A Storm in the East
The Polish Commonwealth- Europe’s largest state- was also the most fractious. Lithuania’s expansion into the lands of the Rus and the Steppe gave the sprawling Polish kingdom substantial Orthodox and Muslim populations, and the German settlers in Prussia, Silesia and the Baltic coast maintained steady contact with their peers in the west; together the groups provided fertile ground for more radical religious movements emanating out of the Holy Roman Empire. Religion was far from the only fault line, however, nor even the most significant- as in the other western states Poland faced a restive nobility resentful of impositions on traditional feudal privileges. Poland, as a nominally elective monarchy, was plagued by an especially weak central authority- as early as 1480 the Polish author Jan Siska wrote admiringly of Poland’s “Republican” character, in striking contrast to the more autocratic governments then emerging in France, England and Italy. Above all else the king was bound by the oath of election to respect rights, properties, and privileges of the aristocrats, above all else granting them representation in the Sejm, with each noble born man, no matter his wealth or standing, having the right of immediate veto on legislation. In practice the Hohenzollern monarchs tended to ignore the Sejm as not worth their time- they preferred to negotiate with individual landowners and cities, or else fall back on the family’s extensive holdings, which included Prussia, Pomerania, Brandenburg itself and parts of rich Silesia, especially after the extinction of the Silesian Piast dukes of Opole in 1490 and the reversion of his territory to the Polish crown. The monarchy also asserted an exclusive royal prerogative over the rivers and roads of the kingdom, with a royal tax levied on traffic on the Oder and Vistula rivers. This was vehemently opposed by local landowners and the crown was forced to compromise in de jure Poland, but the kings- backed by the merchant classes and enjoying the general favor of the Holy Roman Empire- were able to progressively alienate the existing landed estates in the western, wealthy periphery of the kingdom, exploiting the ambiguous status of the border territories along the Oder and general contradictions between Imperial and Royal law to assert a more favorable status quo. Poland’s Hohenzollern monarchs were German princes, and considered themselves prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire first and foremost- but they were born, not in Berlin, but in Legnica, came of age in Krakow, and diverted much of their energies in expanding east. The Polish government issued documents in Latin, used Italian or French for diplomacy, and Polish and German in the court; in the Grand Duchy Lithuanian, Ruthenian, and Polish were all prominent among the upper classes with the latter increasingly dominating among the nobility.
The war against Kalmar Denmark did not immediately upset Poland’s internal affairs, but the strain of the conflict neverthelss shook the foundations of royal rule. Much of the fighting had occurred along the Pomeranian coast, in territories held by the Hohenzollern dynasty directly or within their zone of influence. War and the perils of a hostile power controlling the Oresund hit the Baltic cities especially hard, and royal revenues declined substantially with the collapse of trade, undermining a major pillar of fiscal support for the royal administration. In response to the growing threat of Danish naval power the Polish king formally incorporated Prussia into the Holy Roman Empire, thus in theory obliging the Empire to rally to the province’s defense if attacked by a foreign power; in practice the German states had little interest in meeting any such obligations, demanding that the Emperor underwrite any such expenses himself. The subsequent reorganization of the Empire under Gian Federico Visconti, and continued reforms under his son and successor Gian Galeazzo, were at least in part an attempt to defray the costs of such imperial defense, and thus arguably represented an early example of the principles of collective security applied in practice to European international relations.
Poland’s descent into civil war presented an unprecedented opportunity for the Scandinavian union, and had the bellicose king Alfred the Lion still reigned it is likely he would have considered intervening immediately, but his son was a more tactful and calculating man. Known to history as Eric the Fox, he took a careful appreciation of the dwindling royal treasury, the restlessness of Norwegian barons, and- especially after the Lithuanian rebels were routed at Vilna in 1515- opted against renewed warfare. Instead the king decided to extend his tendrils into Novgorod collaborating with rebellious princes to overthrow the Hohenzollern overlord and re-establish a republic under Danish suzerainty.
Muscovy’s striking decline in the latter half of the 15th century stands as a sobering reminder of harsh geopolitical realities and the difficulties facing even competent rulers. Although the Muscovite state enjoyed capable leadership and a strong demographic and cultural foundation, the emergence on the one hand a powerful Hohenzollern led Polish-Brandenburg-Lithuanian union, and on the other of an imperialistic Persia obsessed with its patriarchal influence over the nomadic tribes ultimately proved fatal to the nascent state. In part Moscow’s obstinate adherence to Eastern Orthodoxy was emblematic of this trend- the Byzantine submission to Rome, and subsequent negotiated (or enforced) unions in Serbia, Transylvania, Wallachia, and Novgorod had the effect of diplomatically and culturally isolating the Russian states. This by itself was not overly egregious given Moscow’s geographic isolation, but it ensured that the state had few if any friends or connections in foreign courts, and the disastrous decision of Duke Ivan to intervene against Poland in the war of the Navarrese succession saw to his own death and the destruction of much of his army. Muscovy never truly recovered from the disaster, owing to constant depredations from Crimean and Astrakhani nobles along the southern frontier: in the four decades following Ivan’s death it is estimated that nearly a quarter million Russians were captured by Turkish raids, the vast majority ultimately destined for Venetian slave plantations in Egypt, Crete and Cyprus. Political incoherence, diplomatic isolation, and demographic and economic stagnation all served to cripple Russia’s last independent principality in the face of her aggressive and domineering rivals.
The end came, as it often did, with almost pathetic finality. Duke Vasily III vainly committed himself to battle against Poland alongside the English alliance, but his dreams of restoring Russian independence or even reclaiming the western fringes of the Rus lands lost to Lithuania were definitevely shattered along with the duke himself at the battle of Kiev in 1510. In the aftermath Poland marched on Moscow itself, this time with the intention not merely for plunder but outright conquest. Moscow was a strong city of nearly 100,000 souls, but with the Polish king willing and able to maintain a siege (and after the armistice in the Baltic free of pressing commitments at that frontier) the city’s fate was cast in stone. On June 11th 1511 Polish artillery breached Moscow’s walls and the king’s soldiers stormed into the city itself. The last Rurikovich Duke of Moscow vanished in the chaos and was presumed dead as his city was given over to the Catholics as a prize of war. Once the looting ended the Polish king unilaterally proclaimed himself “king of all Rossiya” and re-established the duchy of Moscow as a Polish fiefdom incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The city was also forcibly subjected to Catholic domination, with a formal Church Union (accomplished under the auspices of the Polish Crown) enacted simultaneously with the Polish occupation.
From the beginning Polish rule was nakedly brutal and lacked any substantive local support, being wholly dependent on the occupying army. The Church Union, unsurprisingly, was fatally tainted by its bloody birth. In contrast to more enduring accords- as in the Balkans, for instance- the Muscovite Catholic Church was enforced at gunpoint, whereas the Byzantine Union had been, in the words of the historian Ferdinando Galeozzi “coerced but not forced.” The Catholics were most successful at the periphery rather than on areas subject directly to Catholic conquest- in Serbia and Greece and Novgorod and Wallachia, where local princes willingly submitted to Rome in the hopes of integrating themselves into the broader Catholic political and cultural sphere. Romania’s confessional division- the persistently heretical devotions of Transylvania, which notwithstanding Hungarian oppression remained solidly Orthodox and were among the first to convert to the new Protestant faith- stands as a striking reminder both of the strength and limitation of state power at its most raw and violent.
King Henry did not enjoy his conquest for long- with the outbreak of rebellion in Lithuania Moscow finally revolted, rising against the garrision and burning the governor alive in his own mansion in March 1515. This was followed three months later by a similar much more extensive massacre in Novgorod. King Conrad of Swabia was shot dead by an assassin, and the city rose in revolt. An orgy of violence saw hundreds of Germans slaughtered- alongside Jews and Catholic priests. The city thereafter formally proclaimed a republic but Prince Erik of Scandinavia had other plans, using the abuses inflicted upon the catholic populations to justify an invasion. The revived Novgorod republic lasted four months before falling to another foreign power.
Ultimately Russia’s weakness was to the greatest benefit not of Poland- which after all had more significant commitments further west, in Germany, the Baltic, and the Dinaric Peninsula- but to the Iranicized Tatars of Astrakhan, who under the great Darvish Ali unified most of the lands of the former Golden Horde and embarked upon the last great war of nomadic conquest against his hapless neighbor. With Poland in turmoil the khan- fresh from his conquest of Crimea- set his sights on Moscow, mortal enemy of the Tartars and then under the “rule” of a succession of False Dmitrys, each claiming to be a scion of the extirpated dynasty.
Muscovy still had a respectable army, but the Astrakhan Khanate had the wealth of slaves and access to foreign markets. It is perhaps telling that the last great steppe conqueror, a supposed descendant of Genghis Khan, modeled his army along the lines of the Ottoman sultanate- although certainly using the cavalry at his disposal it was to be firearms bought from the Venetians that would destroy Moscow’s newfound independence. The False Dmitry (third of his kind) and his army of Russian nobles were annihilated at the battle of Ryazan on June 5th 1521, and Moscow again placed under siege. The city was thereafter subjected twice in as many decades to a foreign sack and occupation. Yet unlike the Poles the Tsar critically made no attempt at forced conversion; on the contrary he extended official state protection to the Russian Orthodox Church, assuming pretensions of “liberating” the city from foreign tyranny. The newly reconstituted Muscovite Metropolitan Bishop was granted authority over all the Orthodox Christians within the burgeoning empire, and was effectively transformed into a pillar of support for the new regime in lands which were after all quite different from the “native” Turkic tribes.