment of the 'Maygar King.' But would he have succeeded in keeping his army together, and inducing it to face the cruel trials of this siege, if he had not been backed by a Sovereign whose temperament and grip were known to all? It is more than doubtful. Without Davout and Lannes, Masséna and Ney, Napoleon would probably have failed to win most of his battles, and it was when he was left with Grouchy that the end came at Waterloo. And all Zamoyski did was to carry out a plan which nobody ascribes to anyone but Batory, and which, in the long-run, was to prove the best possible under the circumstances. The men of Pskov were to be convinced, at last, that a town may be taken 'by looking at it'! The Poles did not fire their guns, but they kept their lines intact, and stopped all communication between the fortress and the outer world, and the supply of provisions Ivan had brought together was not inexhaustible.

Meanwhile, in Livonia, into which country Ivan was now powerless to send a single man, the Swedes were pursuing their victorious career. Poland had now more reason to fear these too independent allies of hers than to hope much from their help. Yet they struck hard blows at the common foe. In the course of the summer Horn and Pontus, at first acting independently, and then in unison, carried Lode, Fickel, and Hapsal, and in September they laid siege to Narva. The German town capitulated, after a siege which, according to the Livonian chroniclers, cost 7,000 lives, and the Russian town was surrendered by Athanasius Biélski. By the end of November all the coasts of the Gulf of Finland were in the hands of the Swedes, who succeeded in capturing the English ships that were bringing war supplies to Ivan. De la Gardie threatened Pernau, Derpt, and Fellin, and was on the point of taking possession of the last ramparts of the Muscovite conquest in that country.

These triumphs produced their natural effect at Pskov, by