And meanwhile the King was informed that a body of Russian troops which had been collected at Mojaïsk had made a raid into Lithuania towards Smolensk, burnt two thousand villages, laid a whole province waste from Orcha to Mohylev, and carried away the entire population, peasants and nobles alike, to the further bank of the Dnieper. It was not till July 15, and then by travelling sixteen leagues a day, that Batory reached Polotsk, where he reviewed his army; and on the 29th he arrived at Zavolotché, and there held a council. So far was the season advanced that it was difficult to know what course should be pursued. There had been an idea of attacking Novgorod. But, as Ivan had foreseen, the choice fell on Pskov, which was nearer. And even so, it was clear the town would not surrender before the cold weather came. Batory's correspondence proves him to have resolutely accepted the contingency of a winter campaign, in the course of which either Pskov would be taken or Ivan forced to make peace. To retain possession of Pskov, the Tsar would give up Livonia, and, owing to the intervention of Rome and the attitude taken up by the Diet, the King was fain to ask no more, and go no further, for the present.
On August 25 the Poles, who had carried the town of Ostrov as they marched along, arrived under the walls of Pskov. They were struck by the size of the town and its imposing appearance. 'It is like another Paris,' wrote the Secretary of the King's Chancery, Piotrowski, in his diary, which has come down to us. This observation is repeated, word for word, in the 'Memoirs' of Müller, another eye-witness. Pskov, which had been in a state of defence, and kept constantly fortified, for hundreds of years, on account of the proximity of the Germans, possessed stone ramparts, to which a strong surrounding palisade had recently been added. Within the walls two Princes of the Chouïski family, Vassili Feodorovitch and Ivan Petrovitch—the last-named a grandson of the Regent, with whom we made acquaintance during Ivan's minority—both of them brave and experienced men, commanded 30,000 troops, according to Russian authorities, or 40,000, according to the Poles. Both calculations are certainly excessive as regards the effective force available, and properly so-called, and as certainly below the mark. if we reckon the 'eaters of bread,' as Rodolfini, a Venetian who served as a Colonel in the Polish army, denominated the serving-men and labourers who followed in its train, and some of whom, at all events, were capable of using firearms in a moment of need. He reckoned the total of these at 170,000 men. A considerable number of these must also have been attached to the garrison of Pskov, but the information we possess as to that period is quite devoid
