the grand-prince, received from him presents, which for that time must be regarded as extremely handsome, viz.,a gold chain with a cross, an ermine mantle covered with satin worked in gold, and a pair of silver-gilt spurs.
Thurn left Moscow on the 19th of August 1490, in company with Trachaniota, already mentioned, and the diak Vasiley Kuleschin, who came with a duplicate of the document prepared by Ivan, to have it signed by Maximilian. They arrived on St. George’s day, 1491, at Nuremberg, where a diet was then being held, and where the treaty of alliance was signed on the part of Maximilian. Of this official document neither the original nor a copy could be found by Müller at Moscow, but only a cotemporaneous Russian translation of it.
In November of the same year, Thurn was sent for a second time to Moscow, where he arrived on the 20th, and was admitted to an audience on the 26th. He conveyed his master’s excuses for breaking off the union which he had previously wished for with a daughter of the grand-prince. He was instructed to state that a rumour had spread in Germany during his first absence, that he had been lost at sea. Maximilian had, thereupon, believed that his marriage proposals had not been mentioned; and hence, by the advice of his father and the princes of the kingdom, he had betrothed himself to the princess Anne of Brittany, through which circumstance the whole matter was at an end.
The ambassador then came to the subject of the
