caused him to be put in irons, and deprived him of his rank and his principality.
Afterward, as summer came on, Vasiley, resolving to revenge the slaughter inflicted by the Tartars, and to wipe out the shame which he himself had incurred from his flight and his concealment under the haystack, levied a large army, and providing himself with great store of guns and various kinds of offensive contrivances, such as had never been used in battle before by the Russians, and marching out of Moscow with all his army as far as the river Occa, took up his quarters before the city of Columna. Thence he dispatched heralds into Taurida, to Machmetgerei, to provoke him to a conflict, saying, that in the previous year he had been insidiously attacked, without a proclamation of war, after the fashion of thieves and plunderers. To this the king replied, that, in warfare opportunities were of as much importance as arms, and that consequently he made it his custom to choose his own time for fighting, in preference to allowing others to choose for him. Vasiley, being irritated by this language, and burning with the thirst of revenge, moved his camp, A.D. 1523, to Lower Novogorod, with the view of laying waste and taking possession of the kingdom of Kazan. Thence marching as far as the river Sura, on the confines of Kazan, he built a fortress, which he called after his own name: beyond this point he made no advance, but led his army back. In the following year, however, he sent out Michael Georgiovich, one of his chief counsellors, with greater forces than before, to subjugate the kingdom of Kazan. Sapgerai, king of Kazan, being alarmed at so formidable an array, sent for his nephew, the son of his brother the king of Taurida, a youth of thirteen years of age, to preside over the kingdom in the interim, and himself fled to the emperor of the Turks to beg his assistance and cooperation. As the youth, in obedience to his uncle's suggestion, arrived on his road at Gostinovosero, — that is, the island of
