Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/360

 336 by this time, was obliged to accept peace. The Russia of the present day can very well dispense with these travesties of the realities of history, the last and most pitiable refuge of the vanquished. In a war the result of which hangs on a siege, negotiations begun under the guns of the besieging army are simply capitulation in another form. There is only one way in which the besieged can bring the struggle to a victorious conclusion—that employed by Peter the Great under the walls of Poltava; and the valley of the Viélikaïa notwithstanding, the abandonment of Livonia threw the political, military, and social development of Russia back more than a hundred years.

Once Ivan gave up Livonia, the object of Batory's campaign was attained. The King, though he, too, might make reservations as to the future, could not refuse to treat, nor could he, Possevino being present, decline a mediator accepted by the Tsar. His opinion of this mediation is evidenced by the following fact. The Jesuit, on his own showing, had to deliver a regular assault before he could induce his Polish clients to inform him as to their intentions with regard to the peace in connection with which he himself was to act as arbiter.

Towards the middle of November, Iam-Zapolski, on the road to Novgorod, between Zavolotché and Porkhoy, was unanimously chosen as the meeting-place for the plenipotentiaries. Prince Eletski—who, as Zamoyski remarked, lacked nothing save a principality to make him a Prince—Roman Olferiev Verechtchaguine, and Sviazev, a secretary, were the somewhat shabby representatives of the Tsar of all the Russias. In the persons of Prince Zbaraski, Palatine of Braclaw, Prince Albert Radziwill, Marshal of the Court, and Secretary Haraburda, the King of Poland brought a more capable set of diplomatists into action. Batory's envoys were the bearers of carefully-prepared instructions. What did these embody? Possevino, who arrived at the same time, knew nothing about them, and wherefore, a message sent him by the King, just at this time, pretty plainly shows us. Distrust rings in every line of it. The Sovereign, not without bitterness, contrasts the devotion of Poland to the Holy See, which had stood firm for hundreds of years, with the Papal Legate's sudden zeal for the interests of a third party, which had no evident claim to such a favour.

The quibble which lay at the foundation of the Jesuit's mission inevitably doomed him to this disgrace. Thanks to it, even when he disappointed the hopes of one party, he was suspected by the other, and to the very end the part he played suffered from this fact. All through the Iam-Zapolski negotia-