The Double Standard: Livonian Chronicles and Muscovite Barbarity during the Livonian War (1558-1582)

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Charles J. Halperin

THE DOUBLE STANDARD: LIVONIAN CHRONICLES AND MUSCOVITE BARBARITY DURING THE LIVONIAN WAR

(1558-1582)*

When Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible, 1533-1584) ordered a Muscovite army to invade Livonia in 1558 he not only launched a war of weapons, but also a war of words. The war propaganda issued by Muscovy's opponents contributed significantly to the development of the negative image of Ivan as a tyrant and the Russophobic stereotype of Russians as barbarians which persist to this day. This article deals with one genre of these sources, the chronicles written by Livonian Germans during the Livonian War: Johannes Renner's Livonian History* I wish to express my sincerest appreciation to the anonymous reader for Studia Slavica et Balca- nica Petropolitana for valuable comments, and to David Goldfrank for providing me with a copy of the recent monograph by Cornelia Soldat, which is virtually inaccessible in the US. I am solely responsible for all remaining errors. Johannes Renner's Livonian History 1556-1561 / Tr. Jerry C. Smith and William Urban with J. Ward Jones. Lewiston; NY, 1997,

Balthasar Russow's Chronicle The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow and A Forthright Rebuttal by Elert Kruse and Errors and Mistakes of Balthasar Russow by Henrich Tiesenhausen / Tr. Jerry C. Smith with the collabora-tion of Juergen Eichhoff and William L. Urban. Madison, 1988. - Because I am following this publication, I will use this form of the name, without the umlaut, rather than Rьssow. According to Paul Johansen (Balthasar Rьssow als Humanist und Geschichtsschreiber, ed. Heinz von zur Mьhlen. Cologne, 1996. P. 126), the sixteenth-century East German form of the name lacked an umlaut., and Salomon Henning's Chronicle of Courland and Livonia Salomon Henning's Chronicle of Courland and Livonia / Tr. Jerry Smith, J. Ward Jones and William Urban. Dubuque, 1992., whose selection I will discuss below. All three propagate the same hostile evaluation of Ivan and Russians. All three authors were, and were entitled to be, biased. After all, Russians invaded and ravaged their country, so Ivan and Russians naturally became the villains in their chronicles.

These authors enumerate in graphic detail the atrocities committed by Russian armies against Livonians. Just because the chroniclers were biased does not mean that such atrocities did not occur, but it does mean that the chroniclers were more willing to believe atrocity stories attributed to Ivan and the Russians, the stock in trade of war propaganda. Even though truth is the first victim of war, biased sources can contain accurate information, just as objective sources can perpetuate inaccurate information. However, my main interest here is not in the reliability of these chronicles, although I will briefly discuss various judgments on the matter below. My main focus is on the fact that the chroniclers did not avoid mentioning seemingly honorable and humane actions by Ivan and Russians in addition to atrocities, as well as seemingly comparable atrocities committed by Livonians and their allies. This article poses the question of what intellectual structure enabled the chroniclers to adduce such information, which implicitly at least partially contradicted their hostile depictions of Ivan and Muscovites, without modifying that bias.

A very pragmatic consideration influenced my choice of these three chronicles as objects of study. The translator, Jerry S. Smith, alludes to the pomposity, baroque sentence structure, elaborate figures of speech, redundant expressions, and extremely lengthy compound sentences characteristic of Russow's literary style. Smith also finds extremely long and complex sentences, parenthetical clauses, multiple verbs and adjectives and ellipsis common to Henning's baroque style, making it very difficult to translate because it is difficult to decide what he is saying. Finally, Smith finds that Renner's language poses fewer problems than that of Russow or Henning because his text is straightforward narrative with few comments, interpolations, or biblical or historical allusions, but occasionally he still had to sacrifice accuracy for readability The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow. P. xxvi; Salomon Henning's Chronicle of Courland and Livonia. P. xvii; Johannes Renner's Livonian History 1556-1561. P. xiv.. Urban highlights the “smaller number of specialists” who can still read Russow in the original The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow. P. vii.. Without question my command of sixteenth-century Low German would be totally inadequate to the task of making sense of any of these texts. Therefore, the availability of professional translations by a philologist intended for the nonspecialist reader made their selection easy. It should be noted that Peter Auksi wrote his article on Russow based upon the translation into Estonian. Thaden also discusses Franz Nyenstдdt's (Nyenstede's) Livonian Chronicle⁶, as does Arved Freiherr von Taube, despite the objections of the editor of the anthology in which von Taube's article appeared, Georg von Rauch, that his “Livonian Chronicle” only appeared in print in the first decade of the seventeenth century and von Taube's topic is sixteenth-century Livonian historiography. von Taube insisted that Nyenstede's works represent sixteenth-century opinion Thaden E. Ivan IV in Baltic German Historiography // Russian History. Vol. 14. 1987. P. 379-81, 383, 386. Arved Freiherr von Taube. `Der Untergang der livlдndischen Selbststдndigkeit': Die livlдndische Chronistik des 16. Jahrhunderts / Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtesschreibung. Ed. Georg von Rauch. Cologne, 1986. P. 33-36; Von Rauch. Editorial note. P. 29*.. von Rauch also opined that the chronicle of Lorenz Mьller, also about the Livonian War, could have been included in von Taube's discussion. Instead it can be found in the following chapter of the anthology Arved Freiherr von Taube. `Der Untergang der livlдndischen Selbststдndigkeit'. P. 29*; Gottfried Etzold. Die Geschichtsschreibung der polnish-schewedischen Zeit / Geschichte der deutschbaltischen Geschichtesschreibung. P. 42, 46-47.. Descriptions of the contents of the works of Nyenstede and Mьller suggest that they did not contribute anything not found in Henning, Russow and Renner. In any event, neither Nyenstede nor Mьller is available in English.

We can now turn to background information on the authors. Russow These paragraphs derive from Arthur Voobus. Notes on the Chronicle of Balthasar Russow and its Author // Yearbook of the Estonian Learned Society in America. Vol. 5. 1968-1975. P. 87-98; Auksi P. Henry of Livonia and Balthasar Russow: the chronicler as literary artist // Journal of Baltic Studies. Vol. 6. No. 2-3. 1975. P. 111-117; Urban W. 1) The Nationality of Balthasar Russow // Journal of Baltic Studies. Vol. 12. No. 2. 1981. P. 160-172; 2) Introduc-tion / The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow, P. iii-xxiv, especially iii-vii, xi-xii, xvi, xx; Johansen. Balthasar Rьssow als Humanist und Geschichtsschreiber, P. 99-196, 213-246. was a native of the city of Reval, now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, and an ordained Lutheran minister in the Church of the Holy Ghost, which ministered to the “non-German-speaking,” that is, primarily Estonian- and Latvian-speaking, lower classes of the city. His religious vocation and his own peasant origin made him particularly, even uniquely, sympathetic to the peasants and workers who supported the German-speaking elite who collectively ran the country, the Knights of the Livonian Order, the Roman Catholic episcopal establishment, and the burgher class in Livonian cities. The first edition of his chronicle appeared in 1578, followed almost immediately by an unauthorized second edition and later by the author's revised third edition in 1584. There are modern translations into German, Russian, Estonian, and Latvian. The chronicle also provided the basis for a series of novels in Estonian, not translated into English. By 1584 Reval had been occupied by the Swedes, and Russow published with the support and approval of both the city and the Swedish occupation authorities, who he in turn fully supported.

In Russow's identity religious and political motives outweighed social sympathies. Despite his lower-class origin and ministry to the lower classes, his education made him German culturally and he identified socially with the middle-class merchants and artisans of the city. Moreover, he did not endorse peasant uprisings against the nobles. He was first and foremost a Revaler, but he extrapolated his urban loyalty to all of Livonia. He believed that all Livonians should unite against the Russian threat. However, his Reval and Livonian advocacy took second place to his religious moralism, which is hardly unexpected in a cleric.

The moralist Russow was an equal-opportunity moral critic of all Revalers, all Livonians, indeed everyone, so that his criticisms of Swedish morals in the first edition, although he favored Swedish protection of Reval as the best guarantee of his Lutheran faith, were censored by Swedish authorities in the third edition. His historical analysis was rooted in providentialism, but ascribed the outcome of events to the decisions of individuals or groups, a surprisingly secular approach to history. Spokesmen for the knights and nobility saw only peasant bias in Russow's tirades against their immoral deportment Johannes Renner's Livonian History 1556-1561. P. 233-289.. Russow interpreted the Russians as the instrument of divine punishment of Livonia for its sins. He lived in Reval during the Russian sieges of 1570-571 and 1577, so his animosity toward Muscovy was rooted in his personal experience. The purpose of Russow's chronicle was to influence the Hanseatic merchants of northern Germany and the Holy Roman Empire to support Reval against the Russians; its Low German language appealed to a popular, not scholarly, audience, and it was something of a best seller.

Henning This paragraph derives from Urban W. Introduction / Salomon Henning's Chronicle of Cour-land and Livonia, P. vii-xxv, especially xv-xvi, xxi. was born in Weimar. By accident in Lьbeck in 1554 he met Gerhard Kettler, future Master of the Livonian Order and Herzog of Courland (Kurland), and became his secretary and eventually ambassador. He conducted the negotiations by which Kettler became Duke of Courland as a vassal of the King of Poland in 1562 and the foreign policy which kept Courland out of the Livonian War. Upon Kettler's death in 1587, Henning became regent for Kettler's young sons. Henning wrote his chronicle in part to contribute to their education. His additional intended audience was restricted to the princes' advisors and principle subjects, and to their relatives in neighboring states. He was an unabashed supporter of Kettler and the pro-Polish policy that enabled him to preserve at least part of Livonia, the southwest bordering Poland, under his rule after the secularization of the Livonian Order and Livonia's destruction as an independent state and partition in the Livonian War. Henning's chronicle first appeared in print in 1590, after Henning's death in 1589. Henning shared the narrow prejudices of the nobles in Livonia, who despised even German-speaking middle-class burghers. Livonian nobles married into non-German-speaking noble families (Polish, Swedish, or French) as long as they were legitimate nobles, but never into Livonian German-speaking burgher families. Henning assumed that his readers shared his class perspective.

Renner This paragraph derives from Urban W. Smith J. Introduction / Johannes Renner's Livonian His-tory 1556-1561, P. i-xxi, especially i-ii, x, xii-xiii. was, like Henning, not born in Livonia, but in Westphalia. He served as a notary in Reval and then as secretary to officers of the Livonian Knights in Livonia from 1556 to 1561, first Fogt Jarven Berndt von Shmerten, then Rugger Wolf, Contur in Pernau, and wrote his chronicle in 1561-1562 based upon notes he had taken. By mid 1561, deeming the situation in Livonia hopeless, Renner left Livonia and never returned. After 1578 he prepared a second edition which relied very heavily upon Russow for events after 1561. The goal of the chronicle was, like that of Russow's, to persuade Hanseatic cities and Holy Roman Empire that Livonia could still defeat the Muscovites, if it had their support. Renner's chronicle was not published until the nineteenth century. Renner had excellent access to documents in Livonia during his relatively brief sojourn there, but was not an eyewitness to any of the events he described.

Disagreement over the credibility of these accounts is more apparent than real. Edward Thaden described them as “credible eyewitnesses and intelligent commentators,” who perhaps exaggerated the atrocities committed by Ivan's Russian and Tatar troops in Livonia and repeated rumors, as well as stories from the pamphlet literature, but who also included accurate summaries of authentic texts and provided reliable information Thaden E. Ivan IV in Baltic German Historiography. P. 377-394, quotation 379.. Robert Frost, while admitting the “lurid exaggeration or crude propaganda” of the broadsheets, objected that Thaden had not analyzed the differing degrees of exaggeration of the broadsheets and the chronicles, insisting that the chronicles did not indulge in the formulaic litanies of the broadsheets but instead provided concrete details that make their atrocity accounts plausible, despite the attempts of (unnamed) Russian historians to belittle the reality of the atrocities by impugning the chroniclers' objectivity A good reflection of this attitude would be the views of the recognized East German historian Erich Donnert cited in Von Taube. `Der Untergang der livlдndischen Selbststдndigkeit'. P. 40.. Frost insists that the Livonian chronicles' accounts of Russian atrocities are on the whole plausible, so his overall judgment of the chronicles' credibility is consistent with Thaden's Frost R. I. The Northern Wars. War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558-1721. Harlow, 2000. P. 79-80..

The issue of “eyewitnesses” should be reconsidered. Henning spent much of his time between 1558 and 1562 as Kettler's ambassador in negotiations far away from the military front, indeed outside Livonia. He knew what he knew from Kettler. After 1562 he worked to keep Courland out of the Livonian War, and therefore would not have seen what was going on in those parts of Livonia occupied or attacked by Muscovite forces. Russow experienced Muscovite warfare from inside Reval during sieges, but could hardly have acquired first-hand knowledge of events beyond its walls. Renner served in Livonia only between 1556 and 1561. His knowledge of developments even then came from documentary sources. All three undoubtedly possessed much accurate information on military and political developments, but not by “witnessing” Ivan or the Muscovite army in person. Whatever they reported about Ivan and Muscovites came from written or oral reports composed by other individuals who at least claimed to be eyewitnesses.

However, one argument advanced in favor of the reliability of the chronicles suggests the problem addressed by this essay. Frost notes that Henning stresses occasions when no atrocities occurred and the invaders treated the local population with consideration. Russow criticized German, Swedish, and Polish-Lithuanian atrocities, and did not overlook the instances of Muscovite compassionate behavior. Aleksandr Filyushkin writes that Renner, whose chronicle he considers the earliest and most authentic, shows Livonian peasants not only suffered at the hands of Russians, but also of mercenaries from Germany. Russow criticized the degeneration of Livonian morality and praised the ability of hard-working, abstemious, and disciplined Russian soldiers at defending fortresses. Henning deplored Livonian vice, especially drunkenness and gluttony Filyushkin A. 1) Osobennosti rasskaza o Livonskoi voine khroniki Ioganna Rennera // Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana. 2011. No. 9. P. 93-100; 2) Izobretaia pervuiu voinu Rossii i Evropy. Baltiyskie voiny vtoroy poloviny XVI v. glazami sovremennikov i potomkov. St. Peters-burg, 2013. P. 369, 393, 404, 577-578.. Von Taube points out that Renner did not spare Livonians from criticism; he excoriated Dorpat for its hostility toward the Livonian Order and Livonian gentry for their military incompetence Von Taube A. `Der Untergang der livlдndischen Selbststдndigkeit'. P. 27.. I leave the issue of whether this somewhat “balanced” portrayal of the darker side of sixteenth-century Livonian society and warfare speaks to the credibility of the narratives in the three chronicles to others; I am concerned with the implications of the “balance” for the image of Ivan and the Russians in the three chronicles.

Clearly these three chroniclers did not agree on everything. Two of the three, Henning and Renner, were not even born in Livonia; they were “Livonians” by adoption. Russow did not share the class prejudices of Henning and Renner. Russow was pro-Swedish, Henning pro Polish. Yet Russow and Renner sought to influence the same audience of burghers and nobles in Northern Germany to support Livonia against Muscovy. In the end all three authors identified politically with “Livonia,” however defined, as a state which deserved outside support to retain its existence in the face of Russian aggression. Therefore the chroniclers differed in their countries of origin, education, vocation, class, conception of Livonian identity, purpose of writing, what if anything they physically witnessed during the Livonian War, choice of foreign ally for Livonia, solution for the preservation of all or only part of Livonia, and whether their purpose in writing was private or public consumption. As von Taube observes, the only thing the three chroniclers did agree about was that Russia was the enemy Von TaubeA. `Der Untergang der livlдndischen Selbststдndigkeit'. P. 24.. This unanimity of opinion about Ivan and Muscovy justifies selecting these three texts as evidence in order to explore the negative image of Ivan and Muscovy they shared.

Our understanding of that negative image must be reconsidered in light of Cornelia Soldat's convincing demonstration that in the pamphlet literature (Flugshcriften) of the period, that image derived not from empirical observation of current events, but from the anti-Turkish discourse during the second half of the fifteenth century that originated after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. Pamphlet authors and compilers projected all of the cliches about the Ottomans directly onto the Muscovites. In unremittingly graphic, even pornographic detail, they excoriated the atrocities of the Muscovite armies, highlighting exotic torture, sexual abuse of women, and the enslavement of captives. The Muscovite discourse of the pamphlets was, therefore, pure fiction Soldat C. Erschreckende Geschichten in der Darstellung von Moskovitern und Osmanen in den deutschen Flugschriften des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts // Stories of Atrocities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century German Pamphlets About the Russians and Turks / Foreword by David Goldfrank. Lewiston; Queenston; Lampeter, 2014. - The classic study of the pamphlets: Kap- peler A. Ivan Groznyi im Spiegel der auslдndischen Druckschriften seiner Zeit. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des westlichen Russlandbildes. Frankfurt am Main, 1972. P. 97, 154-163, had sug-gested the link between the Turkish and Muscovite discourses but did not substantiate it. In 1565 Ivan established the oprichnina, his private domain and the instrument of his mass terror; his bodyguards were called oprichniki. Ivan abolished it in 1572. On pamphlets about the oprichnina see Soldat C. Erschreckende Geschichten, P. 193-256.. Moreover, this pamphlet literature overlapped the Livonian chronicles. Russow may have read pamphlets on the oprichnina²⁰, and parts of Henning's chronicle appeared in pamphlet form Soldat C. Erschreckende Geschichten. P. 312-319, 314 n. 632 (on Russow).. The extent to which the Livonian chronicles borrowed or imitated the fictitious anti-Muscovite discourse of the pamphlets would speak against the historical reliability of their atrocity stories. However, the chroniclers did not rely exclusively on pamphlets as sources. They also utilized documentary evidence, German defector accounts such as that of Johann Taube and Elert Kruse Taube and Kruse were Livonian nobles who entered Ivan's service after being captured, became actively engaged in Ivan's scheme to make Magnus his vassal King of Livonia, defected to Po- land-Lithuania, and then wrote a tell-all account of Ivan's atrocities. Their account also appeared in pamphlet form. Soldat C. Erschreckende Geschichten, P. 245-152., rumors and gossip, and each other's works. Yet all such sources also expound the same cliche stereotypes of the tyrant Ivan and his barbarian subjects, to which we now turn In general negative images of Ivan and Muscovy during his reign in travel accounts derived from a different source, Sigismund von Herberstein's “Notes on Muscovy”. (PoeM. T. “A People Born to Slavery”. Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476-1748. Ithaca, 2000.).

I will examine in detail and in turn passages conveying the negative images of Ivan as a tyrant and of Russians as barbarians, passages demonstrating praiseworthy behavior by Ivan and Russians, passages containing episodes of Livonian and other European atrocities, and, finally, passages that attest to fundamental flaws in Livonian knowledge about Russians. Only a comprehensive presentation of the atrocity accounts in these narratives can convey how obsessed the authors were with such episodes To avoid overwhelming the reader with individual footnotes containing a page reference for every episode in each chronicle, and to avoid group citations of multiple page references which deprive the reader of the ability to backtrack each episode, I have chosen to provide in-line parenthetical references with page numbers, in which Renner = Johannes Renner's Livonian History, Russow = The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow, and Henning = Salomon Henning's Chronicle of Courland..

ivan terrible war livonian muscovites

Ivan as tyrant

According to Renner, Ivan was inhumane Urban asserts that Renner's “concentration on Russian atrocities blinded him to Ivan's mo-tives.” Johannes Renner's Livonian History. P. xi-xii., cruel, and bloodthirsty (Renner, P 6), broke his word (Renner, P. 59), and had Livonian commanders flayed with whips and then beheaded them with axes after marching them for five miles (Renner, P. 187-188).

According to Russow, after captured lords of the Livonian Order were taken to Moscow, Ivan had them “piteously executed” by having their heads bashed in by clubs (Russow, P. 85). He ordered the execution of 40,000 able-bodied men who could have been used for war (Russow, P. 127). He was too faint-hearted a warrior to launch frontal assaults on castles (Russow, P. 145). He did not honor some safe-conducts to those who surrendered cities to him and ordered their recipients hung, stabbed, or burned, and their heads mounted on pikes. He had women and girls taken as captives. He executed over fifty servitors of his vassal, Duke Magnus of Holstein, who became his puppet King of Livonia, even though they had opened the gates of Kokenhausen to him, because he was angry at Magnus. He had the eyes of elderly marshal Casper von Muenster put out, and then had him flayed to death; twelve pro-Magnus nobles were sabered to death (Russow, P. 183; also Henning, P. 128). He thought himself superior to all emperors and kings of the time (Russow, P. 186).

According to Henning, Ivan was barbaric, monstrous (Henning, P. 25), treacherous, and arrogant (Henning, P. 27). He committed “describably bestial atrocities” (Henning, P. 52). He was a dreadful monster (Henning, P. 64). He sadistically hit a Lutheran pastor over the head with his riding whip (Henning, P. 129). If he had known the story of the King of Persia who told his two sons to fight to the death over succession and then tortured to death the satrapwho claimed to have killed one son in battle (Henning, P 119), he would have copied that procedure, because “he takes special joy and delight” in novel cruelties (Henning, P. 120). He was a “vain and puffed-up tyrant” (Henning, P. 138).

Several atrocities attributed to Ivan stand out. Russow, following Taube and Kruse, wrote (Russow, P. 125-126) that during the winter of 1570 Ivan's acts of tyranny in own country, especially Novgorod and Pskov, were “more terrible and hideous than one can find in any chronicle.” A few years before, in defiance of all law and custom, he had executed many people from among princes, military commanders, noblemen, chancellors, clerks, townsmen, and peasants, along with their wives and children. He also killed his father's brother, Prince Vladimir Andreevich Prince Vladimir Andreevich was Ivan's first cousin, not his uncle. and his wife and children, along with his wife's brother Prince Michael Temriukovich Prince Mikhail Temriukovich Cherkasskiy was the brother of Ivan's second wife, Tsaritsa Mariya Temriukovna Cherkasskaya, who died in 1569. When Ivan ordered Cherkasskiy's execu-tion in 1571, he had probably not yet remarried.. He burned villages and towns, drained fish ponds, and destroyed livestock and grain. In 1569 he killed several thousand people, among them many captured Livonians and Poles, at Tver', where they were drowned.

In 1570 Ivan advanced on Novgorod with his cutthroats, men-at-arms called oprichniki, who committed murder and plunder in Novgorod so extensive that not a single house remained untouched. They vented their lust on many genteel and beautiful ladies and maidens so violently that many died. They tied up several thousand prisoners and threw them into the Volkhov River Corrected from Taube and Kruse, who erroneously wrote of the Volga River.. Even that mighty river, eight fathoms deep, became so clogged with corpses that the oprichniki needed staves to push bodies in so that they would float away. To amuse himself, Ivan ordered several hundred naked women pushed into the river. Ivan's oprichniki hung up citizens by their arms and set fire to their clothing, or tied their arms to sleds and drove about until their limbs were torn from their bodies. The following summer Ivan executed 109 individuals in Moscow. Some were boiled to death, other beheaded. With his own hands Ivan stabbed to death the esteemed chancellor Ivan Viskovatiy Viskovaty was the former head of the Muscovite Foreign Affairs Bureau (Posol'skiiprikaz)..

According to Henning (and Russow), after Prince Vladimir Andreevich Staritskii and other nobles conspired against him, Ivan became even worse, seeking to eradicate them from the face of the earth by destroying them, their wives, their children, their other relatives, their retainers, and their cattle, dogs, cats, and even fish in ponds (Henning, P. 100; Russow, P. 125-126). This episode may have been extrapolated from accounts of the looting of the estates of boyar Ivan Fedorov-Cheliadnin, which preceded the murder of Prince Vladimir Staritskii and the attack on Novgorod and Pskov.

Henning repeated an atrocity story about Ivan that he had heard told by Nicholas the Red, Lord Palatine of Vilna, when Nicholas the Red and Magnus visited Gerhard Kettler, former Grand Master of the Order of Livonian Knights, now Duke of Courland (Henning, P. 100-101). Two brothers could not bring themselves to execute the infant they had been ordered to kill, so they entrusted it to their sister. However, upon returning to Moscow they became fearful that their act of mercy would be discovered, so they decided to confess all to Ivan and request mercy. Like the sly Reynard the Fox, Ivan acted as if he felt compassion, and asked to see the child to adore it. When they child was brought in, he cuddled it, kissed it, and played with it. The two brothers were overjoyed that they had acted properly in saving the child. Ivan was actually engaging in a typically Russian game of deceit; Russians are far more dangerous when pretending friendship than when expressing rage. They behave like panthers, who play dead to lure apes down from the trees they had climbed to escape the panthers, in order to tear them to pieces. Before the two brothers knew what was happening, Ivan had seized a knife and stabbed the child three times in the heart. He then threw the dead child out a window and watched bears and dogs devour it. He ordered the two brothers struck down immediately with sabers.

The only time Ivan kept his word was when he threatened the inhabitants of a Livonian town that he would slaughter everyone if they did not surrender. Many residents blew themselves up rather than surrender, so Ivan had everyone who survived the explosion sabered, hacked to bits, mutilated, and left unburied as food for birds, dogs, and other wild beasts (Henning, P 135).

The misanthrope and parricide Ivan was three years old when his father died. Ivan became so upset when his eldest son Dmitrii argued that Muscovy should make peace with neighboring lands that he “unhumanly” slew Dmitrii by stabbing him with his iron-tipped staff, “an atrocity against his own flesh,” as a result of which he never again felt any happiness, but died depressed, like all tyrants (Henning, P. 148) In 1581 (before Henning's chronicle appeared in print) Ivan supposedly killed Tsarevich Ivan, not either Tsarevich Dmitrii, the first of whom, the son of Tsaritsa Anastasiya Uryevna, died by accidental drowning in 1553, and the second of whom, the son of Tsaritsa Mania Nagaya, out-lived Ivan, to be supposedly murdered at the order of Boris Godunov, and then canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church..

While the editors of the three Livonian chronicles obviously do not believe everything about Ivan recorded in them, nevertheless they accept as historically accurate the depiction of Ivan as a monster, a “totalitarian tyrant,” a “blood-crazed murderer,” a “notorious coward,” mentally unstable and paranoid,” and an “unpredictable despot” Johannes Renner's Livonian History, P. i, 101 n. 35; The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow, P. iii, viii, xix, 184 n. 129; Salomon Henning's Chronicle of Courland, P. xviii, 25 n. 2, 100 n. 33..

Russians as barbarians

To the Livonian chroniclers, the Russians were barbaric, sadistic monsters, whose atrocities they described in graphic, sensational detail. According to Renner, the Russians were cruel, bloodthirsty, and inhumane (Renner, P. 1). They massacred men, women, and children among fishermen. They hanged Livonian women from trees and robbed them of their clothing, silver, and gold (Renner, P. 183). They impaled babies on stakes (Renner, P. 40) or sharp picket fences (Renner, P. 93), and hacked little children in two and left them (Renner, P. 61), or hacked adults into pieces (Renner, P. 66). They placed a huge stone on the stomach of a pregnant women to force her foetus from her womb (Renner, P. 41). They burned alive a woman hiding in an oven (Renner, P. 76). They cut off the breasts of maidens and women and hacked off the hands and feet of men (Renner, P. 79). They threw fifty children into a well and filled it with stones (Renner, P. 79). They flayed a man and cut open his side, poured in gunpowder, and blew him apart (Renner, P. 79). They decapitated captives after flaying them and cutting off their fingers and toes (Renner, P. 87). They massacred peasants young and old (Renner, P. 61). They flayed captives in Moscow with whips of braided flails, marched them five miles to a cemetery and then beheaded them with axes (Renner, P. 188). They drove naked peasants into great fires (Renner, P. 93) and nailed one peasant to a post and suffocated him with smoke (Renner, P. 176). They tied a captured noble to a tree, cut open his body, and let his intestines fall out. They nailed a ferryman to a door and then killed him with arrows (Renner, P. 96). They killed an old forest overseer by cutting open his body, nailing one end of his intestines to a tree, and then beating him with whips to make him run, pulling out his intestines and bringing about his death (Renner, P. 97). Peasants were drawn and quartered (Renner, 95). They murdered captives by snapping their necks in such a way that they suffered for one, two, or three days before expiring (Renner, P. 180). The Tatars cut out the heart of one prisoner (killing him, of course), and ate it, saying that doing so would give them courage (Renner, P. 180).

Russow adds that Russians committed terrible acts of murder, theft, and arson during their invasion (Russow, P. 72). They tortured and tormented Livonians (Russow, P. 113), massacred them (Russow, P. 140), threw poor peasants, their wives and children to their deaths off city walls (Russow, P. 213), hacked to death servitors of Magnus (Russow, P. 185), roasted captives on spits for days (Russow, P. 146, 153), stole the blanket off a dead woman (Russow, P. 165), deposited children on the ice to die of overexposure or drown (Russow, P. 174, by Tatars in the Russian army), put out a noble's eyes before flaying him to death (Russow, P. 184), drowned, tortured, and executed captives (Russow, P. 197, 211), sabered captives (Russow, P. 183), plucked out the heart of the living body of a mayor (Russow, P. 184), ripped a preacher's tongue from his throat (Russow, P. 184), sold captives into slavery, raped maidens and women, threw captives to their deaths off the walls of conquered cities (Russow, P. 213), and starved captives nearly to death (Russow, P. 211). They left the bodies of their victims for wild beasts to eat (Russow, P. 146). When several thousand oprichniki arrived in Narva they did not spare a single Russian of high or low station, or women and children. During the massacre they plundered all trading firms, shops, and warehouses, and burned many barrels of flax, beeswax, tallow, hides, hemp, furs, and hides. The smoke and stench were so suffocating so they dug a hole in the ice, chopped the remaining goods into small pieces, and threw them in, rather than burn them (Russow, P. 126). When the Swedes took Narva, they massacred all Russians, but the Russians in Swedish service slaughtered their fellow-countrymen even more brutally than the Swedes or their mercenaries (Russow, P. 214).

According to Henning, the Russians were bloodthirsty “ignorant barbarians” (Henning, P. 26, 112), who raged like savages (Henning, P. 51), and tortured and killed their enemies in inhuman fashion, including stretching them and breaking them on the wheel (Henning, P. 28, 46). They cut down even the young and the old, women and children, who surrendered with their hands raised, or subjected them to inhuman barbarities and atrocities, and then barbaric slavery (Henning, P. 40). Everywhere they went, they plundered, slew, roasted, and burned (Henning, P. 42, 113, 114). They hacked pregnant women in two, impaled foetuses on fence stakes, slit men's sides, inserted gunpowder and blew them up, and slit men's throats and let them bleed to death. They smeared people with thick pine pitch, bound them, and burned them. They gang-raped women and girls, and sold the survivors into slavery to the Tatars (Henning, P. 43, 52). They tore nursing babes from their mothers' breasts, chopped off hands, feet, and heads, and gutted the remainder of the bodies, stuck bodies on spits and roasted or baked them, and then ate them to satisfy their “diabolical, bloodthirsty hunger” (Henning, P. 43) Here apparently the cannibals are Orthodox Christian Russians, not Muslim Tatars.. Magnus was led past the naked sabered bodies of sixty of his men (Henning, P 136). The Russians humiliated noble captives by parading them through the streets of Moscow while lashing them with metal scourges (Henning, P. 61). They beheaded those who fell down, and left their bodies for dogs, birds, and other beasts to devour (Henning, P. 62). Like panthers who play dead to lure apes out of their trees to their deaths, Russians are most dangerous when they pretend to be friendly, and least dangerous when they rant and rave (Henning, P 101). They are barbarous and dreadful (Henning, P 106). They massacred innocent Livonian townsmen, wives, and children in retribution for anti-Russian plots in which they had no part. They butchered poor little schoolchildren (Henning, P 110). Despite safe-conducts to the surrendered occupants of assaulted cities, they sabered them as they departed (Henning, P 128). Captives too old or infirm to be led into captivity, even nobles, were killed on the spot (Henning, P 129). Survivors of a castle whose occupants chose to blow themselves up rather than surrender were sabered, hacked to bits, mutilated, and left unburied to be eaten by birds, dogs, and other wild beasts (Henning, P 135, 137) Their behavior before and after the wedding of Magnus exceed all the bounds of propriety and was too repulsive and indecent to recount (Henning, P 115).

In addition, cowardice, servility, and impiety characterize Russians. Because the Russians were cowards, they had to resort to subterfuge and deceit to win battles or wars. According to Renner, they schemed to pretend to withdraw under a truce, only to violate the truce and return in a surprise attack (Renner, P 60). They offered cities privileges if they surrendered, but this was mere subterfuge (Renner, P 51-52). They offered mercenaries and citizens safe passage with their property if they wished to leave, only to rob them (Renner, P. 61). They promised the bishop of Dorpat that he could retain his monastery under Muscovite rule, but occupied it after the city fell (Renner, P. 67).

According to Russow, the cunning Russians always had an excuse for their actions (Russow, P 88). They ate meat during Lent to convince Lutherans of their religious tolerance (Russow, P 120). They relied upon opportunism, treachery, threats, and intimidation, not bravery, courage, strength or force for victory; they retreated at the first sign of resistance (Russow, P 145). They executed seventy Scots who voluntarily entered Russian service on the pretext that the Scots had been captured (Russow, P 152). They hacked to bits Livonian subjects of Magnus who had surrendered to Russian forces under the misapprehension that Ivan and Magnus were allies (Russow, P 185). They offered to let the citizens of Pernau leave safely and return for what they could not then carry, but that was just a ploy (Russow, P 161-162). They flogged two Junkers of Magnus who did not comply with their orders; committed atrocities against women and girls unheard of among Turks and other tyrants, flayed men, roasted men alive, plucked out the living heart of a mayor, ripped a preacher's tongue from his mouth, executed other people with as much pain as possible, and heaped the bodies together for food for birds, dogs, and wild beasts (Russow, P 184). They offered inhabitants safe conducts, but then hung, stabbed, or burned them, mounted the heads of their victims on pikes, and sold the women and girls as captives (Russow, P 183).

Russian servility emerges in a dramatic episode, repeated by Henning from Taube and Kruse. For petty reasons Ivan had prominent a boyar impaled. He survived for two days, and asked to see wife and children to tell them something important. This last wish was granted, and the boyar's last words, repeated over and over, were “God bless” Ivan. The Russians obeyed Ivan out of fear, not loyalty (Henning, P 119).

Muscovite impiety occurs in the Livonian chronicles in the form of violent acts against Catholic and Protestant religious institutions. The Muscovites carried away church bells (Renner P 79, 139, 176) and burned down churches and monasteries (Renner, P. 139), not even sparing a convent (Russow P. 158). When vacating a Livonian city, according to Russow, Russians left with their “idols and images painted on wooden boards”; it is no surprise that a Lutheran pastor viewed Russian icons with derision (Russow, P. 207). Henning tells a story to illustrate that the Russians lacked any true religious conviction or sincerity. A young abbot at Magnus's wedding told servitors of Magnus that he believed whatever Ivan believed (Henning, P. 115). The participation not just of Tatar, but of Russian women in combat or post-combat atrocities such as strangling peasant children incensed Russow and Renner (Russow, P. 213; Renner, P. 43).

In all these passages about Ivan as tyrant and the Muscovites as barbarians no Livonian chronicler ever expressed skepticism at a single incident he had supposedly witnessed himself, heard about from an eyewitness, or read about in a report based upon eyewitness testimony. The Livonian chroniclers found all such horror stories entirely credible not because they fit the cliches of the Muscovite threat discourse, but because the chroniclers believed that discourse to be accurate, regardless of the fact, as we know, that it had been transposed onto Ivan and the Muscovites from the Turkish discourse. Tyrants and barbarians committed atrocities; Ivan was a tyrant and the Muscovites were barbarians; therefore all atrocity stories attributed to them deserved unconditional acceptance as reliable statements of fact.

Ivan and Russians act honorably

The Livonian chroniclers characterized Ivan and the Russians as devoid of any socially redeeming values, incapable of any human, that is, humane, behavior. However, the Livonian chronicles also included evidence that Ivan and the Russians could at times act in laudable ways, and that the Livonians and other “Europeans” could equal the Russians in perpetrating atrocities.

According to Renner, Muscovite arquebusiers Strel 'tsy. were forbidden even to say a harsh word to Livonian soldiers who had been given safe conduct to leave a captured city unharmed. A Russian who snatched a gun away from a Livonian had to return it and was beaten. The Russians kept a list of these soldiers, who had sworn not to bear arms against the Russians again. If any of them were later captured, they were executed, because they had broken their word (Renner, P. 67). When the Russians recognized a former prisoner, a canon from Dorpat, among captured mercenaries, they flayed him, hung him on a tree, and shot him (Renner, P. 181). A wounded Livonian voluntarily entered the Russian camp and received medical attention; presumably he was neither executed nor imprisoned, but allowed to leave when he had recovered from his wounds (Renner, P. 166). The Russians required captured mercenaries at Fellin to surrender their guns, but not their armor or other weapons, and allowed them to leave safely (Renner, P. 181). When Ivan expressed his intention to execute all his Livonian prisoners, his leading bishop Presumably the metropolitan of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. tried to dissuade him not to do so, lest he incur God's wrath. The bishop explained that although the Livonians had different customs and rituals than the Russians, they were still Christians. Ivan listened to the bishop and changed his plans (Renner, P. 188).

In these stories the Russians behaved honorably toward their Livonian enemies. Their otherwise cruel and excessive punishments of enemy soldiers who violated the conditions under which they were released seem appropriate. The head of the Russian church demonstrates ecumenical tolerance and Christian mercy, and Ivan himself displays a pious respect for his ecclesiastical mentor.

Russow's narrative contains comparable passages. The Muscovites kept their word to let the occupants of Dorpat leave with their wealth, although the Master of the Livonian Knights ordered their wagon train looted (Russow, P 76). Ivan honored safe-conducts, such as those for Lithuanians whose cities had been conquered by the Russians. Lithuanians were permitted to return to their own country unharmed. After conquering another Livonian castle, Ivan permitted the Polish garrison to leave unmolested (Russow, P. 183, 185). The disciplined oprichniki ravishing Narva followed Ivan's orders not to harm a single Livonian or any Livonian property (Russow, P. 126). Even more impressively, Russow, after condemning the moral wantonness common among the Poles, added that Ivan would never have tolerated such behavior (Russow, P. 116). Presumably Ivan was made of sterner moral stuff than the king of Poland.

Henning also recounts instances in which the Russians allowed the population of captured cities to leave with their belongings unmolested, such as at Pernau and Berson (P. Henning, 117, 128). He also recognized Russian courage in warfare. The Russians at Lais displayed great bravery in resisting the Livonian attack (Henning, P. 57). The Russians at Wenden blew themselves up rather than surrender (Henning, P. 137). The Russians defending Polotsk Then located in the Grand Principality of Lithuania, now Polatsk in Belarus., according to Heidenstein Reinhold Heidenstein wrote an account of the campaigns of King Stefan Batory of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth between 1578 and 1582., although dying amidst the flames of the burning city, comported themselves with such chivalry that they faced their foes head-on and fought resolutely even when their clothes were on fire (Henning, P. 142). Henning reported that some prominent Russian lords and kinsmen sadly agreed to desert the “dreadful tyranny” of Ivan and shift their allegiance to King Sigismund of Poland, but they were caught (Henning, P. 100). These Russian nobles had sufficient scruples and courage to recognize that the tyrant Ivan did not deserve their loyalty, and at least attempted to act on that realization.

Even Ivan, in Henning's chronicle, has his moments. In recognition of the steadfastness and independence of a captured Livonian noble in refusing to convert to Orthodoxy, Ivan ordered him released from prison (Henning, P. 62). Ivan generously agreed to a request from Wenden captive men who begged for permission to see their wives before being led away. Ivan let the men speak to their wives through shut gates (Henning, P. 131-132). Ivan had Magnus and his men arrested when Magnus attempted to secure control of cities in Livonia that Ivan had not allocated to him. Brought before Ivan, Magnus, on his knees before the mounted Ivan, begged for mercy for own life and the lives of his men. Ivan, his son Probably his elder son, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich., and his chief general dismounted. Ivan bade Magnus rise, “for he was, after all, the child of a great lord” (the king of Denmark). Magnus and his men had previously been disarmed. Ivan now returned Magnus's sword to him. After rebuking Magnus most severely for disobedience of his lord, Ivan promised to forgive him and to his spare his life and the lives of his men (Henning, P. 132). Ivan supposedly comforted a Junker in a Moscow prison with the thought that it was the same here on earth as in heaven, the first and the last were equal, demonstrating that Ivan treated the mightiest as well as the most humble, all members of all classes and peoples, on the basis of their equality on earth and before God (Henning, P. 135).

The inclusion of these incidents in the chroniclers has not been analyzed sufficiently. First, no passage attributing decency to Ivan or Russians could possibly derive from the pamphlet literature. No pamphlet ever presented Ivan or Russians in a favorable light of any kind. Nor can we attribute these positive stories to the source of the anti-Muscovite pamphlets, the anti-Ottoman pamphlets. Second, no immediate explanation presents itself for their inclusion in chronicles which overwhelmingly present Ivan and the Russians in the opposite light. Early modern chroniclers writing for political or propagandistic purposes did not emulate the practices of modern professional historians who would have felt obligated to include evidence that seems to contradict the historians' overall conclusions. Chroniclers had no such scholarly qualms. They could omit anything they did not want to include, and we would be no more surprised that a Livonian chronicler passed over exculpatory stories about Ivan and the Russians in silence that we are at the silence of some Muscovite narratives about less than edifying actions taken by Ivan See Charles J. Halperin, Stepennaia kniga on the Reign of Ivan IV: Omissions from Degree 17 // Slavonic and East European Review. Vol. 89. 2011. P. 56-75.. When the Livonian chroniclers wanted to impugn instances in which Ivan or Russians acted properly, they usually attributed these acts to Russian deceit, but they failed to do so in these cases. I have no theory for why the three Livonian chroniclers included such counter-intuitive evidence in their chronicles. However and finally, we can propose a theory to explain how the Livonian chroniclers could repeat such positive stories about Ivan and Russians in their chronicles without making any attempt to rationalize the contradiction between the implicit portrayal of Ivan and the Russians in them and the explicit dominant paradigm of these narratives that Ivan was a despot and the Russians barbarians.