Never had such an army been seen in Russia: the safest estimates number it at a hundred and fifty thousand, including seventy-five thousand cavalry. Prince Dmitri strengthened his soul in prayer at Troitsa, where he obtained in the name of the God of Nations the blessing of Sergius, and was given two monks, brave men, to go forward with him and his host. As this embodied strength and hope of the nation moved toward the banks of the Don, it was threatened by the Lithuanians from the west, and the Tatar hordes from the east. A message from Sergius favoring an advance, decided the councils of war; and when the passage of the river was effected, the army formed for battle on the plain of Kulikovo, the Field of Woodcocks, westward of the Don and southward of Riazan (1380). A mound of earth was cast up for the general-prince to witness the movements of the action; and as he stood upon it, the army in one loud voice of unison offered the prayer: “Great God, grant to our sovereign the victory.” Dmitri, beholding the marshaled ranks, and knowing the solemn fate that was soon to dim their splendor and disorder their stately array, knelt in the sight of all the troops, and with uplifted arms besought the divine protection for Russia. As he rode before the men, he proclaimed: “The hour for the judgment of God is come,” and when the alarum had been sounded, he stood ready to lead the first advance. “It is not in me to seek a place of safety,” he said to those who would deter him, “when I have exhorted these, my brethren, to spare not themselves for the good of the land. If I am cut down, they and him in whom we confide will protect our Russia.”
The battle was long and strenuously contested; for in respect of the future, it was to be decisive for or against the ascendency of the Asiatics, and the self-government of the Russian states. A breach had been made in the drujina of the Grand Prince, when his trusted kinsman Vladimir, and the watchful Dmitri of Volhynia came from their appointed positions to his support. The right, left, and center of the host were woefully thinned, but they were not repulsed. Mamaï, from the height of a funeral mound, saw his men desperate, falling and giving way, as the afternoon waned, and covering his eyes, exclaimed: “The God of the Christians is all-powerful!” The Mongols in trepidation and wild disorder were pursued in all directions; a hundred thousand of them lay dead or shrieking in death agonies upon the plain; nor was the Russian host hardly less depleted. When Vladimir, who won the distinction of “the Brave,” in this action, planted his banner upon a mound, and with signal trumpets rallied the remnant of the men, princes, nobles, soldiers obeyed the call; but Dmitri was not among them. After a long search he was found, faint, bleeding, his armor shattered. The whispered words of good cheer, the banners waving before his dimly opening eyes, caused his pulses to beat again, and as he lay surrounded by his captains, his low prayer of thanksgiving was heard between the huzzas of the weary yet rejoicing ranks. From that day forward he was Dmitri Donskoï—of the Don—for by its waters he had broken the tradition of servitude; under his leadership the Russian heart had been rekindled to its ancient courage; the Russian manhood had been restored. As his litter was borne from the field, he saluted his fallen comrades in arms: “Brothers, nobles, princes, here is found a resting place for you. Here, having offered yourselves for our land and faith, you have passed to a peace nevermore disturbed by conflict. Hail and farewell.”
Such was the battle of Kulikovo—the reparation of what was foregone at the battle of the Kalka.[B] The nation, however, had still much to endure from, and was essentially modified in its manners and customs by the people who had been its masters. Four centuries or more were required for the European Mongols to adopt the customs of Russian civilization, and to render them sufficiently instructed to contribute to the prosperity of the empire. The pestilence of the fourteenth century, the Black Death, together with the dissensions of the khans, impaired the strength of the Horde, which rallied, however, under Timur Lenk, the Lame, or Tamerlane, as he is commonly named, a direct descendant of Genghiz on the maternal side[C]. Toktamuish, one of his generals, took possession of the country from the Volga to the Don, and turned his horses’ heads toward the north. The counsels of the princes were divided. Dmitri would not that the thousands buried at Kulikovo should have perished in vain: but the principalities were in no condition for the further maintenance of war. In the hope of help from the north, Dmitri withdrew to Kostroma, above Moscow. The Mongols laid siege to his capital, but finding they could make no breach in its defenses, entered into negotiations, or affected to do so, and watching their opportunity, surprised the gates. Then ensued the devastation of former days. The precious archives of national history, the ancient stately buildings, were all consumed: the citizens were massacred without distinction or mercy. “In one day perished the beauty of the city that had overflowed with riches and magnificence,” writes Karamsin; “smoke, ashes, ruined churches, corpses beyond the counting, a frightful waste, alone remained.” Dmitri, like his ancient kinsman, Iuri,[D] returned to deplore the ruin of the richest portion of his country, for which, in vain, as it appeared, he had labored and suffered from his youth up. The prince’s son, Vasili, was detained as hostage at the Horde, but escaped after a three years’ captivity. Many more were required for the rebuilding of the city. The Tatar baskaks were again established among the slowly reviving communities. But incapable of solidarity, these people were unable permanently to subdue the dwellers in cities, or to destroy a firmly compacted state. The invasion of Toktamuish closed the drama of their conquests in Europe.
Dmitri lived some years after this overthrow of his hopes, but continued to the last, strong and assiduous for the up-building of his principality. The walls of the Kreml[E] were rebuilt this time not of oak, but of stone; churches and fortified monasteries were reared within and beyond the city walls. Not less necessary than his own dwelling is the house of worship to the religious Russian. Kief at one time had four hundred churches, or nearly fifty more than Rome, and Moscow, though almost entirely rebuilt since 1813, encloses a hundred and seventy within its walls. To the west of the Grand Principality, extending to the Urals, the stone girdle of Eastern Russia[F], lay the vast territory of Permia, or Perm. A monk, Stephen, went forth into its unexplored wastes, won the hearts of some of its people, confuted their sorcerers, overthrew their idols, notably one much adored, the Golden Old Woman, who held two children in her arms—established schools, and in time was made bishop of the diocese he had discovered; wherein finally he was put to death, winning thus the honor of the first Russian missionary and missionary martyr, and enduring reverence for his mortal remains, entombed in the capital of his country.
In the south, the intrepid, maritime Genoese formed colonies at Kaffa and Azof, connecting links between Russia and the West. Among the articles brought into the country at this period were cannon. Parks of artillery were used in the army, in the last year of the Donskoï’s reign.
His personel, as retained by the historical paintings representing the scenes of his career, is that of a serious, steadfast man, patient and brave, intent upon his affairs, without self-consciousness, capable of that tempered happiness that attends long-continued exertion. His dark hair falls upon vigorous shoulders; a full and manly beard does not conceal the firm outlines of the lower part of the face. The eyes are touched with care, their region deeply traced with marks of toil; a seamed, broad forehead sustains the weight of its crown. They that looked upon this prince must have been reminded of the Presence that strengthens and subdues the souls of all good men. Dmitri, Alexis, and Sergius, the ruler, the pastor, and the saint, made the titles “Holy Russian Empire,” “Holy Mother Moscow,” not wholly insignificant, not entirely a sad irony upon the conduct of those who wrought by manifold means toward the compacting of the nation.
A bylina, or historical ballad, chants the last scene in this eventful, care-laden life. In the Uspenski Sobor, “the Holy Cathedral of the Assumption, Saint Cyprian was chanting the mass. There, too, worshiped Dmitri of the Don, with his princess Eudoxia, his boyars, and famous captains. Suddenly ceased the prince to pray: he was rapt away in spirit. The eyes of his soul were opened in vision. He sees no longer the candles burning before the sacred pictures; he hears no longer the holy songs. He treads the level plain, the field of Kulikovo. There, too, walks Mary, the Holy Mother: behind her the angels of the Lord, angels and archangels, with swinging lamps. They sing the pæans of those who fell upon that earth, beneath the blade of the pagan. Over them she, too, lets fall the amaranth.—‘Where is the hero who stood here for his people and for my Son? He is to lead the choir of the valiant: his princess shall join my holy band.’ * * * * * * * In the temple the candles burned, the pictures gleamed, the precious jewels were bright. Tears stood in the grave eyes of our prince. ‘The hour of my departure is at hand,’ he said. ‘Soon I shall lie in unbroken rest; my princess shall take the veil, and join the choir of Mary.’” For from the days of Anne, daughter of Olaf of Sweden, and consort of the great Iaroslaf (1050), the wives of the Grand Princes, following the custom of the widowed empresses of Byzantium, had retired to a convent upon the death of their lords.
Dmitri, by compact with a number of his kinsmen, princes, had effectually secured the Muscovite succession to the eldest son, thus abolishing the old Slavic law, whereby the elder, were he son or brother of the deceased prince, entered upon it. So entire was the confidence, so genuine was the affection that he had inspired in the hearts of his countrymen—for he was, in effect, the Russian Washington—that his son Vasili (Basil) received upon his shoulders the “collar” and burden of government (1389) without opposition. His reign of thirty-six years proved that he had inherited his father’s skill and good fortune, if not fully his greatness of mind. The Donskoï had secured the virtual consolidation of the adjoining State of Vladimir, or Suzdal, with that of Moscow. The far-reaching territories of Novgorod the Great, too, were gradually being regarded as a part of the Grand Principality, notwithstanding frequent demonstrations of resistance from its people, who yet paid tribute to, and had chosen, from motives of policy, a succession of grand princes for their princes. The republic, after its humiliation by the Mongols, had warily parried the Muscovite encroachments by frequent alliances with Lithuania,[G] a realm much larger than organized Russia in the fourteenth century—whose tribes had been united by a succession of powerful native chiefs.
By the charter of Iaroslaf the Novgorodians were accorded the right of choosing their sovereign; hence, when circumstances rendered a Lithuanian prince desirable for their protection against a Muscovite one, they obtained him by election. But affinities of race, religion, and a common history, were too strong to permit a permanent union with a foreign power.