Sovereign was 'not a Sovereign of yesterday.' If they were asked what they meant, they were to reply, 'The Sovereign who is that knows himself!'
Ivan's cleverness was one of the most dangerous factors in his character, and he was quite capable of sacrificing a province to a sally, and then patching up the damage by some fresh sacrifice of his dignity, which he always fancied himself to be protecting after this fashion.
So eagerly did he hurry forward his envoys' departure that they reached Vilna, where Batory had desired them to meet him, long before the appointed date. In spite of all apparent probabilities, the Tsar still hoped to prevent any resumption of hostilities. But, in the King of Poland's mind, Vilna was but one stage on the road of the new conquests he was meditating. When he reached that town, in May, the Russian Ambassadors heard him demand, not Livonia only, but Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, the whole of Siéviéria, and a war indemnity of 400,000 ducats! When Pouchkine and his comrades sent a messenger to Moscow to ask for orders, Batory had him accompanied by a courier of his own, Dzierzek by name, who conveyed an ultimatum which reduced his claims to some extent, but still insisted on Livonia and the indemnity, though he limited his further demands to the razing of certain frontier fortresses. And the Polish King would only wait for his answer till June 4.
At that moment Chévriguine's mission was already producing some preliminary effect. I shall show, a little further on, how the Pope had yielded to the charm of the idea of a mediation, which, even if completely successful, could not have made up, from the Catholic point of view, for the advantages likely to accrue from Poland's decisive triumph. The appointed mediator, a Jesuit named Possevino, was actually at Vilna, and the fact of his presence there was infinitely useful to Ivan. Roma locuta erat. If the Holy See pronounced against the continuance of the war, Poland's onward progress would be checked, and stopped outright, if she persevered, by the thunders of the Vatican. The Tsar fancied so, at all events, and, recovering himself at once, he treated Dzierzek much as Batory had treated his own Ambassadors, and sent his courier back with a letter for the King beginning thus: "We, Ivan Vassilévitch, the humble, Tsar and Grand-Duke of Russia … by the grace of God, and not by the turbulent will of man. …' This opening phrase will enable my readers to guess the rest for themselves. In Kojalowicz's edition the document covers three-and-twenty printed pages. After paraphrasing the Psalms of David after a fashion of his own, calling Batory an Amalek, a Sennacherib, a Maxentius, greedy of
