In the winter of 1505 (27th October) Ivan ended his long and remarkable reign. The sovereignty which he relinquished was scarcely to be recognised as the same which had been bequeathed to him by Vasili the Darkened. From a struggling principality it had shot up into a monarchy, struggling still, but for empire, not existence. The terrible humiliating Mongol yoke, which had been such a bitter reality when Ivan’s world was young, seemed now the almost forgotten bogey of a dimly-remembered past. A revolt of the Khan of Kazan, the last event of the old man’s reign, served only to emphasise the fact of the altered relations between Tartar and Moskovite. Perm, the regions of the Petchora, and the vast boreal territories which had belonged to the republic of Novgorod more than doubled the extent of the Grand-principality, which had been further swelled by the absorption of Tver and Viatka, and the conquest from Lit’uania of the Russian lands east of the Sojh. The standing and importance of the Moskovite State likewise had kept pace with its expansion during this long reign, and the policy of the Kreml was a matter of interest not merely to Sarai and Riazan and Vilna as heretofore, but to Buda, Constantinople, Wien, and Rome, to Krakow, Kjöbenhavn, Upsal, and Koenigsberg. Such was the inheritance which Vasili III. Ivanovitch received from the cold hands of his father; from his mother (who had died in 1503) he derived the reflected glory which centred in the last of the Paleologi. Embarrassments too were not wanting to disquiet the opening days of the new reign. Besides the revolt of Kazan, the suspended hostilities with Poland and Livland threatened the future repose of the State. The alert and provident von Plettenberg was husbanding his resources against a renewal of the war, and was, moreover, receiving considerable Teutonic and Catholic support. A loan had been subscribed on his behalf by the cities of Lubeck and Rostock, and the Pope had diverted to his use a share of the receipts accruing from the sale of indulgences--an ingenious device which at the same time equipped the gentlemen of God against the heretics, admitted more souls to swell the triumph-song of Heaven, and, incidentally, enriched the coffers of Holy Church. Financial aid was also forthcoming from Maximilian, who granted to the Land-Master a three years’ privilege to exact tolls from all ships entering Livlandish harbours (1505).[114] The policy of the Emperor at this moment halted between an angry suspicion of the house of Yagiello, which drew him towards a good understanding with Moskva, and a jealous solicitude for the German colony on the Baltic, which pulled him in the opposite direction. Alexander, relieved of the nightmare incubus of his terrible father-in-law, lost no time in resuming his plaints and proposals to the new sovereign. Would Vasili restore the filched territories to Lit’uania and peace to the two countries? To which the