Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/148

cxx parted on his journey; and, at the same time, unlimited power was given to the ambassadors for all cases in which the instructions received should appear insufficient. They left Vienna on the 12th of January 1526. Besides the principal personages, there were also in the embassy Gunther and Christoph von Herberstein, two distinguished sons of Herberstein’s second brother, George. They took the route through Moravia and Silesia to Poland. They had not advanced far when an order from the archduke Ferdinand, dated Augsburg, February 1st, was sent after them, in which both ambassadors were expressly desired to pay the utmost attention to the religion, ceremonies, and ecclesiastical rules of the Church of Russia, for which purpose they had to use as a guide a little book recently published by Johann Fabri, the materials of which had been collected by the author from the above-mentioned Russian ambassadors to Spain during their stay at the court of Ferdinand in Tübingen. It was very favourable for Herberstein’s journey that he could join these ambassadors, who were returning to their country by the way of Vienna, and travel to Moscow in their company. The king of Poland imagined that he had good reason to mistrust the intentions of Austria, and from the beginning of this new embassy he ascribed another purpose to it than that which was really correct; and in this suspicion he was corroborated by the circumstance that the ambassadors travelled in the company of the returning Russian delegates. He was therefore quite convinced, as Herberstein afterwards learned from