the dismay. Before the morning, the Russian camp was entirely
deserted, and the fugitives were rushing, like an inundation, up the
valley of the Moskwa toward the imperial city.

But God did not desert Russia in this decisive hour. He appears to
have heard and answered the prayers which had so incessantly ascended.
In the Russian annals, their preservation is wholly attributed to the
interposition of that God whose aid the bishops, the clergy and
Christian men and women in hundreds of churches had so earnestly
implored. The Tartars, seeing, in the earliest dawn of the morning,
the banks of the river entirely abandoned by the Russians, imagined
that the flight was but a ruse of war, that ambuscades were prepared
for them, and, remembering previous scenes of exterminating slaughter,
they, also, were seized with a panic, and commenced a retreat. This
movement itself increased the alarm. Terror spread rapidly. In an
hour, the whole Tartar host, abandoning their tents and their baggage,
were in tumultuous flight.

As the sun rose, an unprecedented spectacle was presented. Two
immense armies were flying from each other in indescribable confusion
and dismay, each actually frightened out of its wits, and no one
pursuing either. The Russians did not stop for a long breath until
they attained the walls of Moscow. Akhmet, having reached the head
waters of the Don, retreated rapidly down that stream, wreaking such
vengeance as he could by the way, but not venturing to stop until he
had reached his strongholds upon the banks of the Volga. Thus,
singularly, _providentially_, terminated this last serious invasion of
Russia by the Tartars. A Russian annalist, in attributing the glory of
this well-authenticated event all to God, writes: "Shall men, vain and
feeble, celebrate the terror of their arms? No! it is not to the might
of earth's warriors, it is not to human wisdom that Russia owes her
safety, but only to the goodness of God."

Ivan III., in the cathedrals of Moscow, offered long continued praises
to God for this victory, obtained without the effusion of blood. An
annual festival was established in honor of this great event. Akhmet,
with his troops disorganized and scattered, had hardly reached the
Volga, ere he was attacked by a rival khan, who drove him some five
hundred miles south to the shore of the Sea of Azof. Here his rival
overtook him, killed him with his own hand, took his wives and his
daughters captives, seized a