Teutonic Knights (39 page)

Kettler was an adherent of Protestant ideas. Although originally a Roman Catholic, like all recruits into the order, he had been stationed in Germany for a few years. There he had seen possibilities for reforming the military order that he longed to put into practice. Upon his return to Livonia he became identified with that faction wishing to imitate the Prussian branch of the order, to secularise the state, divide up its lands among the members, and become landed nobles. This minority faction had been temporarily suppressed by Wilhelm von Fürstenburg, but now it revived, its numbers swelled by the failure of the master’s policies. As it became obvious that the Livonian Order could not perform its military role properly, demands for reform rose; and the reform that was called for was that espoused by Gotthard Kettler, who almost alone of all the castellans was able to achieve minor victories against the marauding Russian cavalry forces. His courage and initiative in the field were equalled by his restraint, and willingness to work within the old framework of the order until a consensus was achieved.

Most Livonians were giving up all thought of defending themselves alone. The nobles and castellans stood paralysed by the atrocities committed on their unresisting subjects; the burghers were appalled by the behaviour of the Hanseatic League, which not only failed to send aid but took advantage of Reval’s troubles to bypass the port rather than unload their cargo for subsequent shipment to Russia; and the churchmen were hawking their dioceses to German and Scandinavian dynasties, hoping to escape their situation with a profit. The members of the Livonian Order hardly did better. The castellan of Wesenburg proved himself more competent at chasing willing women than chasing away Russians; he abandoned the strongest and best-stocked fortress in Estonia and fled to Reval. That the castle did not fall to the Russians was due solely to the initiative of a young warrior who garrisoned it with the few men who followed him. The castellan of Reval sent to the Danish monarch to come and take possession of the province. Only because King Christian died suddenly did Estonia not return to Danish ownership. When no troops arrived the citizens of Reval concluded that they would have to defend themselves, and they set to work, building new fortifications against the powerful siege train of the enemy. Their old walls would not have withstood a serious bombardment, but Ivan gave them the time to get ready. Having exhausted his men and his supplies, the tsar left garrisons to hold Narva and Dorpat, then withdrew back into Russia with his men, a vast number of prisoners, and an incredible amount of booty. The diocese of Dorpat never recovered: the last bishop died in Russian captivity and was not replaced.

The Russian army renewed its advance in January 1559, this time striking from Dorpat through the rolling countryside of central Livonia to Riga, then past that well-fortified city into Semgallia and Kurland. There it captured ill-prepared fortresses one after the other. The Tatars reinforced their traditional reputation for cruelty, but the Russian troops who had beaten the Tatars and made them serve the tsar were almost equally feared.

Readers of the chronicles may well doubt whether the Russians were as cruel in these years as later, or as horrible as the retelling of the story fixed them in popular memory. No doubt the atrocities seemed crueller because Livonia had been at peace so long, but at that time Ivan was still making a sincere if clumsy effort to win over German lords and native peasants. This would change later, as Ivan’s periodic bouts of insanity were combined with his promotion of ambitious but frightened newcomers to office, newcomers who understood that the tsar would not accept excuses for any failure. Ivan’s ‘secret police’ used terror against the tsar’s enemies at home, and terror against his opponents abroad.

Nor were the Russians the only threat to life and property. Unpaid mercenaries and outlaws roamed the countryside. Soon enough Livonians would learn to protect themselves against all soldiers – hideouts would be dug in the woods, girls and young children would be kept out of the way, and the men would defend every fortified church and manor to the utmost; they especially had to prevent marauding irregulars from having their will, for such troops were always worse than organised army units. In the future, when the scum of all Europe appeared in one or another of the armies that operated in Livonia, people learned how to avoid or survive the sacking, plundering, and mistreatment that Germans, Lithuanians, Poles, Swedes, Danes, English, Scots, Dutch, and even more exotic adventurers practised on the civilian population. Even so, the memory of the first years of horror was not erased. The Russians were saddled with a reputation for barbarity that served splendidly as war propaganda for both sides – by the Russians to cow their enemies, and by the Livonians to win help from abroad and to encourage their subjects to fight to the last against the Muscovites.

That the Russians were hardly without human feelings is proven by their careful administration of conquered districts and their practice of confirming landholders and merchants in their former rights and possessions. Also, at the very height of his success, in March 1559, Ivan IV suddenly and unexpectedly granted a truce to his enemies. Through this he hoped to obtain a peaceful surrender and settlement of terms by which Livonia would be governed.

The reason for halting the Muscovite advance seems to have been the impending intervention of Danes, Swedes, Poles, and Lithuanians into the Livonian War, but most of all an invasion by the Crimean Tatars. Apparently the tsar hoped to secure his gains in the north by negotiation, to balance the intervening powers against one another, and keep them all away while he sent his own army south. He was mistaken in this. The northern powers were indeed jealous of one another, but not one monarch was willing to withdraw his hand from the booty that lay before him, and each was eager to get his share before the others gobbled it up. Ivan’s gesture cost him six months, months in which he could have occupied most of Livonia, months during which his opponents secured footholds in the country and raised troops to send into the fighting.

In September of 1559 the Livonian Order forced Wilhelm von Fürstenburg to resign his office. Kettler, with authority now in his hands alone, was delayed in secularising his order only by the military crisis. He had already signed a treaty with Sigismund Augustus at Vilnius that made Livonia south of the Daugava a Polish protectorate. At this same time the bishop of Oesel sold his lands to Magnus of Holstein, the younger brother of the king of Denmark. Magnus was soon in Moscow pursuing a policy of his own that involved marriage into the tsar’s family and the creation of a mockable, impotent state grossly subservient to Russia. The Swedes came into the war in June of 1561, when Reval and the nobility of Harrien, Wierland, and Jerwen gave homage to King Eric. The era of German rule was coming to an end, but no one could predict what would succeed it. Not even the foreign powers now intervening in the war were able to do much at first, as the Russian summer offensive of 1560 swept over the land.

The Livonian Knights had, in fact, developed an effective strategy for dealing with the Russian invaders. In the beginning they had attempted to bring infantry and artillery to bear on raiding parties, but they could not catch Tatar horsemen; when confronted by overwhelming numbers of infantry and cavalry, they retreated into stout fortresses. These tactics left the countryside extremely vulnerable to raiders. Out of necessity Kettler now improvised cavalry tactics that could limit the damage that Russian horsemen could do. Relying on the superior knowledge of the land and the ability to fall back on the castles, they were aggressive in harassing the enemy wherever they found him. This prevented the Russians from spreading out to loot and burn, thus restricting their ability to live off the land and offering some protection to the Livonian peasants. In addition, Kettler persuaded the Lithuanians to defend the southern lands and allowed the Swedes to hold the north. Concentrating his remaining forces, Kettler promoted able commanders whose youth and daring were breathing new spirit into the army. Alas for his fortunes, luck was not with them, as this passage from a contemporary chronicle describes:

The battle at Ermes was a fatal defeat. The numbers lost were not great, but the fallen knights were the flower of the Livonian Order. Everyone then realised that the end was approaching for the traditional government and way of life. Despite the confusion, the defeats, and the feeling that resistance was hopeless, the Livonian Knights had stayed in the field, harassed the enemy foragers, and defended their most important castles against attack. The extensive correspondence between the master and his castellans and advocates shows that the efficient organisation did not break down completely. Troops were still moved from one threatened point to another, and supplies were collected and distributed with a minimum of difficulty; but the knights were now too few and too old, the number of mercenaries both too large to pay with the reduced incomes and too small to be successful in pitched battle, and the financial condition of the treasury pitiful. The correspondence with foreign princes was staggering in its volume. Gotthard Kettler tried desperately to raise money and troops from the Holy Roman Empire, and to keep the neighbouring princes from dividing the country among themselves, but he had little success in any of these projects. Although Kettler may have plotted from the beginning to subvert the rule of his order and to make himself a landed prince, it is proper that he be given credit for these efforts to save the Livonian Knights and their possessions, and to pass down that inheritance intact to one ruler.

Still, there was little that Kettler could do to prolong the existence of his military order. Once his field army had been routed, Kettler could not defend the castles effectively. Many brothers went into an imprisonment that ended in the streets of Moscow, their heads bashed in or cut off when they collapsed in exhaustion during the victory parade. The great fortress at Fellin, with all its stores, weapons, and the treasury, was lost when the mercenaries demanded that the commander accept a tsarist offer of surrender; Fürstenburg, who had wanted to fight to the death, was carried away to Moscow to spend the rest of his life in comfortable captivity. Ivan hoped that Fürstenburg would be able to persuade other Livonians to accept him as their lord, with the landed vassals ruling Livonia according to their ancient traditions, their only obligations to the tsar being taxes and military service; and he promised merchants access to the Russian market. A few nobles and burghers did come over to the tsar, but most of those did so only after being captured and given no other reasonable choice. Far more believed the gory stories of Ivan’s atrocities that were giving him the name ‘the Terrible’; as far as they were concerned, tsarist promises meant less than examples of tsarist tyranny. Better, they believed, to try any expedient that gave some promise of surviving the crisis. Soon after this Kettler began secret talks aimed at the dissolution of the order on terms that would make him duke of such regions as could be saved from the Russians.

There were a few brothers who protested handing over the castles, one after the other, to Polish garrisons, but they could not suggest means by which the Livonian Knights could hold the fortresses alone. Only by concentrating the troops who remained and borrowing heavily to pay mercenaries could they even hold Kurland; and Kettler found that difficult because his royal patron was becoming reluctant to loan him anything more.

The Livonian Order was technically still in existence, although most of the brethren were now dead or missing. They had found too late effective tactics for countering the Russian numbers. Now the ranks of their knights were too thin, and the good commanders had fallen in battle. No army can expect to fight without suffering an occasional setback, and if the strategy involves daring tactics, the number of defeats must necessarily be higher. The one defeat at Ermes had wiped out the most effective cavalry unit. Most survivors were now ready to give over the fight to others. The ensuing power vacuum drew the outsiders right into the country.

The sense of panic that followed the crushing defeat at Ermes and the fall of the great fortress at Fellin in the centre of the country was observed carefully by the Estonians, that sturdy people which had never reconciled itself to the crusaders’ domination. The memory of earlier insurrections which had failed miserably had taught caution, but now those whose courage and initiative had not been crushed saw that the time had come – if it ever could come – when it might be possible for them to throw out their oppressors. They were unused to arms, having been deprived of weapons for generations, but in 1559 the Livonian Knights had raised units of native infantry, equipped them with swords, spears, and shields, and used them to support the small bodies of mercenaries and feudal cavalry trying to contain the Russian marauders provisioning the besiegers of Reval; eventually the Russians abandoned their attack and retreated. These sturdy peasants then came to realise that if they fought for the Russians instead of against them, they could become independent again – or at least free of German rule. The tsar encouraged them to rebel, reminding them how he had welcomed everyone, even German nobles, who had come over to him at the beginning and rewarded them for their service and loyalty; he listened to the Estonians’ advice, employed them as scouts and spies, and sent them into the German-occupied regions to spread his propaganda among those who would listen. In the occupied regions he ordered his officials to provide the peasants with seed grain, to help rebuild their homes, and to keep the troops from marauding and plundering. In contrast, the Germans were extorting extraordinary taxes to pay the cost of the war and drafting every available man for military service, for transporting supplies and equipment, or for working on fortifications.