Living in Russia
His account of Russia, The Land and Government of Muscovy: A Sixteenth Century Account, was addressed to the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II. It consisted of four parts: a petition, a description of Russia, a plan for the invasion of Russia from the north, and the author's autobiography. Von Staden hoped to influence the emperor to invade Muscovite Russia, restore the region to the Teutonic Order, and be rewarded. The Elector of Pfalz, Georg Hans Count von Veldenz-Lutzelstein, had similar hopes and drafted von Staden into his employ. Between 1578 and 1582 von Staden worked as a sort of spy for the Teutonic Order. He sent his proposal to the Order's Grand Master, later to the Kings of Poland and Sweden.
Historians discovered this document in 1839 in the Prussian state archives, knowing of the count's plans, but no link to von Staden was discovered until a few years later. His accounts are the most insightful and descriptive of the day, and displayed the disorder of the Russian government under Ivan the Terrible. Heinrich von Staden calls Tsar Ivan a "horrid tryant", but wrote more neutrally than his contemporaries. His narratives of the Oprichnina are the only accounts written by a member, and the history of the Oprichnina was rewritten after von Staden's accounts were found. He describes the targets of Ivan's terror as individual families which the Tsar believed to be dangerous to his authority, rather than against the entire boyar class as previously thought.
Read more about this topic: Heinrich Von Staden
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