Ivan the Terrible: A Military History by Filjushkin Alexander

Author:Filjushkin, Alexander [Filjushkin, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781473805934
Publisher: Frontline Books
Published: 2008-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

The origin of this tribute was unclear and this gave rise to several legends. According to one, the Livonians payed the Russians six Livonian solids a year for each tree with honey bees. As time went by the population increased, the woods turned into fields and the tribute was forgotten. Ivan the Terrible, according to this explanation, misinterpreted it by turning the payment for each tree with honey bees into a charge per person.

Balthazar Ryussov, a Livonian chronicler, cited another legend. On a plot of waste land between Neuhausen and Pskov, local people collected honey from several hundred trees. Dorpat and Pskov contested the right to impose tribute on the honey gatherers, which resulted in constant clashes. Finally, the towns came to an agreement according to which the Russians received five poods (approximately 80 kg) of honey every year. With time the matter became forgotten, until in 1554 it was revived by Ivan the Terrible, but in a new interpretation. Instead of the Dorpat region, it was now applied to the whole of Livonia, and instead of a few poods of honey Moscow now demanded one mark per person plus payment of the arrears accrued over the previous years. The total sum was rather impressive.

According to yet other sources this tribute originated as funds allotted for the support of Orthodox churches in Dorpat. In 1554 the Russians demanded that Livonia must restore St Nicholas Church in Dorpat, closed in 1548, and pay off all the arrears of money, going back many years, for the support of Orthodox churches. Again, all Livonia was to pay. Indeed, the tributary relations of Dorpat and surrounding territories with Russian dukes were very complicated and went back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The parties changed their agreements several times, imposing or cancelling the tribute. It was very difficult to disentangle all these international legal relations going back hundreds of years, hence numerous legends, the bewilderment of Livonian ambassadors and the insistence of Russian diplomats who realised perfectly that in this situation they could demand whatever they liked from Livonia.

In all Russia demanded 6,000 marks (about 1,000 ducats or 60,000 thalers). Interestingly, when Dorpat was captured in 1558, the house of a single nobleman, Fabian Tisenhausen, was found to contain 80,000 thalers, more than was needed to prevent the war! But the Livonians did not want to pay and signed up to the obligation to collect money only after a Russian diplomat, Ivan Viskovaty, unambiguously warned that the tsar would come personally to collect the tribute.7

A version of the agreement was first prepared in Moscow and then finalised on 15 June 1554 by the governor of Novgorod the Great, Dmitry Paletsky. The document contained a paragraph about a fifteen-year truce on condition that Livonia paid the stipulated tribute within three years, restored Russian churches damaged during the Reformation; Russian merchants were granted free trade both in Livonia and, through Livonian ports, with Hansa (except trade in military equipment); all foreigners were given the right of

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