The full title of this small newsletter is: Two true, merciless, and lamentable tidings and reports about the terrible tyranny which the bloodhound, the Moscovite, has exerted in Livland in the year 1577. Written in Riga by a praiseworthy person, on August 30th (Copenhagen: Mads Vingaard[, 1577?]) (LN 1595 / 30 II,-211 8vo).
In the summer of 1577 the Russian army launched an offensive in Livonia. Here the Danish prince Magnus, brother of Frederik II, had been proclaimed king by the Russian Czar Ivan in 1570. But in 1577 they had become adversaries. The anonymous author, apparently belonging to the local population, relates in two consecutive newsletters the cruelty of the Russian enemy – and he does not mince his words:
“About 40 women and girls from Ascherrat were taken to a garden and confined there. Here they were dishonoured and violated by an innumerable crowd of Muscovites so that their cries and screams, laments and moanings were heard by the leader Bartel Butler across the river Dyna”.
And the author ends:
“I cannot write any more because of the great sorrow and lamentation that we in this country see, hear, and learn about”.
