PART III
THE CRISIS
CHAPTER I
THE POLITICAL AND INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION
I.—The Conflict of Ideas and Principles.
'After the Battle of Montlhéry (1465), the Bishop of Paris, with councillors and Churchmen, waited on Louis XI. at Tournelles, and besought him in all gentleness to allow his affairs to be directed, for the future, by good counsel. This counsel was to be given him by six burghers, six Parliamentary councillors, and six clerks of the University. … Sixteen years later, in 1481, the Comte du Perche was arrested, by Louis XI.'s orders, and shut up in the narrowest cage that had yet been constructed—a cage only a pace and a half long—all because he had tried to get out of France. …" (Michelet, Histoire de France, vii. 301; viii. 343).
Between the years 1551 and 1571, a somewhat similar drama was played out at Moscow, amidst circumstances which, though certainly different, possessed many points of analogy. I have already referred to the current of ideas which marked the opening period of Ivan's personal government. The Livonian war, with the diplomatic complications which accompanied it, brought in a draught of European air, which only increased the strength of this current and the complexity of the problems tossed on its eddies. Ivan's father had already presided over the establishment of a foreign quarter in his capital, and under his own particular protection. The Poles and Lithuanians settled there were soon absorbed into the
216
