with Lithuania, after which he defeated Tver and made Michael recognize him as grand prince. Muscovite troops also scored victories over Riazan and over the Volga Bulgars, who paid tribute to the Golden Horde.
But Dmitrii's fame rests on his victorious war with the Golden Horde itself. As Moscow grew and as civil strife swept through the Golden Horde, the Mongol hegemony in Russia experienced its first serious challenge since the time of the invasion. We have seen that Dmitrii had successfully defied the Mongol decision to make Michael of Tver grand prince and had defeated the Volga Bulgars, whose principality was a vassal state of the Golden Horde. A series of incidents and clashes involving the Russians and the Mongols culminated, in 1378, in Dmitrii's victory over a Mongol army on the banks of the Vozha river. Clearly the Mongols had either to reassert their mastery over Moscow or give up their dominion in Russia. A period of relative stability in the Golden Horde enabled the Mongol military leader and strong man, Marnai, to mount a major effort against Dmitrii.
The Mongols made an alliance with Lithuania, and Marnai set out with some 200,000 troops to meet in the upper Don area with forces of Grand Prince Jagiello of Lithuania for a joint invasion of Muscovite lands. Dmitrii, however, decided to seize the initiative and crossed the Don with an army of about 150,000 men, seeking to engage the Mongols before the Lithuanians arrived. The decisive battle, known as the battle of Kulikovo field, was fought on the eighth of September 1380 where the Nepriadva river flows into the Don, on a hilly terrain intersected by streams which the Russians selected to limit the effectiveness of the Mongol cavalry. The terrain was such that the Mongols could not simply envelop Russian positions, but had to break through them. Fighting of desperate ferocity - Dmitrii himself, according to one source, was knocked unconscious in combat and found after the battle in a pile of dead bodies - ended in a complete rout of Mamai's army when the last Russian reserve came out of ambush in a forest upon the exhausted and unsuspecting Mongols. Jagiello, whose Lithuanian forces failed to reach Kulikovo by some two days, chose not to fight Dmitrii alone and turned back. The great victory of the Russians laid to rest the belief in Mongol invincibility. What is more, the new victor of the Don rose suddenly as the champion of all the Russians against the hated Mongol oppressors. While certain important Russian rulers failed to support Dmitrii, and those of Riazan even negotiated with the Mongols, some twenty princes rallied against the common enemy in an undertaking blessed by the Church and bearing some marks of a crusade. The logic of events pointed beyond the developments of 1380 to a new role in Russian history for both the principality and prince of Moscow.
Nevertheless, the years following the great victory at Kulikovo saw a reversal of its results. In fact, only two years later, in 1382, the Mongols
came back, led this time by the able Khan Tokhtamysh. While the surprised Dmitrii was in the north gathering an army, they besieged Moscow and, after assaults failed, managed to enter the city by a ruse: Tokhtamysh swore that he had decided to stop the fighting and that he and his small party wanted to be allowed within the walls merely to satisfy their curiosity; once inside, the Mongols charged their hosts and, by seizing a gate, obtained reinforcements and hence control of Moscow, which they sacked and burned. Although Tokhtamysh retreated, with an enormous booty, rather than face Dmitrii's army, the capital and many of the lands of the principality were desolated and its resources virtually exhausted. Dmitrii, therefore, had to accept the overlordship of the Mongol khan, who in return confirmed him as the Russian grand prince. Still, after Kulikovo, the Mongol grip on Russia lacked its former firmness. Dmitrii Donskoi spent the last years of his reign in strengthening his authority among Russian princes, especially those of Tver and Riazan, and in assisting the rebuilding and economic recovery of his lands.
When Dmitrii Donskoi died in 1389 at the age of thirty-nine, his son Vasilii, or Basil, became grand prince without challenge either in Russia or in the Golden Horde. Basil I's long reign, from 1389 until his death in 1425, deserves attention for a number of reasons. The cautious and intelligent ruler continued very successfully the traditional policy of the Muscovite princes of enlarging their own principality and of making its welfare their first concern. Thus, Basil I acquired several new appanages as well as a number of individual towns with their surrounding areas. Also he waged a continuous struggle against Lithuania for western Russian lands. Although the warlike Grand Prince Vitovt of Lithuania scored some victories over his Russian son-in-law, Basil's persistent efforts led to a military and political deadlock in much of the contested area. It might be noted that, after the conclusion of a treaty with Lithuania in 1408, a number of appanage princes in the western borderlands switched their allegiance from Lithuania to Moscow.
Relations with the East presented as many problems as relations with the West. In 1395 Moscow barely escaped invasion by the army of one of the greatest conquerors of history, Tamerlane, who had spread his rule through the Middle East and the Caucasus and in 1391 had smashed Tokhtamysh. Tamerlane's forces actually devastated Riazan and advanced upon Moscow, only to turn back to the steppe before reaching the Oka river. Around 1400 Muscovite troops laid waste the land of the Volga Bulgars, capturing their capital Great Bulgar and other towns. In 1408 the Golden Horde, pretending to be staging a campaign against Lithuania, suddenly mounted a major assault on Moscow to punish Basil I for not paying tribute and for generally disobeying and disregarding his overlord. The Mongols devastated the principality, although they could not capture the
city of Moscow itself. In the later part of his reign, Basil I, preoccupied by his struggle with Lithuania and Tver, maintained good relations with the khan and sent him 'gifts.'
The death of Basil I in 1425 led to the only war of succession in the history of the principality of Moscow. The protagonists in the protracted struggle were Basil I's son Basil II, who succeeded his father at the age of ten, and Basil II's uncle Prince Iurii, who died in 1434 but whose cause was taken over by his sons, Basil the Squint-eyed and Dmitrii Shemiaka. Prince Iurii claimed seniority over his nephew, and he represented, in some sense, a feudal reaction against the growing power of the grand princes of Moscow and their centralizing activities. By 1448, after several reversals of fortune and much bloodshed and cruelty - which included the blinding of both Basil the Squint- eyed and of Basil II himself, henceforth known as Basil the Blind - the Muscovite prince had prevailed. Dmitrii Shemiaka's final rebellion was suppressed in 1450. Indeed, having obtained sufficient support from the boyars and the people of Moscow, Basil II managed, although at a very heavy cost, not only to defeat his rivals but also to expand his principality at the expense of Basil the Squint-eyed and Dmitrii Shemiaka and also of some other appanage princes.
Relations with the Mongols continued to be turbulent as the Golden Horde began to break up and Moscow asserted its independence. In 1445 Basil II was badly wounded and captured in a battle with dissident Mongol leaders, although soon he regained his freedom for a large ransom. The year 1452 marked a new development: a Mongol prince of the ruling family accepted Russian suzerainty when the princedom of Kasimov was established. Basil II had taken into his service Mongol nobles with their followers fleeing from the Golden Horde, and he rewarded one of them, Kasim, a descendant of Jenghiz Khan, with the principality for his important assistance in the struggle against Dmitrii Shemiaka. The creation of this Mongol princedom subject to the grand prince of Moscow was only one indication of the decline of Mongol power. Still more significant was the division of the vast lands held directly by the Golden Horde, with the Crimean khanate separating itself in 1430, that of Kazan in 1436, and that of Astrakhan in 1466 during the reign of Basil II's successor, Ivan III. In 1475 the Crimean state recognized Ottoman suzerainty, with Turkish troops occupying several key positions on the northern shore of the Black Sea. Of course, the khans of the Golden Horde tried to stem the tide and, among other things, to bring their Russian vassal back to obedience. Khan Ahmad directed three campaigns against Moscow, in 1451, 1455, and 1461, but failed to obtain decisive results. For practical purposes, Moscow can be considered as independent of the Mongols after 1452 at least, although the formal and final abrogation of the yoke came only in 1480. In fact, Vernadsky regards the establishment of the principality of Kasimov as a decisive turning point in
the relations between the forest and the steppe and thus in what is, to him, the basic rhythm of Russian history.
Basil II's long reign from 1425 to 1462 also witnessed important events in Europe which were to influence Russian history profoundly, although they did not carry an immediate political impact like that implicit in the break- up of the Golden Horde. At the Council of Florence in 1439, with Byzantium struggling against the Turks for its existence and hoping to obtain help from the West, the Greek clergy signed an abortive agreement with Rome, recognizing papal supremacy. The Russian metropolitan, Isidore, a Greek, participated in the Council of Florence and, upon his return to Moscow, proclaimed its results during a solemn service and read a prayer for the pope. After the service he was arrested on orders of the grand prince and imprisoned in a monastery, from which he escaped
