opposition in his sea-ward course; the Poles, after the prolonged and elaborate labours of their king-choosing, had been again confronted, under extraordinary circumstances, with the dangers and difficulties of an interregnum. Never more than half reconciled to the eastern exile which his restricted Polish sovereignty entailed, Henri de Valois no sooner heard that he had succeeded to the crown of S. Louis (his brother had died on the 30th May 1574) than he fled precipitately from the kingdom over which he had reigned for barely seven months. Once more the shadow of the Habsburg loomed over the land, and there seemed indeed no suitable candidate with which to oppose the Austrian nomination. The Papal, Imperial, and Moskovite influence, as well as that of the Archbishop of Gniezno and the principal senators, pointed in the same direction; the Szlachta alone held out against the Archduke and his father. The Habsburg hopes were destined, however, to be again falsified, and a new rival sprang up against them in Stefan Batory, Voevoda of Transylvania. This vigorous prince, whose high qualities had secured him his sovereignty on the death of the last of the Zapolya dynasty, speedily became the favoured choice of the Szlachta and Dissident party, and, as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, his election would guarantee the Poles from Turkish hostility. On the other hand they were threatened with the Tzar’s displeasure if they did not elect either Maximilian or his son, the Archduke. To the Poles, if not to the Lit’uanians, the Moskovite was a lesser bugbear than the Turk, and the popular vote was for Batory. The Archbishop and the Senate adhered to the Austrian cause, and the Diet (held at Warszawa, December 1575) resulted in a double election. The battle was not necessarily to the strong, but the race was undoubtedly to the swift; in April of the following year the dilatory Habsburg wrote to inform his brother of Moskva that “we, in December last, with great glory and honour, were elected to the kingdom of Poland and grand duchy of Lit’uania.” Ivan replied to Maximilian that he congratulated him on his election, but had since learned that Stefan Batory was at Krakow, crowned, and married to the Princess Anne Yagiello (sister of Sigismund-August). Stefan had shown as much hurry to arrive in his kingdom as Henri had displayed in escaping from it, and his accession was an accomplished fact; the death of the Emperor in the ensuing October removed the chance of a civil contest. [Sidenote: 1576] The new King, though brought up under Catholic influences, was supposed at the time of his candidature to be of the Protestant communion; he adapted his religion, however, to harmonise with that of the majority of his subjects, and of the wife whom it was politically expedient he should marry, and during his reign was the protector of the Jesuit party in Poland.[170] To Ivan and to Russia his elevation boded trouble, and the Tzar appears to