palities by Moscow. The ambitious
designs of Lithuania, in which Poland and Hungary, and the German
Knights and Latin Christianity, were all involved, had been checked,
and the disappointed state of Lithuania was gravitating toward a union
with Poland. More important still, the Empire of the Khan was falling
into pieces. The process had been hastened by a tremendous victory
obtained by the Grand Prince Dmitri in 1378, on the banks of the Don.
In the same way that Alexander Nevski obtained the surname of Nevski by
the battle on the Neva, so Dmitri Donskoi won his upon the river Don.
Hitherto the Tatars had been resisted, but not attacked. It was the
first real outburst against the Mongol yoke, and it shook the
foundations of their authority. Then dissensions among themselves, and
the struggles of numerous claimants for the throne at Sarai broke the
Golden-Horde into five Khanates each claiming supremacy.

CHAPTER IX

PASSING OF BYZANTIUM--MONGOL YOKE BROKEN

Something else had been taking place during these two centuries:
something which involved the future, not alone of Russia, but of all
Europe. In 1250, just ten years before Daniel established the line of
Princes in Moscow, a little band of marauding Turks were encamped upon
a plain in Asia Minor. They were led by an adventurer named Etrogruhl.
For some service rendered to the ruler of the land Etrogruhl received a
strip of territory as his reward, and when he died his son Othman
displayed such ability in increasing his inheritance by absorbing the
lands of other people that he became the terror of his neighbors. He
had laid the foundation of the Ottoman empire and was the first of a
line of thirty-five sovereigns, extending down to the present time. It
is the descendant of Othman and of Etrogruhl the adventurer who sits
to-day at Constantinople blocking the path to the East and defying
Christendom. These Ottoman Turks were going to accomplish what Russian
Princes from the time of Rurik and Oleg had longed and failed to do.
They were going to break the power of the old empire in the East and
make the coveted city on the Bosphorus their own. In 1453, the
successor of Othman was in Constantinople.

The Pope, always hoping for a reconciliation, and always striving for
the headship of a united Christendom, had in 1439 made fresh overtures
to the Greek Church. The Emperor at Constantinople, three of the
Patriarchs, and seventeen of the Metropolitans--