Chapter 15: East of the Sun
You may remember that the end of our last reading mentioned an expedition led by an adventurer named Montowtowicz, which entered the uncharted lands of Siberia in 1567. Montowtowicz became, posthumously, a great Lithuanian hero, though he was known as “profligate spendthrift” and “reckless wanderer” during his lifetime. His relationship with the Grand Dukes and Kings he served was often tense and fraught with misunderstanding.
Montowtowicz was quite experienced as an adventurer and mercenary by the 1560s, he had spent his youth following the tide of European Wars, leading detachments of irregulars for whichever side would pay him more, and acquiring a reputation as a fierce fighter, a hard drinker, and a lover of games of chance, at which he was frequently accused of cheating. Sometime around 1562, Montowtowicz was rumored to have gotten far too drunk at the gaming table, where he had amassed debts he could not possibly pay; worst of all the holder of these debts was one of Europe’s most ruthless crime syndicates. After this incident, Montowtowicz had been moving across Europe, using a slew of aliases and all of his skills to stay one step ahead of his pursuers. Finally he had wound up in Belgorod, near his hometown in the sparsely populated hinterlands of Lithuania. However, he was not safe even here and his enemies were soon closing in. In desperation, Montowtowicz journeyed to Vilnius where he offered his services as trailblazer to the Grand Duke, promising to find great riches in the eastern lands. At the sound of the words “great riches” the Grand Duke’s ears perked up, and Montowtowicz was outfitted with a team of 3,000 horsemen and sent east, thus leaving civilization (and his creditors) far behind.
Montowtowicz found his explorations the most enjoyable part of his long and checkered career. Not only had a great weight lifted off his shoulders; internal troubles in Lithuania meant that he had virtually no interference from Vilnius during his days in the east. Indeed during the tense years of the Polish annexation attempt, Montowtowicz’s reports accumulated at the Grand Duke’s desk unread; as it seemed of precious little importance during those years whether the natives of Selenga were friendly or not. Montowtowicz and his men rode due east from the Kazakh lands through a series of previously unmapped territories. Finally they encountered a peddler carrying wares of exquisite quality, obviously not of local make. Upon Montowtowicz’s inquiries, the peddler told him the goods came from a great nation to the southeast, beyond the Amur River. Was this perhaps the fabled Kingdom of Prester John? Whatever it was, it warranted exploration. Thus when Montowtowicz and company reached the Amur valley they changed course and headed due south. Sometime in 1569, the intrepid party reached what was unmistakably a city. The buildings were of a bizarre design, and the settlement was small and haggard, clearly little more than a border outpost. The border guards at the city told Montowtowicz that they were from a nation called “China.” They told Montowtowicz that their nation was the largest and most prosperous in the world, but they had never heard of Prester John and followed the teachings of a sage called Confucius. Montowtowicz and his party wintered at this outpost, but were not allowed to enter China itself and were forced to leave once the spring thaw came.
Still hoping to find the Kingdom of Prester John, the explorers headed east along the Amur until they ran into another border post, this time of a nation called the “Manchu,” who were as ignorant of Prester John as their Chinese neighbors. In disappointment, Montowtowicz and his retinue headed east until they reached the shore of an immense sea, they then headed north along the coast. In 1571, Montowtowicz got a nasty surprise when he received the first reply from the Grand Duke (now King) of Lithuania since his explorations began. The King, Mikolaj II Kryzstof, informed Montowtowicz that Lithuanian ambassadors had been dispatched to China and the Manchu and ordered him to return to the gold-producing land of Enkan, where he was told to expect the arrival of Lithuanian colonists. Despite Montowtowicz’s help, the first party to arrive was unable to survive the winter, but the second party successfully lodged itself in Enkan, which was dubbed “New Tula” and became Lithuania’s first colony in 1572. Montowtowicz was to spend the rest of his life shepherding the infant colony, finally succumbing to a particularly fierce winter in 1577.
Back home, Lithuania’s new independence under Mikolaj II was celebrated with the construction of a royal brewery (refinery) in Smolensk. After which, the bulk of the treasury was dedicated to expanding the settlement at Enkan. That was the plan at least, but as often happens, events were to take charge. Russia declared war on the Prince of Tver in 1572, and the Prince immediately beseeched his Lithuanian overlords to provide protection. Lithuania responded, bringing along their Polish allies as well. The Russian-Lithuanian War of 1572-73 was an extremely bloody affair, despite the fact that it lasted barely over a year. The first major battle occurred in Welikia, where a combined Polish-Lithuanian force numbering 60,000 men met and defeated 36,000 Russian soldiers, with heavy losses on both sides. The Poles headed north after Welikia, where they stormed and captured Russian fortresses in Pskov and Kurland. The Lithuanians, under the able generalship of Mykola Radivil, meanwhile executed a flanking maneuver designed to protect the newly constructed refinery in Smolensk. A Russian army numbering 25,000 had marched south from Livland into Lithuanian territory. This army was intercepted by Mykola Radivil (not to be confused with Khrystofer Radivil, another general then leading Hussar raids into Russian territory) in Belarus, where his 38,000 infantry were more than enough to send the Russians packing. After inflicting another defeat on the pursuing Russians, Mykola began to march his men to Moscow when the Prince of Tver made peace on behalf of the alliance, forcing the Russians to cede Kurland and Pskov to Poland (One would think that I, as overlord of Tver, would have some say in this, no such luck).
After replenishing the losses suffered in the Russian conflict, Mikolaj II was able to send 2 parties to Enkan before surprising news came from Central Asia—the Khan of the Kazakhs, suffering from delusions of grandeur, had cancelled his vassalage to the Uzbeks and declared war on Lithuania’s puppet government in Nogai. Though the Sultan felt able to handle the threat, Khrystofer Radivil (4/3/4) and the Hussars were dispatched immediately to the Kazakh front. Kazakh forces were crushed decisively in Aralsk by Lithuanian forces aided by contingents from Nogai. Rather than leaving the Kazakhs be, Khrystofer Radivil followed his orders from Vilnius and pursued the Kazakhs to their own lands, which he quickly forced into complete submission. The Kazakh Horde was added to Lithuania’s stable of vassals in 1579. In addition to submitting to vassalage, the Khan was forced to grant Lithuanian troops military access to his domains, thus giving Lithuania an unbroken (if somewhat torturous) land route to the precious settlement in distant Enkan.
), and thus the Elector's forces were victorious in early action, soon placing no less than 3 Polsih provinces under occupation and laying siege to Krakow itself. The Grand Duke had in the meantime assembled a large army to aid his Polish allies. Lithuanian intelligence was fully aware of the considerable gap in the quality of equipment dividing the two armies, but fortunately the Grand Duke had a top-flight strategist in Juriy Radivil (4/3/4/1). Radivil brought his troops up to Wielkopolska, where he was able to send at least one Brandenburg regiment packing by ambushing them at a river crossing. Radivil's men sooned liberated Wielkopolska from its German occupiers but Krakow had fallen to the combined forces of Brandenburg and Saxony by then and Radivil had no illusions about the ability of his forces to defeat the Germans in open battle. Just when the situation seemed at its bleakest, salvation came to the Polish-Lithuanian alliance as the Elector announced himself satisfied in return for the paltry sum of 15 ducats. This miracle was attributed by the pious Poles as due solely to the intercession of the Holy Virgin, a story so moving that it inspired the Orhtodox heretics in Tula to accept the primacy of Rome (random conversion).
