THE TRANSYLVANIAN VICTOR 323extract much blood from the noble stone. In 1577, he was assured revenue from
the land-tax for two years in advance, in return for lowering the rate from 20 to
15 groszy per tan. In that year, public revenue was approximately three times the
royal revenue.
PUBLIC REVENUE (1577) (Zl)
pobor (land-tax)
szoz (town-tax on property) Direct Taxes 318,000
poglowka (poll-tax)
Income from Alcohol 180,000
Prussian excise 40,000
Excise 38,000
Grand Duchy of Lithuania 103,000
Total. .. 679,000
The real problem was to match expenditure to revenue. Given the fact that an
army of 20,000 mercenaries cost 1.3 million zt. per annum, or twice the income
of the state, it would seem that extended military campaigns were out of the
question. Yet Bathory contrived to bridge the gap. He did so partly by special
funding, and partly by trading political concessions for hard cash. In his first
year alone, he took 200,000 ducats from the city of Danzig, and another 20,000
from the Brandenburg Hohenzollerns for granting the right of reversion to the
Duchy of Prussia. He cajoled the clergy into a 'voluntary payment' of 33,000 zt.,
and raised a cool 150,000 at 5 per cent interest from a consortium of German
princes.^9 As usual, everything flowed from confidence. A ruler who was trusted
by his subjects was able to mobilize unseen resources. When the private contri-
butions of nobility and magnates had been added to the forces paid for by king
and state, Bathory briefly achieved the impossible. He transformed a budgetless
Republic, barely capable of its own defence, into a major power.
The prime object of Bathory's concern was the Republic's eastern neighbour
- the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its Grand Duke, Ivan IV, called the
'Terrible'. Muscovy was no ordinary state, and Ivan was no normal neighbour.
It was not just that Muscovy had been in conflict with Lithuania over Smolensk
throughout the century; nor that Ivan had renewed the war in Livonia during
the late interregnum. Such things were commonplace. Nor did it matter unduly
that the Muscovite's cruelty and ambition was unmatched in a cruel and ambi-
tious age. Bathory's concern centred on the demonic quality of Moscow, which
was visibly consuming not just the lands of its neighbours but the best citizens
and traditions of Russia itself. It enabled Ivan to pursue claims to lands and hon-
ours in Russia far beyond any which he, or his forebears, or his remote princi-
pality, had ever possessed. The 'gathering of the Russian lands' by this 'Third
Rome' had as much rationale in Eastern Europe as might have been professed in
Western Europe by some Irish prince who thought to gather the Celtic lands of