The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький
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of disaffection to the supremacy of Moskva. Vitovt would probably have accomplished even more in the way of conquest and annexation if his ambition had not given too wide a scope to his efforts. While Vasili watched anxiously for the next move of this exciting father-in-law new troubles sprang up in the East; it seemed, indeed, as if Moskva was to reap no advantage from the dissensions of her neighbours. The vengeance of Timur the Lame had at length overtaken his o’erweening vassal, and Tokhtamitch had fled before the storm which his imprudence had raised. The conqueror did not seem disposed to confine his destroying wrath to the actual territories of the Golden Horde, but crossed the Volga and commenced to devastate the easternmost Russian lands. Moskovy quaked before the coming of another Batu; the churches were filled with wailing crowds, and the celebrated Mother-of-God of Vladimir was removed from thence to the capital. 1395By a train of reasoning not easy to follow, to this change of quarters was attributed the sudden turning aside of Timur Khan, who diverted his destructive abilities to the razing of Sarai, Astrakhan, and Azov, and left the Russian lands without further hurt. By modern historians this retreat has been set down to other causes than the translation of the Bogoroditza; “accustomed to the rich booty of Bokhara and Hindostan, and dreaming of Constantinople and Egypt, they found, no doubt, that the desert steppes and deep forests only offered a very meagre prey.”83 However, the credit of the affair remained with the Bogoroditza, and what was more to the point, this respectable and extremely valuable ikon remained at Moskva—no mean asset, for that time and place, in the political importance of a city.
The enfeeblement of the Golden Horde seemed to the Lit’uanian Grand Duke a favourable opportunity to extend his influence in the Tartar steppes and constitute himself the heir of the dying sovereignty. Concluding for the moment a perpetual peace with the Order, against whom he had scarcely ceased to fight since his accession to the Grand Duchy, he mustered a formidable army to support him in this mighty enterprise. Poles, Lit’uanians, and Russians marched under his banner against the Tartars, and Konrad von Jungingen, as a guarantee of good faith, sent five hundred of his knights to do battle against the infidels. 1399On the banks of the Vorskla (a tributary of the Dniepr), Vitovt came in contact with the lieutenant of Timur and suffered a disastrous overthrow, losing two-thirds of his army and seriously damaging his military reputation. Notwithstanding this victory the new master of the Horde, Koutluk Khan, had his power disputed by more than one competitor, and Vasili took advantage of this fact to discontinue payment of the annual tribute. 1408The temerity of his action, overlooked for many years, brought on him at last the chastisement of the Mongols, who, under the leadership of Ediger, the victor of the Vorskla, made a sudden inroad upon Russian territory. Vasili imitated the tactics of his father on a similar occasion; leaving Moskva with a strong garrison to defend the Kreml, he betook himself to the northern districts of his realm to raise what forces he might against the invaders. The assault on Moskva was weakened by the want of siege engines (cannon were just beginning to be used by the Russians and Lit’uanians), and Ivan Mikhailovitch, Prince of Tver, was summoned to support the Khan with his artillery. For once hereditary hatred gave way to patriotic instincts, and Ivan withheld the demanded assistance. The troops of Ediger ravaged and burnt far and wide over the Russian plain, and sacked many a town and village in the Grand Principality, but they could neither force Vasili into a combat nor make an impression on the walls and towers of the Kreml. A threatened revolution at the Horde made the Khan anxious to retreat, and his offer of withdrawal on receipt of a war levy was gladly accepted by the Moskovites, who were dreading a famine; 3000 roubles purchased the departure of the Mongol army, and the Velikie Kniaz was able to return to his rejoicing capital.
Hemmed in on east and west by two powerful and aggressive neighbours, with the slumbering volcanoes of Tver and Riazan ready to burst into activity at any moment within his own dominions, the politic Vasili could do little more than assert from time to time his authority over Novgorod. The republic, indeed, was at the height of its independence, and played its own game in the shifting balance of Order and Hansa, Grand Duchy, Grand Principality, and Golden Horde, which made up the round of its political compass. In 1392 it had closed a period of commercial strife by a treaty84 with the towns of Lubeck, Wisby, Revel, Dorpat, and Riga, compacted in the border burgh of Izborsk, where “ys gekomen her Johan Neibur van Lubeke, her Hynrik van Vlanderen unde her Godeke Cur von Godlande, van overze,85 van Rige her Tydeman van der Nienbrugge, van Darpte her Hermen Kegheller unde her Wynold Clychrode, van Revale her Gerd Witte,” and “hebben gesproken myt dem borchgreven van Nougarden,”—the posadnik of Novgorod—and so on in quaint old low-German wording that brings to the mind a glimpse of red gabled roofs, narrow streets and quays, a whiff of salted herrings, pine timbers, and pungent stoppered drams. This treaty, concluded without reference to the Grand Prince, had been a source of friction between him and the Novgorodskie, and a further grievance was that the Archbishop and clergy of the northern city chose to be a law unto themselves rather than show a proper dependence upon the Metropolitan of Moskva. Yet another matter for complaint was the depredations of bands of free-lances from Novgorod and her offshoot settlement Viatka (an independent territory lying to the north of Great Bulgaria), who, under the name of “Good Companions,” carried on a series of freebooting and piratical campaigns in the Volga valley. More than once these points of dispute led to open rupture between Vasili and his intractable subjects, but Great Novgorod was able to hold her own against the hampered efforts of the Velikie Kniaz.
Eighteen months after Ediger’s winter campaign against Moskva the eyes of all Russia were turned towards the impending struggle between the rival powers of the Baltic lands, the Order and the dual Polish-Lit’uanian State. Vitovt, recovered from his reverse at the hands of the Tartars, was moving again, and had set his lance against the black cross shield of the German knights. A dispute anent the Order province of Samogitia furnished a pretext for a recourse to arms, and both sides gathered their hosts to fight out the deadly quarrel. No hole and corner combat was to decide the mastery of the Baltic basin; 163,000 men marched in the train of Vitovt and Yagiello, 83,000 rallied round Ulrich von Jungingen. At the famous battle of Tannenberg (15th July 1410) the iron-mailed knights of Mary went down in splendid ruin before the unstayable onset of the Slavic warriors; the White Eagle of Poland and the Charging Horseman of Lit’uania gleamed on their blood-red standards over the stark and gory corpses of the Grand Master and the flower of his chivalry, 600 knights and 40,000 men-at-arms; the sun went down on the hard-fought field, where Ulrich von Jungingen and his staunch comrades held their last pale Chapter, and the might of the Black Cross Order faded into the shadows of the past. 1411The Peace of Thorn, by yielding to the conquerors all they demanded, gave a temporary respite to the Teutons, but their power was broken for evermore.86
The latter years of the reign of Vasili Dmitrievitch are distinguished by a dexterous peace with the several items which threatened at every moment to combine against and crush his struggling principality. The ambition of his father-in-law, the frowardness of Novgorod, the dissatisfaction of Tver, the exacting arrogance of the Horde, were successfully ignored or adroitly played one against the other. In like manner the Grand Prince’s brothers were studiously kept in the background, and the boyarins of Moskva and the allied fiefs were taught to look upon Vasili’s surviving son, who bore his father’s name, as future head of the State. 1425Thus scheming and contriving went the Prince of Moskva on his way, till one winter’s day the bells knelled for his passing soul, and Vasili Vasilievitch reigned in his stead.
The late prince had guided the flood of monarchical principles and hereditary right in the desired direction; his successor had to struggle for the greater part of his reign with the back-wash of reaction. Moskva had been placed by persistent effort high above the position of her neighbours, but the elements of discord and disunion lay among her own princes, and it was inevitable that the surviving sons of Dimitri should seek to annul an order of succession which passed them over in favour of a mere boy. Nor had the young Vasili the support of a strong Metropolitan to sustain him in the stormy days that were coming. The Greek Photius who held that office did not exercise in the State the same influence as his forerunners Theognost and Aleksis had done, and even in his own department his authority was not undisputed. For Grand Duke Vitovt, an amateur dabbler in religions,