THE GROWING OF THE GERM
Never since the overthrow on the Sit had a Russian ruler been as
emphatically and unquestionably Grand Prince as was Simeon Ivanovitch,
yclept “the Proud.” Some of the most valuable provinces had indeed
fallen away from the realm, but if the title Prince “of all the
Russias,” which Simeon was the first to adopt, was little justified
by the facts, at least he was, among his compeers, master of what
remained. The very qualification of his powers which the over-lordship
of the Khan implied, was in fact an added source of authority, for
the Russian mind had come to accept the Mongol dominion with the same
submissiveness, if with less enthusiasm, that it displayed towards the
paternal tyranny of the Church. Supported by the double certificate
of Heaven and Sarai, with the iarlikh[63] of Usbek in his hands and
his compliant Metropolitan at his side, the Grand Prince stood head
and shoulders above his brother princes and would-be competitors.
And here may be noted an advantage which the builders of the Russian
Empire possessed over the continuators of the Germanic one, and indeed
over most of the princes of Catholic Europe. The Church “went with”
the secular authority. In western Christendom the popes, after having
entreated the services of emperors and kings as their surest agency
for the destruction of the heathen religions, kicked down the ladder
by which they had climbed to their high position, and convulsed Europe
for many centuries by a bitter strife with the temporal sovereignties;
till the up-springing of a new enemy, questioning the Divine authority
of tiara and crown alike, drew Pontiff, Kaiser, and absolute monarchs
together, like cattle herding in a storm. In Russia no such schism
endangered the sanctity of the ruling forces, possibly because no such
prosperity had been attained by either. “The palace rubbed shoulders
with the Church and the monastery, and was scarcely distinguishable
from them.”[64] The Grand Prince was holy and Orthodox, the Church was
national and official. Ban and interdict, those bogies of mediæval west
Europe, were here familiar sprites which worked at the bidding of the
Grand Prince against his enemies. As the worship of the old Slavonic
gods Peroun and Volos, Daszhbog, Stribog, etc. gave way by degrees
to that of the One-in-Three and the dependent galaxy of saints, so
did the old veneration for a crowd of Rurik-descended princes merge
gradually into awe of one Heaven-born sovereign and a satellite-band of
his officials, amongst whom were the hierarchy of the national Church.
And in another respect the Russian rulers had their task simplified
for them, namely, in the long-suffering docility of the bulk of their
subjects. Here were no defiant goat-herds such as chased the might of
the Habsburgs from the Graubunden Alps, no _Bauernkriegern_ kindling
the fires of civil war throughout an empire, no _Jacquerie_ distracting
an already distraught kingdom. The Slav peasant took all the added
ills of life, droughts, famines, Polovtzi, Mongols, grasshoppers, and
pestilences, tithes and taxes, with a fatalism he had brought with
him from the East, a stoicism learnt possibly from the camel in his
nomad days. A man who, in addition to the privations incidental to
his poverty, will at the bidding of his Church fast “during the seven
weeks of Lent, during two or three weeks in June, from the beginning of
November till Christmas, and on all Wednesdays and Fridays during the
year,”[65] can have little of the bread-rioter or throne-shaker in his
constitution. The very placidity, however, with which he received the
dispensations of Providence in whatever shape they chose to assume,
rendered his allegiance a matter of circumstance rather than principle.
He would accept the mastery of the Lit’uanians, for instance, as he had
accepted the Mongols, as he had accepted the Varangians; like a dog of
too accommodating disposition, he wagged his tail to whichever master
shouted loudest, and just now the Lit’uanian princes were shouting loud
indeed. Chiefly as yet among themselves. The death of Gedimin had left
his country in a position which required skilful handling, while at
the same time the division of the State into eight portions precluded
any one prince from having a controlling voice in the direction of
affairs--an arrangement which could only lead to disaster. Fortunately
for Lit’uania the political foresight and energy of her defunct Grand
Duke had descended in full measure upon one at least of his sons,
Olgerd of Vitebsk. He, while engaged in ravaging the Order territories
in Livland, watching for an attack from across the Polish border, or
casting his eyes over the tempting Russian provinces ready to fall into
his clutches, saw clearly that to live and expand, to prey and not be
preyed upon, Lit’uania must have a guiding hand, one head instead of
many. In order to attain his eagle-soaring ambition he borrowed the
habits of the cuckoo, and ousted his brothers unceremoniously from the
hereditary nest. An exception was wisely made in favour of Kestout,
who equalled him in energy and military achievement, and without whose
help the _coup d’etat_ could scarcely have been effected. Acting in
concert, the brothers seized on the capital, Vilna, and re-established
the grand-dukedom; by a happy division of labour Kestout became
warden of the Polish and Order-land marches, leaving Olgerd to pursue
his conquests and acquisitions in the south-east--an arrangement
which enabled the Grand Duke to add Briansk, Seversk, Kiev, and the
surrounding district to his possessions, and to retain Volhynia against
the King of Poland.[66] With the Prince of Moskva pursuing a policy
of cautious inaction, the only safe course open to him under the
circumstances, Olgerd was able not only to stretch his dominion from
a foothold on the Baltic coast to the shores of the Black Sea, but to
obtain a solid influence over the governments of Smolensk, Pskov, and
Velikie Novgorod. As early as 1346 he appears to have had a hold on the
councils of the latter city; the posadnik Evstaf (Eustace) had spoken
unwisely and not well of the great Lit’uanian,--had in fact called
him a dog. The indiscreet expression reached the ears of Olgerd, who
demanded the death of the offending dignitary. The Vetché armed the
city in defence of the posadnik, reconsidered the matter, and ended by
sacrificing Evstaf to the resentment of the Grand Duke.[67] An action
so opposed to the traditional temper of the proud republic that it is
only to be explained by a strong motive of political expediency. And
in fact an alliance with Lit’uania was valuable to Pskov and Novgorod,
both as a bulwark against German aggression and as a counterpoise to
the encroaching power of Moskva. In the former relation, the resisting
power of the leagued principalities of the North was severely tested by
the warrior monks of the Order; able to draw unfailing supplies of men
and marks from the States of the Empire, the knights had bought Estland
from the King of Denmark (1347), had inflicted a severe defeat on the
Lit’uanian army (1348), and later carried war and desolation into the
lands of Polotzk, Pskov, and Novgorod (1367). With the help of Olgerd
the Russians were able to make a diversion upon Dorpat, and peace was
at length effected with the Order in 1371.[68] From this it will be
seen that the Grand Duke of Lit’uania was a far more prominent figure
in the land than the Grand Prince “of all the Russias.” But of the
policy of these two contrasted state-workers it may be said that while
Olgerd built, the son of Kalita dug. Intrenching himself around the
unit of Moskva, the last-named silently and persistently undermined the
power of the neighbouring princes, and established his own authority
on a sure foundation. Novgorod might wait; Lit’uania might wait; the
Horde might wait. Thus delving and waiting ruled Simeon, so quaintly
named “the Proud,” till death swept him into his cherished cathedral--a
victim, possibly, to the terrible Black Pestilence which was then
desolating Russia.
[Sidenote: 1353-1359]
The succeeding Grand Prince, Ivan Ivanovitch, who found favour in
the sight of the new Khan Tchanibek, displayed all his brother’s
patience without any of his policy. His weakly pacific reign marked
a partial thaw in the iron frost of Moskovite supremacy, which had
bound North-east Russia in its grip under the rule of his three
immediate predecessors. Souzdal, Riazan, and Tver blossomed anew into
independence, and enjoyed a S. Luke’s summer of importance and anarchy.
The Novgorodians, who had exerted themselves to obtain the election
of Konstantin of Souzdal to the grand princedom, only recognised Ivan
on the death of the former (1354), and were little troubled by the
interference of their sovereign.[69] Their own domestic affairs were
sufficiently exciting to absorb their attention; the election of a
posadnik in the spring of 1359 gave rise to a fierce quarrel between
the inhabitants of the Slavonic quarter and those of the Sofia ward,
and for three days the hostile factions fought around the famous
bridge, and were only separated by the intervention of their Archbishop
and ex-Archbishop, whose combined exhortations at length restored peace
to the agitated city.[70]
If Novgorod owed much to the well-directed influence of her prelates,
the House of Moskva was even more indebted to the exertions and
services of the Metropolitan Aleksis, who loyally supported its
interests under the most discouraging circumstances. When the weary
Ivan had closed his inglorious reign, when “having failed in many
things,” he had “achieved to die,” the foundations painfully hewn
out by his forerunners were almost swept away; a new Khan had arisen
who knew not Moskva, and Dimitri Konstantinovitch of Souzdal entered
Vladimir in triumph, with the iarlikh in his hand. Souzdal, Riazan,
Tver, and Velikie Novgorod exulted in the downfall of their ambitious
neighbour, and the work of generations seemed undone. Then was it that
Vladuika Aleksis, seeing in Dimitri Ivanovitch more promising material
than had existed in his father, took advantage of the chaos existing at
the Horde--where Khan succeeded Khan in a whirlwind of revolutions--to
obtain a counter-iarlikh for the young Prince of Moskva. Thus Dimitri
was opposed by Dimitri, each boasting the favour of Sarai, but the
Moskovite enjoying the support of Holy Church. New intrigues gave the
Souzdal kniaz once more the countenance of the Horde, but Dimitri
Ivanovitch dared to disregard the displeasure of a Khan who was here
to-day and might be gone to-morrow; riding forth at the head of his
boyarins and followers, long accustomed to be uppermost in the land,
he drove his rival from Vladimir and carried the war into the province
of Souzdal, besieging the capital. The Konstantinovitch submitted, and
the grand princely dignity returned to the House of Moskva. [Sidenote:
1362] Well had Aleksis earned his subsequent canonisation.
A few years later the Black Death, brought into the district of
Nijhnie-Novgorod by travelling merchants, recommenced its ravages
throughout Central Russia. Its victims were counted by thousands,
and though the account of its sweeping effect at Smolensk, in which
city there were said to remain but five survivors,[71] is probably an
exaggeration, an idea can be formed of its destructive nature by the
number of princes who were stricken down in a single year. [Sidenote:
1365] The Grand Prince’s brother Ivan, Konstantin of Rostov, Andrei,
brother of the Prince of Souzdal, and four of the Tverskie family, were
victims of the dread pestilence, more wholesale even in its work than
the Mongols in the first fury of their invasion.[72] In its wake sprang
up a crop of quarrels, the result of such a legacy of vacant fiefs.
Boris of Souzdal having seized on his deceased brother’s appanage
(Nijhnie-Novgorod), to the despite of his elder, Dimitri, the latter
was driven to throw himself into the hands of his namesake and rival,
the Grand Prince of Moskva, who forced the supplanter to disgorge his
prey. In Tver, likewise, the death of Simeon had brought his brother
Ieremiya, his uncle Vasili, and his cousin Mikhail, into competition
for his territorial possessions. The last-named was pursuing in Tver
the same policy of aggrandisement and centralisation that had obtained
such successful results for Moskva; naturally his proceedings were
watched with jealous eyes by Dimitri, the Metropolitan, and the
Moskovite boyarins, who took up the cause of Mikhail’s opponents and
drove him more than once from his province. Mikhail invoked the aid
of his wife’s father, Olgerd. [Sidenote: 1369] The great Lit’uanian,
whose arms had checked the tide of Teutonic conquest and driven the
Tartars from the Western steppes, who had wasted the outskirts of
Revel and laid classic Kherson in ashes, marched now against the
might of Moskva, his rival in the Russian lands. With him came his
loyal brother Kestout, and, because he must, the Kniaz of Smolensk.
The might of Moskva contracted within the high stone battlements of
its Kreml, which, in the depth of winter, was too strong a hold for
the Lit’uanians to attack. Olgerd contented himself with sacking the
surrounding country, and carried back a spoil of cattle and church
furniture as witness of his triumph. [Sidenote: 1370] The following
year, however, Mikhail, again driven from his hereditary dominions,
again appealed to Olgerd for assistance, and with the first November
snows came the Lit’uanian-Smolenskie host against Moskva. History
repeated itself; a second time the Kreml, rising fair and glittering in
its sheen of white stone and silvery frost, above the blackened ruins
that lay around it, defied the force that gathered against its walls.
Olgerd hovered in vain around the impregnable obstacle to his crowning
triumph. Russian troops, under Vladimir Andrevitch, the Grand Prince’s
cousin, were gathering on his flank, those pied crows, the Knights of
Mary, were croaking ominously on his northern frontier, while an early
thaw threatened to impede his line of retreat through the snow-banked
forests. Under these circumstances the old warrior slacked the rigour
of his onslaught and made an honourable peace with the enemy whom he
could not crush. [Sidenote: 1371] The indomitable Mikhail continued,
nevertheless, to wage a fitful war with his hereditary foe, now
invoking the support of Mamai Khan, the new master of the Golden Horde,
now calling in the Lit’uanians, till at length, hotly besieged in
his city of Tver, he was obliged to submit to the victorious Dimitri
and recognise the supremacy of the House of Moskva. [Sidenote: 1375]
Secure in his own dominions, the Grand Prince was able to turn his
attention to the hostile forces which weighed on him on either side.
In the West the crushing pressure of the Lettish power was for a time
relaxed. [Sidenote: 1377] The Grand Duke Olgerd, “one of the greatest
statesmen of the Middle Ages,”[73] the clangour of whose arms had
vibrated round Polish castle and Order keep, had roused the echoes of
the Moskva Kreml, and startled the pirates of the Black Sea coast, was
now among “the quiet people”;[74] of his many sons, Yagiello succeeded
him in the Grand Ducal dignity. Hampered by a large circle of brothers,
half-brothers, cousins, and other inconvenient relatives, he set to
work vigorously to weed out his superfluous kinsfolk; the aged Kestout,
the companion-in-arms and faithful supporter of Olgerd, was one of the
first victims of the son’s purging operations. Lured into his power,
he was immured within the castle of Kreva, where he was found one day
strangled; his son Vitovt escaped the same fate by a flight into the
Order territory, while Andrei Olgerdovitch, Prince of Polotzk, sought
at Moskva shelter from his half-brother’s hostility. Dimitri had the
satisfaction of lending his support to this malcontent, as Olgerd
had aided the Prince of Tver. But while Moskovite troops ravaged the
Russian territories of Yagiello, Dimitri from his capital was watching
the storm-clouds that had been slowly piling in the East. Nursed into
their position of authority by the favour and support of the Horde, the
Princes of Moskva had become too important and too exalted to continue
their former humble attitude towards the Khans; like a wasp entangled
in a spider-web, the Velikie Kniaz was over-big a captive to be held
comfortably in the meshes of a degrading thraldom. Hence the altered
relations between Moskva and Sarai, which had resulted in a series
of desultory engagements, not openly avowed at the headquarters of
either side, but tending steadily towards a more pronounced rupture.
Nijhnie-Novgorod had twice suffered the fate of a border town in
troublous times, and been laid in ashes by the Mongols; Riazan had
experienced the like misfortune. On the other hand a more important
collision had taken place on the banks of the Vodjha, where Dimitri had
repulsed an army of raiders sent against Riazan by the Khan himself
(1377). For three years the vengeance of Mamai had loomed, black and
menacing, on the eastern horizon, like a slowly gathering storm that
gains added horror from the unmeasurable approach of its outburst; at
Moskva men watched for the horsemen who should one day ride out from
the forest and clatter into the city with the news that the Hordes were
coming. In the summer of 1380 the storm burst; Dimitri learned that
the Khan was moving against them with a large army, that Yagiello,
“who had small cause to love the Moskva Prince,” was in league with
the Mongol, and that Oleg of Riazan was secretly preparing to throw
in his lot with the invaders.[75] Was this to be the end of all the
delving and striving? Was Moskva to lie in ruins, like another Kiev,
a victim to her own renown? At least she should fall fighting. The
Velikie Kniaz gathered under his standard the princes and soldiery of
such Russian lands as he could command. From Bielozero, Rostov, Mourom,
Souzdal, Vladimir, and other quarters, came pouring in the fractions
of the first national army that had assembled in Russia since the old
wars with the Polovtzi. Beneath the towers of the stately Kreml they
mustered, 150,000 strong, to hail the birth of the new Empire, or,
who knew, to share its ruin. Deep-mouthed clanged the bells of Moskva
over the humming city, palely burned a thousand tapers before the
shrines of good S. George and Mikhail the archangel; even the holy
Sergie, founder of the famed Troitza lavra,[76] left his beaver-haunted
solitudes to give his blessing on the high enterprise. Forth to the
banks of the Don rode Dimitri Ivanovitch with his mighty army; before
him went a sable banner, from whose folds gleamed the wan white Christ
of Calvary; behind him came serried ranks of princes, the descendants
of Rurik, save two who were the sons of dead Olgerd. On the wide plain
of Koulikovo, the field “of the woodcocks,” by the blue waters of
the Don, the might of Moskovite Russia crashed headlong against the
strength of the Golden Horde, and fought through the red September day
till wounds and weariness numbed their failing arms. Then through their
ranks flashed the unpent reserves, led by young Vladimir Andreievitch,
whirled the wild charge into the Mongol hosts, swept into rout the
swarthy horsemen of Asia, swelled the hoarse shouts for S. George, for
S. Glieb, and S. Boris, drowning the pealing war-yells for Allah; they
break, they are killed, they are conquered, the God of the Christians
has wakened, the Prince of the Russias has won a new title for ever,
Dimitri Ivanovitch Donskoi! Dimitri of the Don.
Possibly the result of the battle was not so one-sided as the glowing
accounts of the Russian historians painted it, but the immediate
effect gave fair hope for the future. Yagiello withdrew his forces
into Lit’uania, and thither fled the traitorous Oleg of Riazan; the
Mongols vanished across the Oka, and the enemies of Dimitri seemed
melted like snow before the summer of his victory. The Russians dreamed
that they were free. Not so lightly were they to be rid of these dusky
wolf-eyed warriors, who teemed in the wide, arid plain-land of Asia
like rats on an old threshing-floor. In the East had arisen a new star
of battle to lead them in the footsteps of the mighty Jingis, Timur
the Lame, “conqueror of the two Bokharas, of Hindostan, of Iran, and
of Asia Minor.”[77] At the Golden Horde appeared one of his captains,
Tokhtamitch, who routed and hunted to death the ill-starred Mamai, and
seized upon his khanate. Following on this revolution came a message
from the new Khan to the Russian princes, couched in friendly terms,
but requiring their presence at his Court. This was too much for the
Grand Prince and his proud Moskovites to stomach, and Dimitri returned
an answer befitting the victor of Koulikovo. But the defiance of the
capital found no echo in the other Russian lands; not a second time
did they care to face in doubtful conflict foes who were so terrible
in victory, so easily recruited after defeat. Too many brave boyarins
and bold spearmen had perished on the field of the woodcocks, too many
gaps had been made in their ranks which could not be filled at such
scant notice. Dimitri of Souzdal sent his two sons to the Horde; Oleg,
pardoned and restored to his province, intrigued once more with the
enemies of Moskva. [Sidenote: 1382] Against that city marched the Khan
with his Tartar army, guided thither by the traitorous Kniaz of Riazan,
and bearing in his train the young princes of Souzdal. Dimitri took
the prudent, if unheroic part of leaving his capital to defend itself,
and seeking meanwhile to gather an army capable of threatening the
Mongol flank. The flight of the Metropolitan, Syprien (successor of S.
Aleksis), was not open to so favourable an interpretation. The Kreml,
ably defended by its garrison, under the command of Ostey, called in
the Chronicles a grandson of Olgerd, held the enemy at bay for three
days; on the fourth the defenders weakly opened the gates to a ruse of
the wily Khan, and the capital of the new Russia received a baptism
of blood. When the invaders withdrew, bearing with them all that was
worth removing, it was a silent city that they left behind them--a city
peopled by 24,000 corpses, meet gathering ground for wehr-wolf, ghoul,
and vampire, a wild Walpurgis Nacht for the Yaga-Babas of Slavonic
lore. Nor was Moskva alone in her desolation; Vladimir, Zvenigorod, and
other towns were sacked and burnt by detachments of the Mongol army.
The defeat of one of these bands by a Russian force under Vladimir of
Moskva checked the ravages of the invaders, and Tokhtamitch led his
hordes back across the Oka, leaving Dimitri to repair as best he might
the woes of his province, and to revenge himself on those who had
betrayed or deserted him in the hour of his need. If his kingdom was in
ruins, at least he was master of what remained; the Metropolitan was
deposed, Oleg was forced to fly, and his fief, already ravaged by the
Mongols, was harried anew by the Grand Prince’s followers. Burning with
indignation against the enemy whom he had thought crushed for ever on
the banks of the Don, Dimitri had yet to realise that he must return
to the policy of his fathers, and wear again the yoke he had thrown
so proudly off. Mikhail of Tver, who bore him an undying hatred, had
shared neither in Moskva’s triumph nor in her distress, and now was
plotting openly to obtain for himself the Grand Principality. With all
his losses Dimitri was still the wealthiest of the Russian princes, and
a timely submission enabled him to find grace in the eyes of the Khan.
[Sidenote: 1384] A new impost was exacted throughout the land, and the
young princes--Vasili of Moskva, Aleksandr of Tver, Vasili and Simeon
of Souzdal--were held as hostages at Sarai. Russia awoke from her dream
of liberty to find that her God still slept.
While mourning their relapse into a state of dependence, and involved
in a quarrel with the troublesome republic of the north, the Moskovites
learned a disquieting piece of intelligence; Yagiello, their formidable
neighbour on the west, who held more Russian lands almost than did
Dimitri, had added the kingdom of Poland to his possessions. [Sidenote:
1386] The long succession of princes of the House of Piast had come
to an end, in its direct line, with Kazimir the Great, who since 1370
had lain in a side chapel of the Cathedral at Krakow, where his effigy
in red brown marble yet reclines under its fretted canopy. Louis, the
Angevin King of Hungary, who succeeded him on the Polish throne, had
died in the year 1382, leaving a daughter, Yadviga, to uphold her right
as best she could in a country already marked by the intractability
of the crown vassals. Yadviga only obtained the support of the Diet
(composed of the nobles and higher clergy of the realm) by leaving in
its hands the selection of her husband and consort. The choice of the
assembly fell upon the Grand Duke of Lit’uania, whose election would
at the same time remove a possible enemy from their eastern border,
and furnish them with a protector against the hated Teutonic Order on
their north. For this monster of their own creation (a Polish duke had
been the first to give the knights a foothold in Prussia) was gradually
squeezing them out from touch with the Baltic and displacing their
authority in Eastern Pomerania. One of the indispensable conditions
attached to the betrothal and election of Yagiello was that he should
adopt Christianity of the Roman Catholic pattern; “no cross, no
crown.” The prospect of a peaceable accession to the Polish throne
effected what all the endeavours, spiritual, diplomatic, and militant,
of priests, popes, and grand masters had been unable to accomplish;
Yagiello became the apostle prince of Lit’uania, and Catholic sovereign
of Poland.[78] In his new character of a zealous son of the Church,
the Grand Duke set to work to bring Lit’uania within the pale of the
official religion; the pagan groves were cut down, the sacred fires
that burned in the castle of Vilna extinguished, the mystic serpents
killed, and the people baptized by battalions. According to a Russian
historian, those who already professed the Greek faith were forcibly
converted, and two boyarins who clung obstinately to Orthodoxy were put
to death by tortures.[79]
If Rome swept this valuable State into her fold, the Russian Church,
despite the rather depressing circumstance of a confused succession
to the Metropolitan office, was not without the triumph of extending
her rites over heathen lands. A monk of Moskva carried the light of
the Gospel into the lorn and benighted lands of the Permians, a Finn
tribe which dwelt in the northern valley of the Kama, beneath the
shadow of the Ourals. Supported by the authority of the Grand Prince,
he overthrew the worship of the Old Golden Woman, a stone figure with
two infants in her arms, before whose shrine reindeer were annually
sacrificed; had she been more restricted in her family arrangements she
might have been quietly incorporated in the new religion.
In 1389 Moskva mourned her prince, Dimitri Donskoi, who died while
yet in his prime. A variant from the type of cold, stern princes who
had built up the power of his house, Dimitri was a throw-back to the
old light-hearted Slavonic kniaz, before the Norse blood had died out
of his veins, or ever that of Turko or Mongol had crept in. And if he
gained no fresh ground for Moskva, and left Tver and Souzdal and Riazan
still under independent masters, at least he gave Russia a spasm of
liberty and renown in an age of gloom and bondage, and obtained for his
eldest son the undisputed succession to the Grand Principality.
Vasili Dmitrievitch Moskovskie, to give him his distinguishing title
(since 1383 there had reigned a Vasili Dmitrievitch at Souzdal),
ascended the throne under more favourable circumstances than had a
few years earlier seemed probable. On the west, Vitovt, son of the
murdered Kestout, had placed himself at the head of the Lit’uanian
malcontents in opposition to the King of Poland, who in cultivating
the goodwill of his new subjects had lost that of his old ones. Thus
in that direction the threateners of Moskva’s existence were at strife
among themselves. In the east Tokhtamitch was contemplating a rebellion
against the authority of his lord and protector, Timur, a circumstance
which lifted the position of the young Prince of Moskva at the Horde
from that of a humble vassal to that of a desired ally. His father
would probably have taken advantage of this fact to sever once more
his dependence on the Khan; Vasili turned it to a more practical use.
[Sidenote: 1391] With costly presents, and probably promises of future
support, the Grand Prince bought an iarlikh which gave him possession
of Nijhnie-Novgorod, a fief long since granted to Boris of the House
of Souzdal.[80] Vasili was received with acclaim by the inhabitants,
and Boris, deserted on all sides, had to bow to the decree of fate,
represented in this instance by the iarlikh from Sarai. [Sidenote:
1394] On the death of the ousted prince his nephews, Vasili and Simeon
of Souzdal, attempted to reunite Nijhnie-Novgorod with their hereditary
appanage, with the result that Vasili of Moskva seized on both
provinces and drove his cousins into exile. Many and fruitless were
the efforts made by the brothers to recover their lost principalities;
Vasili had developed a Habsburgian tenacity in holding to whatsoever he
acquired, and the ex-princes of Souzdal had in the end to acquiesce in
their spoliation. Events in the West meanwhile had taken an unforeseen
and not altogether favourable turn. The Teutonic Order had been placed
in an awkward position by the wholesale entrance of the Lit’uanians
into the bosom of the Church, which event left the crusaders no more
heathen to convert; hence the joy which they shared with the angels
over the salvation of their long recalcitrant brothers was tinged with
resentment towards the Poles, and especially towards Yagiello. The
Grand Master sulkily refused to stand sponsor to the latter at his
baptism,[81] and the Order prepared, from motives of self-defence, to
give active support to the pretender Vitovt, who was enabled with its
assistance to continually harry the domains of his royal kinsman, till
at length Yagiello, set upon by Catholics, Orthodox, and pagans alike,
ceded to him the grand duchy, under the direct suzerainty of the Polish
Crown (1392),[82] an arrangement which did not bring repose either to
the Order or to Moskovy. The Grand Duke Vitovt was another edition of
his uncle and grandfather; his arms swept far beyond the ample limits
of his principality, and under his vigorous rule Lit’uania attained
her greatest extent, and perhaps her greatest power. Father-in-law to
Vasili, he did not hesitate to continue the slow absorption of Russian
territory commenced by his predecessors; Smolensk dropped from the
feeble hands of its hereditary princes into the actual possession of
the Grand Duke, who thus brought his dominions into contact with the
principality of Tver, long the hatching-ground 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. [Sidenote: 1395] By 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. [Sidenote: 1399] On 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. [Sidenote: 1408]
The 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 treaty[84] 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. [Sidenote: 1411]
The 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. [Sidenote: 1425] Thus 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,
had established at Kiev a Metropolitan of his own, and the faithful in
the Russ-Lit’uanian lands paid their homage, and what was worse, their
tithes, to this unauthorised rival. Hence Vasili had to depend on the
protection of the Horde and the affections of his Moskovite subjects
to defend him against the ambition of his uncle Urii. [Sidenote: 1430]
The death of his powerful relative, the Lit’uanian Grand Duke, removed
another possible supporter, and two years later the young prince had
to appeal to the decision of the Khan Makhmet against the pretensions
of his rival. By a grovelling affectation of submissiveness Vasili
was able to emerge triumphant from the contest, and on his return was
solemnly crowned at Moskva--the first coronation of a grand prince that
had taken place in that city.[87]
The iarlikh of the Khan possessed, however, none of its old finality,
and Vasili had to sustain a civil war against his uncle, and after his
death (1434) with his sons, Vasili the Squinting, Dimitri Shemiaka,
and Dimitri the Red. Although, apparently, not wanting in courage or
energy (both of which deficiencies have been freely attributed to
him), he possessed little skill in utilising his resources, and again
and again suffered defeat, deposition, and imprisonment. The loyalty
of Moskva brought him through many vicissitudes, and the tables were
turned more than once upon his hostile relatives. [Sidenote: 1436]
Repulsing an attack made upon the capital by Vasili the Squinting,
the Grand Prince secured the person of that rebel, and supplemented
the defect bestowed by nature by blinding the eyes of his hapless
prisoner. The leadership of the disaffected party devolved henceforth
upon Shemiaka, who became the implacable enemy of the Grand Prince, and
roused for many a long year the fires of discord in the land. Meanwhile
the bosom of the Church was heaving with agitation as profound as that
which disturbed the State. [Sidenote: 1437] The new Metropolitan,
Isidor of Salonika, had scarcely entered into his new duties when he
was obliged to set off, by way of Novgorod, Riga, Lubeck, Braunschweig,
Nurnberg, and the Tyrol, to attend the great Council which was to be
held at Ferrara--subsequently at Florence--to unite the two Christian
Churches in one communion. The immediate cause of this drawing together
of the Latin and Greek rivals was the danger which was threatening
the headquarters of the latter sect at the hands of the Infidel Turk.
The Ottoman dynasty, rising upon the ruins of the Seljuk Empire, had
slowly but steadily engorged the provinces which made up the dominion
of the eastern Cæsars. Asia Minor, Bulgaria, Thessaly, Thrace, had been
assimilated one by one, and now there remained but Constantinople, “a
head without a body,” to resist the hitherto irresistible invader.
Without substantial and speedy aid from Catholic Europe there was
little probability that the city could long maintain its defence
against the Ottoman armies, and Catholic Europe could not be expected
to interest itself in the fate of a community which differed from
itself in so many vital points of doctrine. The sole hope for
Constantinople lay in the possibility of a reunion with the dominant
factor of Christendom. [Sidenote: 1438] This was the motive power
which had drawn to the Italian town men from Moskva, Trebizond, and the
isles of the Adriatic, to discuss the vexed question of the genesis
of the Holy Ghost, the exact degree of bliss and torment allotted to
the souls of the departed, whether it was permissible to use leavened
bread in the sacrament, and whether Pope or Patriarch should occupy the
chiefest seat at feasts. These were the main points which separated
the Churches, and on each of them the Greek prelates (Mark of Ephesos
excepted) gave way--not that the arguments of the Latins had become
suddenly convincing, but the looming vision of the Turk inclined the
minds of the Orthodox to surrender. “Ils ne croyaient pas, mais ils
craignaient.”
Foremost among the complaisant Greeks was the Metropolitan Isidor;
already, before leaving Russia, he had shown a “scandalous predilection
for the Latin faith”--had he not at Dorpat kissed the Catholic cross
before saluting the Greek ikons? [Sidenote: 1440] Hence on his return
to Moskva prince and prelates assembled in gloomy suspicion to receive
him in the Church of the Virgin, and hear the result of the council’s
deliberations. The Roman cross demurely preceding the Metropolitan,
and the Pope’s name cropping up in the prayers, prepared them for the
surrender set forth in the Act of Council. When Isidor had finished
reading the unpalatable document there was an ominous silence, amid
which Vasili rose to his feet and commenced to hurl invectives at
the disconcerted Vladuika. Heretic, false shepherd, corrupter of
souls, the mercenary of Rome, were among the epithets applied to the
would-be reformer, who was promptly bundled off to a monastery, from
which he was glad to escape back to Rome. John Paleologus might,
for pressing reasons of his own, tolerate this accursed change of
dogmas, but the Velikie Kniaz of Moskva would have none of it, and
hastened, after the example of Vitovt, to consecrate a Metropolitan
on his own responsibility, without reference to the tainted source of
Constantinople. Jonas, Bishop of Riazan, was chosen for the post, but
was not formally consecrated till 1448.[88]
The energy and reckless daring of the Prince’s character showed itself
soon after in a struggle with a new enemy. On the ruins of the Great
Bulgarian State had sprung up the Tartar khanate of Kazan, independent
of the Golden Horde, and a source of uneasiness for Eastern Russia.
In an attempt to repel an invasion of the province of Souzdal by
the forces of this upstart power, Vasili, deserted by his cousin
Shemiaka, could only muster 1500 men, a shadow of the mighty hosts
that had followed the banner of Moskva aforetime. With this handful,
however, he joined battle with the Kazanese, and fell, covered with
wounds, into their hands. At the news of this disaster the enemies
of the Grand Prince raised their heads throughout the land; Boris of
Tver raided the possessions of the Moskovite merchants at Torjhok,
Shemiaka stretched out his hand for the vacant princedom. The sudden
release of Vasili by the Khan Makhmet sorely embarrassed the position
of the would-be supplanter, and Shemiaka was driven to make a bold
bid for the mastery. [Sidenote: 1446] A sudden move put the Kreml
in his hands, and the hapless Grand Prince, while returning thanks
in the Troitza monastery for his deliverance from the hands of the
Infidels, experienced the worse fate of falling into the clutches of
his Christian cousin, who put his eyes out. Thus after ten years came
home to roost the wrong inflicted on Vasili the Squinting, and the
Grand Prince was thenceforth Vasili the Blind. This barbarous requital
of an “unhappy far-off” deed was perpetrated in the names of Shemiaka,
Ivan Aleksandreivitch, and Boris of Tver, and in their hands remained
the person of Vasili and the possessions of the Grand Principality.
The first-named usurped the Moskovite throne and enjoyed for a space
the power of Grand Prince without being able to gain the affections
of the people. [Sidenote: 1447] In the darkness which had descended
on Vasili Vasilievitch the loyalty of boyarins, town-folk, and clergy
still burned bravely for the captive prince; the popular clamour and
the representations of the Metropolitan forced Shemiaka to restore him
to liberty and bestow on him the town of Vologda as a residence, and
not many months had passed ere the exile came marching back in triumph
to his beloved and faithful Moskva--whose dazzling walls, indeed, he
might never again behold, but whose pealing bells and hoarse-shouting
populace spoke music to his darkened soul. Scarred and mutilated in
the long struggle, in which he had tasted the bitterness of defeats,
imprisonment, banishment, blinding, the Grand Prince had triumphed over
all his misfortunes, had wearied down all opponents, had won. A final
victory dispelled the power of Shemiaka (1450), and three years later
he died at Novgorod, not without suspicion of poisoning. From this
turning-point Vasili the Darkened reigned peaceably and prosperously on
the throne he had laboured so hard to retain.
As the Moskovites settled down to their long-estranged placidity,
rumours reached them of the terrible thing which had befallen the city
of the Caesars; rumours which soon grew into creditable news and made
them doubt but that the bottom of their world had fallen out.
Little fruit had been born of the vaunted Council of Florence; the
Churches were as far apart as ever. In vain might the Byzantine Emperor
and the Greek hierarchy conform with the decisions of the act of union;
the lower clergy and the bulk of the populace would have no dealings
with the unholy ordinance. “Better Turkish than Papish,” the motto
of the Water-Beggars in a later age, would fitly have described the
sentiments of the people of Constantinople at this period. Thus they
fought and squabbled over their beloved dogmas, while the enemy was
slowly gathering his toils around the doomed city. The Pope, mortified
at the miscarriage of his plans, sent no legions rolling across Europe
to the assistance of the last of the Constantines; his legate, indeed,
was on the scene, arguing and expostulating, with the rhetoric which
gained him applause in the council-chamber at Florence, but failed him
in the cold, grim Church of the Virgin in the Kreml--for this plausible
Roman cardinal is no other than Isidor, sometime Metropolitan of
Moskva. But while the Pope hesitates the Sultan acts. On every side the
city is beset by an army that blackens the face of the earth. Cannon
and ram and scaling-ladder are plied against the massive walls and
heavy gates. Day after day the assault is urged; the city is bravely
defended, for the most part by foreigners--for the greater proportion
of the citizens are in the churches praying for deliverance from the
unbelievers. [Sidenote: 1453] But the wonder-working Virgin, weary of
well-doing, or recognising the superior insistency of the attackers,
makes no move to save the holy city; the faltering wail of “kyrie
eleison” is drowned by the fierce roar of “Il Allah illah Allah,”
the scarlet banner of the Yeni-Tscheri[89] waves in the breach at
the Gate of Romanos, the young Sultan Mahomet II. bursts in upon his
prey, and Constantine Paleologus, wounded and trampled on in the rush
of the victors, dies amid the ruin of his empire. The purple and gold
of old Byzantium are lost in the pall of night, and the rising moon
salutes another crescent that gleams forth upon the dome of S. Sophia.
The cry of the muezzins peals through the startled city; the eternal
speculations upon the economy of self-begetting Trinities dies away
before the new dogma, “There is one God and Mahomet is His prophet.”
This is the end of the Crusades; this is the fall of the Tzargrad.[90]
After the first feeling of stupefaction and regret produced by these
doleful tidings had passed away, the Moskovites might gather some
little satisfaction from the overthrow of their spiritual headquarters,
their one link with southern Europe. More than ever isolated, the
Russian principality gained in importance by becoming the sole
resting-place of the official Greek religion and of Greek ideas. Not
at once did Moskva realise, or invent, the pleasing idea that she had
succeeded to the heritage of the Caesars; yet to her, still struggling
with the competition of other cities, with Tver, and Vladimir, even
with faded Kiev, it was no small gain to have her churches and high
places adorned by the art and sanctified by the presence of the Greek
monks and artists, sages and artificers, who sought refuge within
her gates. And the last years of her Prince, the evening of his
stormy day, were ones of great progress for the white city, and for
the monarchy which was rising around this corner-stone. The forces
of reaction seemed for the moment to have spent their fury on the
person of Vasili, and his unbroken spirit might now pursue its way
unquestioned. [Sidenote: 1456] Novgorod, long the resort and refuge
of his enemies, had at last to reckon with the armed expression of
his resentment; its messengers were refused hearing, its army of 5000
mail-clad knights was routed near Rousa, its posadnik was a captive
in the Grand Prince’s hands, his forces occupied Torjhok. Peace had
to be bought by the disbursement of 8500 roubles, by submission to a
princely levy, and by other sacrifices of pride and pelf. The same year
died Ivan Thedorovitch of Riazan, leaving his infant son Vasili to the
guardianship of the Grand Prince, who took good care of the orphan--and
of his province. Viatka, that turbulent colony, which outdid its parent
Novgorod in rebellion and disorder, was forced to pay a tribute to
the Prince of Moskva and to respect his arms. [Sidenote: 1459] Pskov,
long time but a Lit’uanian outpost, received his second son Urii as
governor. Thus the grand principality, at peace once more within
itself, was beginning to quicken its dormant authority in the farthest
limits of its extent. [Sidenote: 1460] In the year 1460 Vasili paid a
long and gracious visit to Velikie Novgorod, to set the seal of his
sovereignty on his northernmost city and dazzle the proud republicans
with his imposing retinue. Much might they marvel at this grim groping
figure, who had buffeted his way through so many storms, who had
wrested victory from defeat, had thwarted the designs of Pope and
Council, had taught the bells of S. Sofia Novgorodskie to jangle in his
honour, had made Moskva mistress over long-resisting provinces. Scarred
and worn with the traces of his life-struggle, Vasili the Darkened was
a meet type of the Russia he ruled over, but just beginning to grope
its way into the paths of unity and dominion. When in 1462 he went to
his well-earned rest, he left his son Ivan in assured possession of the
sovereignty in which he had been already for some time associated. The
old mad folly of dividing the hardly-cemented territories between the
dead Prince’s sons was still persisted in--Vasili’s eyes had not been
opened even by being put out--but Ivan was emphatically Grand Prince of
Moskva.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] The firman issued by the Khans to the prince of their selection.
[64] K. Waliszewski: _Peter the Great_.
[65] M’Kenzie Wallace: _Russia_.
[66] V. B. Antonovitch.
[67] N. Kostomarov, _Sieverno Rousskiya Narodopravstva_. S. Solov’ev.
[68] _Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen._
[69] S. Solov’ev. N. Kostomarov.
[70] S. Solov’ev.
[71] Karamzin.
[72] S. Solov’ev.
[73] Th. Schiemann.
[74] A Russian expression for the dead.
[75] S. Solov’ev.
[76] Monastery of the Trinity near Moskva.
[77] A. Rambaud, _History of Russia_.
[78] Schiemann.
[79] Karamzin.
[80] S. Solov’ev.
[81] _Histoire de l’Ordre Teutonique._
[82] S. Solov’ev; Th. Schiemann; _Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen_.
[83] Rambaud.
[84] Reproduced by Schiemann from copy in Rath archives of Revel.
[85] “From over the sea.”
[86] Schiemann; S. Solov’ev; _Geschichte der Ostseeprovinzen_;
_Histoire de l’Ordre Teutonique_; L. Ranke, _Preussische Geschichte_.
[87] Rambaud, S. Solov’ev.
[88] Karamzin.
[89] New guard, corrupted into Janissaries.
[90] Von Hammer-Purgstall, _Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman_. J. W.
Zinkeisen, _Geschichte des osmanischen Reich in Europa_. E. A. Freeman,
_Ottoman Power in Europe_.