Through a thousand dangers they reached Moscow.  When there, Lapotinsky declared that he came not as a suppliant, but to present a claim which his master was prepared to enforce, if necessary, with the sword, and that, in accordance with the character of his mission, he was directed, in his audience with Ivan, to present the letter with one hand while he held his unsheathed saber in the other.  The officers of the imperial household assured him that such bravado would inevitably cost him his life.

“The tzar,” Lapotinsky replied, “can easily take my life, and he may do so if he please, but nothing shall prevent me from performing the duty with which I am intrusted, with the utmost exactitude.”

The audience day arrived.  Lapotinsky was conducted to the Kremlin.  The tzar, in his imperial robes glittering with diamonds and pearls, received him in a magnificent hall.  The haughty embassador, with great dignity and in respectful terms, yet bold and decisive, demanded reparation for the injuries which Russia had inflicted upon Poland.  His gleaming saber was carelessly held in one hand and the letter to the tzar, from the King of Poland, in the other.  Having finished his brief speech, he received a cimeter from one of his suite, and, advancing firmly, yet very respectfully, to the monarch, presented them both, saying,

“Here is peace and here is war.  It is for your majesty to choose between them.”

Ivan IV. was capable of appreciating the nobility of such a character.  The intrepidity of the embassador, which was defiled with no comminglings of insolence, excited his admiration.  The emperor, with a smile, took the letter, which was written on parchment in the Russian language and sealed with a seal of gold.  Slowly and carefully he read it, and then addressing the embassador, said,

“Such menaces will not induce Russia to surrender her dominions to Poland.  We, who have vanquished the Poles on so many fields of battle, who have conquered the Tartars of Kezan and Astrachan, and who have triumphed over the forces of the Ottoman empire, will soon cause the King of Poland to repent his rashness.”

He then dismissed the embassador, ordering him to be treated with the respect due his high station.  War being thus formally declared, both parties prepared to prosecute it with the utmost vigor.  The tzar immediately commenced raising a large army, reinforced his garrisons, and sent a secret envoy to Tauride, to excite the Crimean Tartars to invade Poland on the south-east while Russia should make an assault from the north.