Poland was united with Rome in religion. The pope, Leo X., anxious to secure the cooeperation of both Poland and Russia against the Turks, who were the great foe Christianity had most to dread, proposed that the King of Poland, a renowned warrior, should be entrusted with the supreme command of the Christian armies, and adroitly suggested to Vassili, that Constantinople was the legitimate heritage of a Russian monarch, who was the descendant of a Grecian princess; that it was sound policy for him to turn his attention to Turkey; for Poland, being a weaker power, and combined of two discordant elements, the original Poland and Lithuania, would of necessity be gradually absorbed by the growth of Russia. Vassili hated the pope, because he had ordered _Te Deums_ in Rome, in celebration of a victory which the Poles had obtained over the Russians, and had called the Russians _heretics_. But still the bait the pope presented was too alluring not to be caught at. In the labyrinthine mazes of politics, however, there were obstacles to the development of this policy which years only could remove. Upon the death of Maximilian, Charles V. of Spain ascended the throne of the German empire, and established a power, the most formidable that had been known in Europe for seven hundred years, that is, since the age of Charlemagne. Vassili was in the midst of these plans of aggrandizement when death came with its unexpected summons. He was in the fifty-fourth year of his age, with mental and physical vigor unimpaired. A small pimple appeared on his left thigh, not larger than the head of a pin, but from its commencement attended with excruciating pain. It soon resolved itself into a malignant ulcer, which rapidly exhausted all the vital energies. The dying king was exceedingly anxious to prepare himself to stand before the judgment seat of God. He spent days and nights in prayer, gave most affectionate exhortations to all around him to live for heaven, assumed monastic robes, resolving that, should he recover, he would devote himself exclusively to the service of God. It was midnight the 3d of December, 1533. The king had just partaken of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Suddenly his tongue was paralyzed, his eyes fixed, his hands dropped by his side, and the metropolitan bishop, who had been administering the last rites of religion, exclaimed, "It is all over. The king is dead." CHAPTER XII. IVAN IV.--HIS MINORITY. From 1533 to 1546. Vassili At the Chase.--Attention To Distinguished Foreigners.--The Autocracy.--Splendor of the Edifices.--Slavery.--Aristocracy.--Infancy of Ivan IV.--Regency of Helene.--Conspiracies and Tumults.--War with Sigismond of Poland.--Death of Helene.--Struggles of the Nobles.--Appalling Sufferings of Dmitri.--Incursion of the Tartars.--Successful Conspiracy.--Ivan IV. At the Chase.--Coronation of Ivan IV.