However, this was the deceptive weakness of a no-man's-land situated between several strong predators, all of whom coveted its ports, its wealthy cities, and its first-class fortresses; all waiting for one of the others—the stupidest—to take the initiative. For the very fragmentation and decentralization of Livonia were, paradoxically, its main strength. It had no one nerve center at which to strike. Each fortress had to be conquered separately, and there were hundreds of fortresses. A war could not be brought to an end either by a swift attack or by a pitched battle; Livonia was a hopeless quagmire, capable of absorbing the bones of a whole generation of would-be conquerors. The one who struck first not only risked losing prestige by openly taking on the aggressor's role, but would also unite against himself a strong coalition of other predators, who would reap the spoils at the expense of the first under the guise of justice. This was why
Ivan III would rather have left to someone else the dubious pleasure of beating his head against the impregnable walls of Riga and Revel', and then taken the choicest morsel from the paws of the exhausted victor. He prepared for his descendants territorial positions suitable for just such a strategy. The only Livonian prize that really interested Muscovy was the first-class port of Narva, situated at the mouth of the Narva River, on the other bank of which Ivan III had providently built a Russian city named for himself (Ivangorod), and the taking of Narva was a question of one good bombardment, of one frontal attack (as happened on May 11, 1558). It was not necessary to challenge all of Europe and involve oneself in a twenty-five-year war—the more so since Muscovy was absolutely unprepared for such a war.
"Among the . . . Lithuanians, not to speak of the Swedes, it was easy to note a greater degree of military skill than among the troops and generals of Muscovy ... in almost all of the major confrontations with Western opponents on an open field, the Muscovite troops lost. . . . Tsar Ivan understood this excellently, if not better than anyone else," admits S. M. Solov'ev.[123] "The feudal militia of the Muscovite tsar could not hold their own in hand-to-hand combat against the regular armies of Europe. It was necessary to seek an enemy on their own level, such as the Crimean and Kazan Tatars," M. N. Po- krovskii confirms.[124] More surprisingly, R. Iu. Vipper, too, says the same thing: "In the conquest of the Volga region, the Muscovite mounted armies were engaged in battle with troops like themselves, and used extremely simple strategy and tactics. It was quite another matter to fight a Western war, where they had to confront the complex military art of the commanders of European mercenary armies: the Russian troops were almost always defeated on the open field."[125]Even S. V. Bakhrushin, who composed a no less triumphant hymn to Ivan the Terrible and the Livonian War than Vipper, admits with a sigh that "Russia in the sixteenth century was not yet prepared for a solution of the Baltic problem."
In the light of this unanimity, the conclusions which the fans of Ivan the Terrible draw from their premises seem quite insane. "One is therefore the more struck," Bakhrushin exclaims, for example, "by the penetration with which Ivan IV perceived the basic vital task of Russian foreign policy, and concentrated on it all the powers of his state."[126] Evidently the tsar consciously threw "the greatest empire in the world" into an obviously doomed adventure—or, as Vipper expresses it, "into the abyss of extermination"—merely in order to demonstrate his perspicacity to posterity. By involving the country in a national catastrophe, it seems, he demonstrated his statesmanship, and, Bakhrushin asserts, "anticipated Peter, and showed considerably more political penetration than [his opponents]."
"And again and again we importuned the tsar and counselled him either to endeavor to march himself or to send a great army at that time against the horde [i.e., the Crimea]," writes Andrei Kurbskii. "But he did not listen to us, for his flatterers, those good and trusty comrades of the table and the cups, his friends in various amusements, hampered us while helping him; and in the same way, he sharpened the edge of the sword for his kinsmen and fellows more than for the heathen."[127]