On January 23, 1558, the army of Ivan the Terrible set out on a campaign against the Livonian Confederation, a military-religious state created in the Baltic States by German knights. So the Russian kingdom undertook the first serious attempt in its history to "cut a window" to Europe, reaching the Baltic coast.
The 16th century marked the gradual decline of the order statehood in the Baltics. The Livonian Confederation, which included the lands of the Livonian Order and four bishoprics, was a politically and militarily weak state formation, on whose lands neighboring Sweden, Denmark, Poland and the growing Russian kingdom were eagerly looking. Ivan the Terrible, who shortly before the campaign to Livonia annexed the Astrakhan and Kazan Khanates, the Great Nogai Horde and Bashkiria, considered it possible and necessary to expand the country's borders not only to the east and south, but also to the west. Moreover, Russia needed access to the Baltic Sea for more active economic relations with Europe.
The campaign of Russian troops in January 1558 in Livonia was of an intelligence nature. The number of troops was 40 thousand people, and they were commanded by the tsar's trusted governors - boyar Danila Romanovich Zakharyin-Yuriev, the tsar's uncle Prince Mikhail Vasilyevich Glinsky and Kasimov Shah-Ali Khan. It was Shah Ali Khan that Ivan the Terrible entrusted the general command of the campaign to Livonia. The Landstag of the Livonian Confederation, trying to prevent the outbreak of war, decided to transfer a tribute to Moscow in the amount of 60 thousand thalers. But by the spring it was possible to collect only half of this amount, which could not please Ivan the Terrible.
Russian troops were again sent to Livonia under the command of the governor Danila Fedorovich Adashev and Alexei Danilovich Basmanov. In April 1558, Russian troops laid siege to Narva, one of the key fortresses of the Livonian Order. Then the troops under the command of Prince Pyotr Ivanovich Shuisky besieged the Neuhausen fortress. The resistance of its defenders was suppressed only after a month of siege. In July 1558, Dorpat garrison surrendered to Shuisky, led by Bishop Herman Weiland. By October 1558, 20 fortified cities of Livonia were in the hands of the Russian troops, in which Russian garrisons were stationed. The bulk of the troops withdrew to the territory of the Russian kingdom for the winter.
Naturally, the Livonian Order was not going to put up with this state of affairs. In 1559, 42-year-old Gotthard Kettler (1517-1587), a native of Westphalia, from an old knightly family, took the post of Land Master of the Teutonic Order in Livonia. He led the 10,000-strong Livonian army and was able to defeat the voivode Mikhail Repnin. However, in January 1559, the Russian troops of Prince Vasily Serebryany invaded Livonia, quickly inflicting a crushing defeat on the Livonians and seizing 11 Livonian cities.
The military successes of Ivan the Terrible in Livonia have seriously alarmed the neighboring countries of Northern and Eastern Europe. Poland, Lithuania, Denmark and Sweden demanded an immediate end to hostilities against the Livonian Confederation. All these countries had their own interests on the Baltic coast. First of all, they claimed control over sea communications. If earlier Russian merchants were forced to transit through Revel, then in the event of the capture of Livonia and the provision of access to the Baltic Sea, the situation could change - for the better for the Russian kingdom and for the worse for the same Sweden.
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While Ivan the Terrible concluded a truce with the Livonian Confederation, Gotthard Kettler, quickly navigating a difficult situation, concluded an agreement with the Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund II to establish a protectorate of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania over the lands of the Livonian Confederation. However, in 1560, hostilities resumed. The success initially accompanied the actions of the Russian troops, which managed to inflict several significant defeats on the Livonian troops. But then the situation changed. In 1561, the Vilna Union was concluded on the formation of the Duchy of Courland and Semigalia on the territory of Livonia. Fleeing from the Russian kingdom, the Livonian Confederation chose to enter into union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Centuries later, it is obvious that Ivan the Terrible hastened with hostilities against the Livonian Confederation, having embarked on an adventure, the consequences of which the Russian kingdom had to unravel for a very long time. To begin with, almost all of Europe has taken up arms against Moscow because of the war with the Livonian Confederation. It was an ideological, civilizational issue - unlike the Orthodox Russian kingdom, the Livonian Confederation belonged to the world of Western, Catholic culture. On her side there was moral, political and military support from almost all of Western, Central and Northern Europe. It was during the hostilities in Livonia, in Europe that the demonization of the Russian state and the Russian people began. This attitude towards Russia became decisive for European politics for the following centuries. Europe hated and feared the Russian state. Having rushed events in his desire to get access to the shores of the Baltic Sea, Ivan the Terrible turned Europe against himself, and this very much "backfired" on his successors - the subsequent rulers of the Russian state.
Another negative consequence of the outbreak of the Livonian War was the termination of the existence of the Livonian Confederation as a formally independent state entity. The lands of Livonia went to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Sweden, Denmark. This did not mean anything good for the Russian kingdom, because instead of a weak "buffer" state, which was the Livonian Confederation, the Russian kingdom received on its borders a direct neighborhood with strong European countries at that time. In addition, the hope of access to the Baltic Sea was receding - it is one thing to carry it through the territory of the Livonian Confederation, and quite another - through the territory of Sweden or the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
A new phase of the war in Livonia in 1561-1562. has already led to a direct confrontation between the Russian kingdom and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At first, the Russian troops acted relatively successfully, but then they gradually began to surrender their positions. So, in 1564, the Russian army under the command of Prince Pyotr Shuisky was defeated in the Battle of Chashniki by the Lithuanian army, which was commanded by the great Lithuanian hetman Nikolai Radziwill and Kashtelian Vilensky Grigory Khodkevich. The Russian voivode, Prince Peter Shuisky, died during the battle, as did several hundred Russian soldiers.
Prince Andrei Kurbsky, who commanded the Russian troops in the west of the kingdom, went over to the side of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. For the Russian kingdom, this was a serious blow, since Kurbsky was a confidant of Ivan the Terrible and possessed information about Russian agents in Livonia and Lithuania. Failures in the war forced many influential boyars to ask for an end to hostilities, but Ivan the Terrible responded to these requests by creating an oprichnina and toughening up the boyars policy. As for the hostilities, it was decided to continue them.
Moscow rejected the proposal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to divide the territory of Livonia between the two states and embarked on a course of "war to the bitter end", which meant the capture of Riga. In his Livonian adventure, Ivan the Terrible completely forgot about the difficult position of Russia in other directions. In the north, relations with Sweden deteriorated more and more, and in the south, the Turks and Crimean Tatars became more active. First, Turkish troops undertook a campaign to Astrakhan, and then, in 1571, the Crimean Tatar army reached Moscow and set the capital on fire. The situation was aggravated by a plague epidemic, which began in Reval in 1570 and caused serious damage to the Russian army. An epidemic of plague and a terrible famine in 1571 covered many regions of the Russian kingdom.
The unification of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, which took place in 1569 according to the decision of the Diet of the gentry, held in Lublin, had a very negative significance for the Russian kingdom. According to the Union of Lublin, Poland and Lithuania were united under the rule of one elected king. The direct reason for the conclusion of the Union of Lublin was the growing fears of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to be defeated in the war with the Russian kingdom. The fear of the conquest of Lithuania by Rus eventually passed on to the Polish gentry, who nevertheless decided that they could no longer distance themselves from the confrontation between Lithuania and the Russian kingdom.
Thus, the result of the Livonian campaign of Ivan the Terrible was the emergence on the western borders of Russia of a new powerful state formation - the united Rzeczpospolita. Naturally, the political, economic and military power of the Polish-Lithuanian state increased many times over the capabilities of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania before the union. For two centuries the Commonwealth turned into a constant enemy, and sometimes an open enemy of the Russian state. Throughout the XVI-XVII centuries. The Commonwealth built all sorts of intrigues against the Russian state, which culminated in the Polish invasion of Russia in the Time of Troubles and attempts to put False Dmitriy on the throne of Moscow.
In 1579, Sweden entered the war against Russia, which also pursued its own interests. First, Sweden did not want the Russian kingdom to reach the Baltic Sea, as it hoped to receive income from the controlled Baltic ports. Secondly, Sweden's sphere of interests included vast lands in the region of the Neva River and the Gulf of Finland, which the Swedish king was going to recapture from the Russian kingdom. In 1580, Swedish troops captured Korela (Priozersk), in 1581 - Narva, after which the capture of Koporye and Ivangorod followed.
The war in Livonia demanded a colossal exertion of resources from the Russian kingdom, especially since Moscow did not actually have serious allies in this confrontation. The constant costs of war, Tatar raids, plague, famine and crop failure led to disastrous consequences for the country. So, only the population of Moscow by 1580 decreased three times. The total population of the Russian kingdom decreased by about 25%, and this despite the fact that during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, new densely populated lands - the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates, the Nogai, Bashkir and Cossack lands - became part of the country. People, especially in the central regions of Russia, were mowed down by famine and a plague epidemic, the consequences of which the authorities were unable to eliminate. The adventurous policy of Ivan the Terrible to conquer the Livonian lands gave its bloody fruits.
It is not for nothing that contemporaries called the period of the Livonian War Porukha. This word perfectly conveyed the state in which the Russian lands found themselves as a result of the war. Mortality increased sharply - from hunger, plague and other diseases. At the same time, Ivan the Terrible began to relocate peasants to the Middle and Lower Volga regions, which also contributed to a decrease in the population in the central regions of the country. Many peasants moved on their own to the outskirts of the country, trying to avoid enslavement. More than 50% of agricultural land as a result of this policy remained uncultivated, which entailed a further rise in the cost of food and exacerbated the famine that gripped the Russian lands.
Although Ivan the Terrible, entering the Livonian War, pursued the goal of providing access to the Baltic Sea and, accordingly, improving the political and economic situation of the Russian kingdom, in practice everything turned out completely differently. In January 1582, the Russian kingdom made peace with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, recognizing the latter's control over Livonia and Belarus. In 1583, an armistice was concluded with Sweden, according to which Karelian lands and lands along the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland were withdrawn in favor of the Swedish crown. Thus, the goals that Ivan the Terrible set before the war were not achieved. The Russian kingdom not only did not reach the Baltic Sea, but also lost land near the Gulf of Finland.
On March 18 (28), 1584, Ivan the Terrible died, leaving unresolved conflicts on the western borders of the country. In 1590-1595. a new Russian-Swedish war broke out, as a result of which it was possible to win back from the Swedes the lands they had captured by 1583. As for access to the Baltic Sea, Russia solved this problem a little over a century later, already in the 18th century. Two hundred years after the events of the Livonian War, Rzeczpospolita also ceased to exist as an independent state, so that historically, the victory still remained with Russia.
Author: Ilya Polonsky