deliberation of 1600 armed men enlisted on that Prince’s behalf.[101] The enfeeblement of Lit’uania by reason of its separation from Poland invited the long-nursed hostility of the Grand Prince and his faithful ally, Mengli-Girei. The latter ravaged the Lettish territories in the south, while the forces of the former harried all along the Moskovite border. Many of the boyarins and petty princes subject to Alexander passed over to the service of a monarch who was of their own nationality and religion, and the Grand Duke had to signalise his accession by buying off the hostility of Ivan with the surrender of some frontier lands. [Sidenote: 1494] On these terms an “eternal peace” was accommodated between the two countries, and the following year a matrimonial alliance was effected between Alexander and Ivan’s daughter Elena. Whatever chance might have existed of durable concord between a weak state holding conquered territory and a strong state to whom that territory has once belonged was extinguished by the irritating stipulations with which this marriage contract bristled. Uncomfortable as a neighbour, Ivan was incompatible as a father-in-law; the safeguards which had been insisted on against any tampering with the Princess’s Orthodoxy were supplemented by minute regulations with regard to her worship, her household, even her dress. She might visit a Catholic church as a curiosity--twice; she was to eschew Polish costumes, even her cooks were of Russian selection. In fact, her Court was to be an Orthodox Moskovite oasis in the Lit’uanian desert.[102] Alexander found he had sacrificed his domestic independence without obtaining any compensating security for his dominions; the restless Hospodar of Moldavia and the Krimskie Khan continued to harry the Podolian and Galician lands, and the Moskovites were openly aggressive towards the Grand Duke’s subjects. Ivan, indeed, at this period seems to have rated the power of the Yagiellos cheaply, and to have permitted himself a diversion in the affairs of North-western Europe. Whether he had secretly nursed designs against the merchants of the Hansa League, who continued to maintain a flourishing commerce at Novgorod after the civic glories had departed from her, or whether for once his coldly-measured policy was influenced by an unpent passion, the facts scarcely indicate. [Sidenote: 1495] The spark that roused, or gave plausible ground for, his sudden resentment against the unsuspecting traders was the torture of two Russian subjects at Revel--who were boiled to death for coining false money and otherwise misconducting themselves--coupled with an insult to the Grand Prince. Ivan revenged himself by swooping down on the famous Hanse factory at Novgorod, confiscating all the merchandise therein stored, and seizing the persons of forty-nine merchants of Lubeck, Hamburg, Munster, Dortmund, Revel, Dorpat, etc. By this raid he enriched himself with a sum computed at a million gulden, but the Hansa trade with