Livonian War (1558–1583)

LIVONIAN WAR (1558–1583)

LIVONIAN WAR (1558–1583). In 1558 Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible began over twenty years of war for a Baltic foothold by invading eastern Estonia, an area made vulnerable by factional divisions within the Livonian Order (the Order of the Brothers of the Sword) and political conflict among the order, the archbishopric of Riga, and the increasingly Protestant population of the towns. Moscow's potential rivals—Sweden and Poland—were preoccupied with other concerns; Muscovy therefore enjoyed early success. By 1560 Narva and Dorpat and most of the Livonian interior as far as Courland was under Muscovite occupation. But this provoked the Danes, Sweden, and Poland into entering the war.

The second phase of the Livonian War (1563–1571) saw Muscovite armies invade Lithuania; Polotsk, Ozerishche, and other towns along the Western Dvina quickly fell to them. The tsar planned to install Duke Magnus, brother of Denmark's King Frederick II, as vassal king of Livonia to secure a Danish alliance to drive the Swedes out of Riga and Pernau (Pärnu), which they had seized in 1560. Muscovite occupation of northeastern Lithuania finally convinced the Lithuanian nobility to accept closer administrative union with Poland in a Commonwealth (in the Union of Lublin, 1569), which considerably increased the military resources available to the Polish crown. Frederick II not only withheld the support Duke Magnus needed to expel the Swedes but signed a treaty with the Swedes at Stettin in 1570. The deposition of King Erik XIV brought to the Swedish throne John III Vasa (ruled 1568–1592), who was the son-in-law of King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland and was inclined to view Muscovy as a greater threat than Poland to Swedish interests in Livonia. The military stalemate in Lithuania and Livonia had meanwhile left Muscovy's southern frontier undermanned, with the result that Khan Devlet Girei took a large Crimean Tatar army deep into central Muscovy, sacking and burning Moscow itself in 1571.

In the third phase of the war (1572–1577) Ivan IV exploited the interregnum following the death of Sigismund II to mount another major offensive in Livonia. But the Muscovites were still unable to capture Reval (Tallinn) or Riga. Meanwhile the Commonwealth's newly elected king Stephen Báthory (ruled 1576–1586) was able to achieve rapprochement with the Ottomans and Crimeans, to convince the Sejm to raise taxes for a much larger army of 56,000 men, and to negotiate an alliance with the Swedes. By contrast Ivan IV was finding it harder to maintain large Muscovite forces in the field, for years of heavy taxation and manpower mobilization from the western Muscovite provinces (particularly Novgorod and Pskov) had left these districts devastated.

In 1578 Polish and Swedish armies combined to deal the Muscovites a crushing defeat at Wenden (Cēsis). This marked the war's final phase, which was catastrophic for the Muscovites. Over the next three years they were pushed out of Livonia altogether. Stephen Báthory recaptured Polotsk and the other towns of the Western Dvina region in 1579–1580 and carried the war into western Muscovy, placing Pskov under protracted siege in 1581. By the end of 1581 the Muscovite garrisons at Narva, Ivangorod, Yama (Kingisepp), and Kopor'e had fallen to the Swedish general Pontus De la Gardie. Ivan IV was compelled to sign a ten years' armistice with the Commonwealth at Iam Zapol'skii in January 1582 and a three years' armistice with Sweden at Pliuss in 1583. The tsar thereby forfeited all the lands his armies had occupied along the Baltic coast. Central and southwestern Livonia came under Commonwealth control; the Swedes took Estonia and the territory along the Gulf of Finland.

See also Ivan IV, "the Terrible" (Russia) ; Lublin, Union of (1569) ; Northern Wars ; Poland-Lithuania, Commonwealth of, 1569–1795 ; Sigismund II Augustus (Poland, Lithuania) ; Stephen Báthory ; Sweden ; Vasa Dynasty (Sweden) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Frost, Robert I. The Northern Wars: War, State, and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721. Harlow, U.K., and New York, 2000.

Koroliuk, V. D. Livonskaia voina: Iz istorii vneshnei politiki russkogo tsentralizovannogo gosudarstva vo vtoroi polovinie XVI v. Moscow, 1954.

Roberts, Michael. The Early Vasas: A History of Sweden, 1523–1611. Cambridge, U.K., and London, 1968.

Brian Davies