Tartars were but the
advance guard of the great army. With the earliest dawn, as far as the
eye could reach, the inundation of warriors came rolling on, and
terror vanquished all hearts. This army was under the command of a
Tartar chieftain called Toktamonish. The assault was instantly
commenced, and continued without cessation four days and nights.

At length the city fell, vanquished, it is said, by stratagem rather
than by force. The Tartars clambering, by means of ten thousand
ladders, over the walls, and rushing through the gates, with no ear
for mercy, commenced the slaughter of the inhabitants. The city was
set on fire in all directions, and a scene of horror ensued
indescribable and unimaginable. The barbarians, laden with booty, and
satiated with blood and carnage, encamped on the plain outside of the
walls, exulting in the entireness of their vengeance. Moscow, the
gorgeous capital, was no more. The dwellings of the city became but
the funeral pyre for the bodies of the inhabitants. The Tartars,
intoxicated with blood, dispersed over the whole principality; and all
its populous cities, Vladimir, Zvenigorod, Yourief, Mojaisk and
Dmitrof, experienced the same fate with that of Moscow. The khan then
retired, crossing the Oka at Kolomna.

Dmitri arrived with his army at Moscow, only to behold the ruins. The
enemy had already disappeared. In profoundest affliction, he gave
orders for the interment of the charred and blackened bodies of the
dead. Eighty thousand, by count, were interred, which number did not
include the many who had been consumed entirely by the conflagration.
The walls of the city and the towers of the Kremlin still remained.
With great energy, the prince devoted himself to the rebuilding and
the repeopling of the capital; many years, however, passed away ere it
regained even the shadow of its former splendor.

Thus again Russia, brought under the sway of the Tartars, was
compelled to pay tribute, and Dmitri was forced to send his own son to
the horde, where he was long detained as a hostage. The grand duchy of
Lithuania, bordering on Poland, was spread over a region of sixty
thousand square miles. The grand duke, Jaghellon, a burly pagan, had
married Hedwige, Queen of Poland, promising, as one of the conditions
of this marriage which would unite Lithuania and Poland, to embrace
Christianity.[3] He was married and baptized at Cracow, receiving the
Christian name of Ladislaus. He then ordered th