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The Siege of Reval

Journal of Samuel Kiechel
27 August – 3 September 1586

In Reval

“The city [Reval] held out against the Muscovites when Basilius, the Grand Duke of Muscovy, was before its walls and besieged it twice. At one time, he had an army of 50,000 men and declared that he would not leave until he had taken the city, even if it hung by a chain from the heavens.”

Die Reisen des Samuel Kiechel aus drei Handschriften, K. D. Haszler (ed.), Stuttgart 1866, p. 129; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

In Reval

After a turbulent journey from Narva, Samuel Kiechel had safely arrived in Reval (Tallinn). He described the city as small, powerful and heavily fortified, and considered it a pleasant place with well-built houses and friendly inhabitants. The sea was only a stone’s throw away, and fully loaded ships could access the harbour.

Reval from the north, in the upper right is Toompea (Cathedral Hill) with the castle of Reval, and in the lower left is the sea and harbour, 1634

Reval had a beautiful cathedral. Kiechel learnt that many years ago the city had been the seat of a bishopric. It also had a fraternity, similar to the one Samuel had seen in Danzig (Gdańsk) and Riga. At the fraternity house, citizens and foreign visitors met daily.

Furthermore, Kiechel wrote that before the war, Reval was a popular trading hub, and ships sailed from there to Narva and then to Pleskau (Pskov). In those times, the Muscovites had to bring their goods to the city, and it was much easier to deal with them than it was now. But the war tore it all apart.

The food in Reval was good value for money, Kiechel continued. Meat and fish were available, as were poultry, partridge and grouse. The beer brewed in Livonia was poor and not comparable to the beer in other cities around the Baltic Sea. Wine was expensive, mostly imported from the Rhineland.1

About Reval

Swedish map of Reval (Rewell) and its surroundings, ca. 1600-1649

The Danes founded Reval in 1219 after conquering northern Livonia under King Valdemar II (1170-1241). The site had already been an Estonian settlement for centuries. In Danish cultural history, Reval plays a significant role. According to legend, the Danish national flag first appeared there. At the Battle of Lindanise, the site where Reval would later be founded, the Danes were about to lose when, as a sign of divine favour, the flag fell from the heavens, encouraging them to turn the fight around.

Under Danish rule, Reval became the seat of the governor of the Duchy of Estonia. As part of the effort to Christianise the Estonians, King Valdemar established the Bishopric of Reval. The bishopric was subordinate to the Archbishopric of Lund but, unlike the other four ecclesiastical domains in Livonia, it held no territory.2

In the mid-fourteenth century, Denmark faced a succession crisis and lost control of its provinces. A peasants’ revolt in Estonia could only be quelled by calling on its southern neighbour, the Teutonic Order, for help. The Teutonic knights occupied settlements and strongholds in northern Estonia and proved unwilling to leave once the rebellion was suppressed. In need of funds to reinstate royal sovereignty, the newly crowned Danish King Valdemar IV (1320-1375) decided to sell Livonia to the Teutonic Order in 1346.3

Like Riga and Dorpat (Tartu), Reval attracted German merchants and craftsmen who settled there. However, because of its proximity to Finland and its economic and political ties to Denmark and Sweden, it had a higher proportion of inhabitants of Scandinavian origin. In the first half of the sixteenth century, half of the city’s population were Estonians, twenty per cent were Swedes and Finns, and the rest, about a third, were Germans.4

The fraternity Samuel mentioned was the Brotherhood of Blackheads. The name derived from its patron saint, Maurice, an Egyptian martyr of the third century. The brotherhood’s members were foreign and unmarried local merchants. Most of the foreign merchants came from other cities in the Hanseatic League. Reval was an important trading hub. It was part of the League and, together with Riga and Dorpat, dominated east-west trade between western Europe and Russia. The Livonian cities not only controlled the main access routes but, because of their proximity, also administered the Hanseatic trade posts, managed diplomatic relations, and negotiated trade privileges with northeastern Russian cities such as Novgorod, Pskov and Polotsk.5

Reval from the north, 1670

The Livonian cities were early adopters of the Protestant Reformation, and Reval became Protestant in the mid-1520s. The introduction of the Reformation signalled the end of the Bishopric of Reval. Although there were nominal Bishops of Reval until 1560, they no longer had any power or influence in the city. The last bishop of Reval sold his bishopric in 1561.6

During the Livonian War (1558-1583), Reval and the northern provinces of Harrien (Harju) and Wierland (Virumaa) sought the protection of the Swedish King in 1561. The Swedes established a garrison in the city, and Muscovite forces besieged Reval twice, in 1570 and 1577. But the city held out. About the second siege, Samuel Kiechel heard an anecdote he recorded in his journal.

Reval under Siege

Kiechel was told that Basileus, the Duke of Muscovy, had besieged Reval’s walls twice. On one occasion, he brought 50,000 men and proclaimed that he would not leave. He would capture Reval even if the city hung by a chain from the heavens. But he failed, and he was very upset.

Drawing of the Siege of Reval in the Wickiana, an illustrated, handwritten collection of news and events from the late sixteenth century. Its author, Johann Jakob Wick, was a clergyman in Zurich and far removed from the event. The illustration of the siege is therefore more the author’s imagination than a depiction of what happened. But it shows that news from Livonia spread throughout Europe.

To Kiechel’s surprise, only 500 citizens defended the city, and they had no outside help. Lübeck had sent two ships carrying soldiers, ammunition and provisions. But the ships made little headway because of adverse winds and storms. After one month at sea, they had to return to Lübeck. According to Kiechel, it was seen as God’s will that the citizens of Reval received no outside help and had to defend themselves alone. Since then, they had placed themselves under the protection of the King of Sweden.7

During the siege, the Muscovites positioned their artillery so close to the walls that they could fire into the city. After some time, the Duke of Muscovy sent a messenger with letters to the council. He demanded the city’s surrender and promised mercy. If they refused, he threatened to take the city by force, and not even the children in their mothers’ wombs would be safe. The council discussed the offer and sent a messenger with a reply to the Duke’s camp. The letter was addressed to the Duke and bore Reval’s seal. But inside was only a blank page.

A heavily fortified castle stood high above the city. While the messenger was on his way, the castle’s garrison was ordered to aim their largest guns at the Muscovites’ camp. When the messenger arrived, he delivered the letter and then left the camp in haste. Muscovite noblemen and soldiers alike gathered to learn whether Reval had surrendered. The people in the castle watched them closely. When a large number of Muscovites had assembled, the citizens fired their heavy guns into the camp. The shots destroyed fortifications and killed or wounded many.

The rejection of his offer and the bombardment of his camp further incensed the Duke of Muscovy, who then bombarded the city day and night. His soldiers shot hot cannonballs and other incendiaries into the city, but Reval’s stone buildings were hard to set alight. In the houses of the wealthy citizens, servants were ordered to be ready to extinguish any fires with water or manure. The Duke tried everything to capture the city but ultimately had to give up and retreat.

Kiechel heard that the Muscovites had guns so large that 500 people were needed to move one of them. The Duke had no draught animals and used people because he treated his subjects like animals. In every town and village the Duke captured, he treated the inhabitants poorly.8

The Siege of 1577

The siege of 1577 lasted only three months, from January to March. As Kiechel wrote, the Russian forces were substantial and fielded heavy artillery, though not as large as the piece he described, which required 500 men to move. The Swedish garrison in Reval was much smaller, but the citizens supported the soldiers, and the city had prepared for the siege. In addition, while many strongholds in Livonia had fallen into decay in the decades before the war, Reval’s walls and towers had been extended and strengthened.9 Many of these fortifications still exist and can be visited. The castle Kiechel mentioned is on Toompea, a hill in the heart of modern Tallinn.

Plan of Toompea (Cathedral Hill) in Reval, 1670

I could find no evidence to corroborate Kiechel’s account of the exchange of letters and the bombardment of the Russian camp. It might have happened this way, or the story may have been a composite of fragments from different events. The siege was already a few years in the past when Kiechel visited; word of mouth is perennially unreliable, and our traveller may also have forgotten or mixed up details when he wrote it down.

What he misunderstood was that the Duke of Muscovy’s name was Basileus. The tsar at the time of the war was Ivan IV (the Terrible, 1530-1584). Basileus was the Greek title for King or Emperor in the Byzantine Empire. A connection between the Greeks and Russians certainly existed. The Kyivan Rus’, the first Slavic empire in eastern Europe, converted to Orthodox Christianity and modelled their church structure on the Byzantines. After the Byzantine Empire’s end and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, Eastern Orthodox clerics considered Moscow the spiritual successor, the ‘third Rome’. But why Kiechel assumed that the old Greek title was the name of the tsar is unclear. Most likely, the person who told him about the siege also mentioned it.

Sixteenth-century woodcut of Ivan IV

Also, Kiechel noted that two ships from Lübeck came to support Reval and, after they had to turn back, the city sought Swedish protection. This remark is chronologically out of order. The siege took place in winter, when the Baltic Sea was frozen, so ships could not have sailed. In addition, Reval sought Swedish support in 1561, years before the second siege.

But these are minor issues with Kiechel’s account of the siege. We do not know where he heard it, or whether it came from a single source or from multiple people. In addition, as curious and interested as our traveller was, he lacked background knowledge of Livonia and would therefore have found it difficult to place the chaotic events of the long war in context. For what little he often wrote about the places he visited, it’s nice to find a more substantial anecdote in his journal.

Leaving Livonia

Samuel Kiechel stayed in Reval from 26 August to 3 September. He wrote that he was not in the mood to travel overland back to Riga. After his experiences on the road from Narva, this was understandable. But the only other way to leave Livonia was by ship across the Baltic Sea to Lübeck. Samuel noted that it was getting late in the year, and the last ships were about to depart.10

Sailing on the Baltic Sea was dictated by the seasons. From late autumn to the middle of spring, the ice on the sea kept all ships in harbour. Our traveller had already experienced these restrictions half a year earlier when he sought ways to leave Sweden. Early September was not yet the time for ice and snow, but sailors and ship owners had to consider adverse winds and autumn storms that could prolong a journey or leave them stuck in some harbour. Spending the winter in a foreign city was expensive, and the ice could severely damage a ship.

On 3 September, while Samuel Kiechel was visiting the market square, he heard news that a Dutch ship was about to set sail for Danzig. This was fortunate, since he intended to continue his journey through Poland, Silesia and Austria. All other ships from Reval were bound for Lübeck, which would have forced him to make quite a detour.

Kiechel went to the harbour, sought out the ship’s owner and asked if he took passengers. He was told that he had to be ready to leave right now because they were about to raise anchor. Our traveller hurried back to the inn to get his belongings and pay the innkeeper. On the way, he also bought a few provisions.

But when he arrived back at the harbour, the ship had already raised anchor and was about to leave. Kiechel hired a small boat and told the boatmen to follow the ship. When the sailors noticed the boat, they lowered their sails and waited for him to come aboard.11

Illustrations & References

All images are in order of appearance with links to sources on external websites:

  1. Die Reisen des Samuel Kiechel aus drei Handschriften, K. D. Haszler (ed.), Stuttgart 1866, pp. 129-131; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. ↩︎
  2. Angermann, Norbert, Brüggemann, Karsten, Geschichte der Baltischen Länder, Ditzingen, 2018, pp. 31f. ↩︎
  3. Ibid., pp. 39f. ↩︎
  4. Ibid., p. 53. ↩︎
  5. Ibid., pp. 55f. ↩︎
  6. Ibid., pp. 88f. ↩︎
  7. Reisen des Samuel Kiechel, pp. 129f. ↩︎
  8. Ibid., pp. 130f. ↩︎
  9. Frost, Robert I., The Northern Wars. War, State, and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558 – 1721, Harlow 2000, p. 27. ↩︎
  10. Reisen des Samuel Kiechel, p. 131. ↩︎
  11. Ibid., pp. 131f. ↩︎