The insatiate Stefan continued to employ both pen and sword against his hard-pressed adversary. In a letter rejecting Ivan’s renewed offers of peace, with which he prefaced a new campaign, he taunted the Tzar with his ill-sitting correctitude; “You reproach me with having mutilated the dead; it is false, but certain is it that you torture the living.” Entering thoroughly into the style and spirit of Ivan’s controversial essays, he further recommended him to re-read the fiftieth Psalm in order to acquaint himself with the duty of a Christian. The Tzar had found his match. [Sidenote: 1581] As in the two preceding years, the month of August brought with it Batory, thundering his cannon this time against the walls of Pskov. The reputation of the great captain had drawn to him warriors from many lands, and the white-eagle standard flapped in the van of an army, 100,000 strong, mustering in its ranks Poles, Letts, Magyars, Austrians, Kourlanders, Prussians, Lubeckers, Danes, and Scots. The ancient city on the Peipus shore, which for many a stormy hundred years had been a bulwark of the Russian land against the aggressions of the west folk, opposed a heroic resistance to the mighty efforts which were made for its subjection, and the flood of Polish conquest received a timely check. The stupor of fear and helplessness which seemed to have settled down on the Tzar and his voevodas neutralised to a great extent the effect of this stubborn defence; the Swedes captured Habsal, Narva, and other places of less importance in Estland, and later, led by de la Gardie, one of those brilliant soldiers with whom France periodically fascinated the world, penetrated into Russian territory and took Ivangorod, Yam, and Kopor’e. [Sidenote: Jan. 1582] Soon after these disasters Ivan effected a ten years’ truce with Batory, a composition being brought about largely by the diplomatic efforts of Pope Gregory XIII., who was fascinated, as many an astute Pontiff had been, with the prospect of alluring Russia into the Catholic fold. The terms of the truce were ruinously disadvantageous to the gosoudarstvo, and Ivan could scarcely have been forced to sacrifice more if he had staked and lost a series of pitched battles against his foe. Velikie-Louki was restored to him, but Polotzk remained in the hands of the victors, and Livland, snatched piecemeal from the Teutonic knights and contested inch by inch for a quarter of a century, was yielded at one wrench to Poland. The patient and persistent efforts of a long reign, the dogged struggle towards the shores of the Baltic and free intercourse with Western Europe, were relinquished as the price of a temporary and uncertain peace, and the Moskovite Empire was thrown back upon itself, like a conquered Titan thrust down into his chasm. And in another direction Ivan had with his own hand fatally shattered, in a fit of unrestrained passion, the dynastic hopes and strivings which had been