The marriage of Alexander to Ivan's daughter seemed to end the hostility between the two countries, but nothing was further from the schemes of the wily grand duke. He stipulated that she should have a Greek chapel in the palace, and warned her never to appear in a Catholic church, and always to wear the Russian national dress. Soon after the wedding Ivan complained that his daughter was forced to wear Polish costumes, and that the Greek Church was being persecuted. These were to him ample cause for war, the more so since he had good reason to count upon his friends, the priests and boyards of the Greek Church. When the war broke out, cities where the majority of the people belonged to that church, opened their gates to his army, and Alexander was badly defeated in the battle of Vedrocha. This war added another slice to Ivan's territory.
Alexander in his distress made an alliance with the Livonian Order and with the Great Horde at Saraï; but Ivan's old friend, the Khan of the Crimea, made a raid in Gallicia and Volhynia, and the Lithuanians were defeated at Mstislaf; but they compelled the Russians to raise the siege of Smolensk. Meanwhile Ivan had serious trouble. In 1495, he ordered the merchants of several Hanseatic towns to be arrested at Novgorod, and incidentally had goods to the value of $200,000,--an immense sum in those days,--carried to Moscow. This caused the (p. 105) foreign merchants to leave for safer places; but the Livonian Order invaded his territory, and in the battle of Siritza, they crushed a Russian army of 50,000 men, but the following year, 1502, they were defeated at Pskof.
Toward the end of his life he was in doubt about his successor, because his eldest son was dead. At first he thought of making his grandson Dmitri, his heir; but he changed his mind, sent his daughter-in-law and grandson to prison and proclaimed his second son Vassili his heir. He died in 1505, after a reign of forty-three years. It was under his direction that a new code of laws, the Oulogenia, was prepared.
XII--RUSSIA BECOMES AN AUTOCRACY. (p. 106)
Vassili, Ivan's son, showed a great resemblance to his father. He did not evince any greater love for his near relatives, as one of his first acts was to put his nephew Dmitri in prison, where he died. One of his brothers who did not like his manners, tried to escape, but was brought back and severely punished.