The result was a fight, in the spring of that same year, for the possession of Wenden. Ivan had sent out an army of 18,000 men—more than enough, he had reason to think, to make head against the troops commanded by Chodkiewicz and Sapiéha, which were not nearly so numerous, and had hitherto, as we know, been destitute of every kind of necessary. Batory despatched a fresh embassy, and the Tsar told it to wait; 'there would soon be news from Livonia!' The news came, and Ivan learnt that matters at Warsaw had quite altered.
At the very beginning of his reign, Batory had sent the castellan of Sanok, John Herburt, to Stockholm, whence he had returned with a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, for the recovery of Livonia. The course of the Narova was to mark the dividing-line between the possessions acquired, or to be acquired, by the two allies. Now, the Poles, under Andrew Sapiéha, had joined forces with the Swedes, under Boë, had forced the Russians to fight in the open, and had once more proved their own superiority in conflicts of this kind. Four voiévodes had been killed, four more taken prisoners, 6,000 men slaughtered in the Russian camp, Ivan's gunners had strangled themselves across their own guns—this was the news the Tsar received. His Tartar cavalry alone had escaped the disaster, with his Commander-in-Chief Galitzine, who, according to the Polish authorities, hastened the Russian defeat by taking to flight, and carrying several of his more prominent comrades with him—a seasoned warrior, the okolnytchyi Feodor Chérémétiev, and one of the Sovereign's most trusted men, Bowes' enemy, the diak Chtchelkalov.
This put a stop to all thought of truces and negotiations. Ivan dismissed Haraburda, the Polish envoy,.but not until he had taken a characteristic revenge. Ever since Batory's accession he had refused to call the King of Poland his 'brother.' 'Did you not try to elect John Kostka?' he said to the Poles. 'Would you have me call him my brother, too?' Kostka was a private nobleman. 'And what is this Transylvanian Prince of yours?' he went on. 'Nobody ever heard of that principality till now!' Haraburda was obliged to listen to a good deal of talk of this kind. But the Tsar's two Ambassadors, Karpov and Golovine, were still at Warsaw, and Batory treated them accordingly. When he received them on December 3, 1578, he did not rise to his feet, as the protocol demanded, to inquire after their master. So the envoys at once declared themselves unable to discharge their mission. And, indeed, the whole country about them was in a ferment. The Diet, which had been called together on January 19, 1578, had voted an extra war subsidy for the next two years. This was reckoned at 800,000, or even at 1,200,000, florins—no very large sum, indeed,
