What happened in Europe and Asia when Ivan the Terrible ruled in Russia

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

History at school is taught in virtually isolated lines. Separately Europe, separately Asia, separately Rurik and their legacy. But it is quite possible to measure historical periods in Russian figures. For example, in Ivan the Terrible.

All jokes, but here are a few major events and figures that can easily be tied to Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich. It is immediately easier to navigate the chronology.

St. Bartholomew's night

Everyone remembers the cruel fun of Ivan the Terrible in the company of the guardsmen. Binge drinking, which involved murders, driving around Moscow at night with attacks on women and girls in their own homes … It all ended overnight. Grozny took and dismissed his guardsmen (and later executed some). Why?

In 1572, Europe shuddered at a terrible event initiated, it is believed, by the mother of the French king, Queen Dowager Catherine de Medici. For the wedding of her daughter Margaret (who went down in history as Queen Margot) with King Henry of Navar, who is also a Huguenot (Protestant), many Huguenots of France and not only gathered. Taking advantage of this, the Medici arranged a conspiracy, and on the sixth day of the celebration of the wedding of Margaret and Henry, more precisely, on the sixth night, the Catholics of Paris began to slaughter the Huguenots - from babies in cradles to fiercely resisting armed nobles. Heinrich of Navarsky himself survived only because his wife bravely defended him.

Although Catholics usually supported their own in any confrontation with Protestants, the massacre was so terrible that even zealous Catholics Poles condemned the French royal family. Paris has complicated relations with almost all European countries. Among other monarchs, Ivan the Terrible strongly condemned what happened. The irony of fate was that he expressed his condemnation of the massacre two years after the Novgorod pogrom he organized. Either the Bartholomew Night made him look at himself from the outside, or it was political considerations, but he gave a sharply negative assessment of what happened - in his letter to the German emperor.

It is believed that it was under the impression of St. Bartholomew's Night that Grozny dismissed the guardsmen and again fell into religion, as it was under the influence of his first wife in his youth. Dissolution, however, is not quite the right word. The tsar began with the murder of the founder of the oprichnina, Alexei Basmanov, moreover, he offered to kill his son Fyodor Basmanov, promising to keep him alive in return. Fyodor killed both his father and his brother-oprichnik, after which a link was sent. But he died there under mysterious circumstances.

Suleiman the Magnificent

Many have heard or even watched the series "The Magnificent Century" and know Sultan Suleiman and the main love of his life, which the Europeans gave the nickname Roksolana, and the Turks called Khyurrem Sultan. According to legend, she was a Slavic beauty, so intelligent and with character that, having recognized her, the sultan no longer looked at other women and consulted with her in many ways.

Suleiman the Magnificent is another famous contemporary of Ivan the Terrible. The relationship between these sovereigns cannot be called friendly. Grozny fought with Kazan, where representatives of the Crimean khan family ruled, and the Crimean khan, in turn, was a subject of Suleiman. The relations between the two countries were not improved by the war of Ivan Vasilyevich with the Astrakhan Khanate, an ally of the Ottoman Empire. If Suleiman and John entered into a direct correspondence, then John, as usual, would have left some selective rudeness to his descendants as a keepsake.

Stefan Bathory

One of the most legendary rulers of Eastern Europe, the Hungarian Stefan Bathory (Istvan Bathory), is included in the history of modern Belarus, Poland and Lithuania. He was chosen by the Poles to the royal throne three years after St. Bartholomew's Night and left behind a memory as an enlightened and kind monarch, despite the fact that he could not speak the languages of any of the peoples-subjects. He wrote orders and decrees in Latin.

The troops of Stefan Batory more than once met with the troops of Ivan the Terrible on the battlefield. Grozny was an ambitious ruler and dreamed of uniting under his rule all the former lands of the Rurikovichs, including those that entered the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and then became part of the Commonwealth. He prospered until the moment Batory took the Polish throne. He enlisted the support of the Turks (which was unexpected for the Christian sovereign) and in the most harsh and even cruel way began to return everything so recently conquered by the Russian tsar.

Ivan the Terrible himself treated Bathory scornfully, not considering himself equal. In his letters, he always called him “neighbor” and not “brother”, because Batory received the throne not by right of blood (although he secured his rights by a wedding with the last representative of the direct descendants of Prince Jagiello, Anna Jagiellonka). After long months of war, Batory sent Ivan the Terrible a letter in which he challenged him - it would be more honest, they say, to resolve all issues in a duel between two sovereigns than to shed the blood of his subjects. Grozny considered it beneath his dignity to accept this challenge.

Virgin queen

Another legendary queen of that time, the Englishwoman Elizabeth I, is known for what Shakespeare did under her, it was her fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada (however, then Armada defeated the English fleet, but this is less discussed), and she also first captivated, and after a lot years executed Queen Mary Stuart. Mary was a relative of Elizabeth, received the throne in Scotland, but also claimed the English crown.

Elizabeth I was the only woman with whom Ivan the Terrible was in correspondence. This correspondence lasted about twenty years, from 1562 until the death of the tsar in 1584. In 1569 Ivan the Terrible feared, without jokes, that he would be overthrown, and decided to secure asylum in England. He probably also considered strengthening his position by marrying the Queen of England.

Negotiations on this topic failed, and the tsar wrote his famous angry letter, in which he recalled literally everything he could, for example, that the British do not even have a single seal - different letters hang on different letters, but decent sovereigns do not do that, and remembered the maiden title Elizabeth. For some time after this, relations between the Muscovy and England were terminated.

Despite the fact that they were contemporaries, Grozny was not interested in Shakespeare's work. But, by the way, shortly before his death, he tried to woo another Englishwoman, Maria Hastings, daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon. The piquancy of matchmaking was that Grozny was married at that time and the matchmakers must have embarrassed the count's daughter a lot, promising her that if she accepted the offer, they would get rid of his wife.

Other famous contemporaries of Grozny

The famous Japanese political leader who tried to open Japan to ties with Europe, Oda Nobunaga died two years earlier than Grozny. They were generally exemplary of the same age - Nobunaga was born four years later than John. Like Grozny, he was considered a rather cruel person. Like Grozny, he tried to collect once united, but under him, disunited Japanese lands - only officially not under his rule, but under the rule of his emperor.

During the reign of Grozny, three emperors of the Ming dynasty were replaced in China: Jiajing, Longqing and Wanli. The first persecuted Buddhists, being a Taoist himself, brought the country into a severe economic crisis and had an addiction to young girls - he believed that young virgins would make him immortal. In parallel, he took an immortality pill made from red lead and arsenic, and it is because of them that he is believed to have died. His son and successor Longqing hated magicians and those who promised immortality - which is not surprising. Avoiding the pills of immortality did not help him - Longqing died at the age of thirty-five, however, having managed to bring the country out of the crisis.

Emperor Longqing's son Wanliu eventually took the throne at nine years old. It was under him that potatoes and corn brought from America began to be grown in China. During his reign, there was the first official contact with Russia - but after the death of Grozny.

The Spanish queen Juana the Mad was also a contemporary of Grozny. At the time when Ivan Vasilyevich took the reins of power, she had been living in captivity for many years, since her mental disorder was severe - she, for example, could not eat if someone was watching, and refused to wash. Spain (and, by the way, Germany) was ruled by her son Charles V, the last emperor to be crowned by the Pope.

Grozny ended his life under the son of Karl Philip II. Under him - and in the memory of the Russian tsar - Spain annexed Portugal with weapons, taking advantage of the death of the Portuguese king. And in the memory of Ivan the Terrible, part of the Netherlands threw off the Spanish rule.

Simple memos will allow you to organize not only this part of the school history course in memory. What is the fundamental difference between the most popular monarchs of the family in the world: Japanese, English and Norwegian.