Contacts of the Moscow State with the Habsburgs in the Last Years of the Reign of Vasily III

This article is devoted to the diplomatic contacts of the Russian state with the Habsburgs in 1519–1531, from the death of Emperor Maximilian I to the return to Moscow of the last embassy sent to Prague by Grand Prince Vasily III. The House of Habsburgs in the relations with Moscow state was represented by Emperor Charles V and his brother Ferdinand I, Archduke of Austria (from 1521/22), King of Bohemia and Hungary (from 1526/27), and Roman King (from 1531). They were interested in forming a league of Christian rulers to counter Ottoman expansion, which meant the conclusion of an ‘eternal peace’, or at least a truce, between the Russian state and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was united to the Kingdom of Poland by a personal union under the rule of Sigismund I the Old. The interests of Vasily III and his entourage were diametrically opposed: they wanted to ratify the Treaty of 1514, which was directed against the Jagiellonians and provided for joint offensives. From 1526, when the Hungarian king Lajos (Louis) II died at the Battle of Mohács, Ferdinand I fought for the Hungarian throne with János Szapolyai, who was supported by Poland. At the same time, Charles V was preoccupied with the affairs of Western and Southern Europe. At the same time, he delegated the authority in maintaining international relations in Central and Eastern Europe to Ferdinand I. The Moscow-Habsburgs exchange of embassies showed that the Moscow side was reluctant to negotiate with Ferdinand I, despite his interest in it, sought to contact the emperor and did not disclose the anti-Jagiellonian content of the 1514 treaty, offering “renewed friendship and love”. The fundamental divergence of the parties’ objectives and the peculiarities of their communication meant that the Union Treaty was never ratified. The central place in the article is occupied by the analysis of the information about the Moscow embassy of 1528, the fourth of five missions sent by Vasily III to the Habsburgs in the mentioned period. A new source on this embassy is published in the appendix with a translation into Russian: a letter from Ferdinand I, King of Bohemia, to Margaret of Austria, Governor of Flanders, dated 28 July 1528, concerning the passage of the Moscow envoy to Emperor Charles V in Spain.