When Diplomacy Fails Podcast

**IF YOU LIKE, FOLLOW THESE LINKS!**1) To support the podcast financially in return for some extra audio content, check out Patreon!2) To find a community of history friends, look at our Facebook page and group!3) To keep up to date with us, follow us on Twitter!4) Matchlock and the Embassy, our new historical fiction novel, is out NOW! Get it hereIt's hard to imagine it now, but 400 years ago, Russia was THE underdog in Europe. Racked by the aftershocks of the Time of Troubles (1603 - 1618) Russia's Tsar had a long way to go before the name Romanov would spread far and wide. And he had a score to settle. The King of Poland, Sigismund III, had invaded and occupied Russia all the way to Moscow barely a decade before. Sigismund claimed that his own son was the true Tsar of Russia, not Michael Romanov, or whatever he called himself. But how to get even with an all powerful Polish King, who had friends in very high places - the Habsburgs?The Tsar's solution was simple - with an old enemy, the Swedes, he