able for camp and fortress duty, or for digging earthworks, and the Polish army was likewise attended by a very numerous train of similar auxiliaries. The proportion between the two sides, to sum it up, was as four to one, or very near it.
This left Ivan with a numerical superiority large enough to impart an appearance of recklessness to Batory's undertaking. But it was an appearance and nothing more. Some historians, swayed by Kourbski's assertions, have supposed the Tsar to have suffered painfully, at this juncture, from the lack of the better military leaders, of whom the Opritchnina had deprived him. The consequences of the great political, social, and economic crisis through which the country had just passed are clearly recognisable in the incidents and the issue of this decisive struggle, but this particular interpretation of them cannot be accepted. The best leader Ivan had employed since his accession was Peter Chouïski, and he did not make a very brilliant show under the walls of Orcha. The country, worn out and sore, was to prove itself incapable of any prolonged effort, but as far as the preliminaries of a campaign were concerned, the Opritchnina left the machinery of war intact. Yet here we see, save for the artillery and a few hundreds of foreign soldiers, and officers, face to face with Batory's European army the ancient fighting-machine of Muscovy, the insufficiency of which Ivan had already proved against the Swedes, and against the Poles themselves, indeed—an agglomeration of armed men whose personal valour, and powers of endurance and of heroic devotion, in officers and men alike, could not make up for its inferior equipment, its want of discipline—or of drill, at all events—and the shortcomings of its leaders.
Ivan's very clear realization of the causes of this weakness influenced his decision at this critical moment as much as his own natural temperament. I have already shown that he was no soldier. Whatever the condition of affairs, the idea of checking the invasion by facing Batory at the head of his boïars cannot have occurred to him. Such a thing had never been seen in Muscovy since the far-distant and legendary days of Dmitri Donskoï; and when another horde of Tartars had threatened the capital, the son of the national hero himself had fled to Kostroma. This was the traditional line of conduct, and on this particular occasion especially, the Tsar was bound to follow it faithfully; the Opritchnina had not robbed him of his army, but if he led out that army to meet Batory and his Poles and Hungarians in the open, he might make up his mind beforehand to a beating.
And, further, Ivan was completely taken in, at first, as to his adversary's plans; he thought his blow would be struck, as in past days, at Livonia. Thus, when he reached Novgorod in
