e Horde, and
compelling the minor Princes to deliver to them the Mongol tribute.
If any of the lesser Princes refused to acknowledge this intermediate
authority, the Grand Prince could easily crush them by representing them
at the Horde as rebels. Such an accusation would cause the accused to be
summoned before the Supreme Tribunal, where the procedure was extremely
summary and the Grand Prince had always the means of obtaining a
decision in his own favour.

Of the Princes who strove in this way to increase their influence,
the most successful were the Grand Princes of Moscow. They were not a
chivalrous race, or one with which the severe moralist can sympathise,
but they were largely endowed with cunning, tact, and perseverance, and
were little hampered by conscientious scruples. Having early discovered
that the liberal distribution of money at the Tartar court was the
surest means of gaining favour, they lived parsimoniously at home and
spent their savings at the Horde. To secure the continuance of the
favour thus acquired, they were ready to form matrimonial alliances
with the Khan's family, and to act zealously as his lieutenants. When
Novgorod, the haughty, turbulent republic, refused to pay the yearly
tribute, they quelled the insurrection and punished the leaders; and
when the inhabitants of Tver rose against the Tartars and compelled
their Prince to make common cause with them, the wily Muscovite
hastened to the Tartar court and received from the Khan the revolted
principality, with 50,000 Tartars to support his authority.

Thus those cunning Moscow Princes "loved the Tartars beyond measure" so
long as the Khan was irresistibly powerful, but as his power waned they
stood forth as his rivals. When the Golden Horde, like the great Empire
of which it had once formed a part, fell to pieces in the fifteenth
century, these ambitious Princes read the signs of the times, and put
themselves at the head of the liberation movement, which was at first
unsuccessful, but ultimately freed the country from the hated yoke.

From this brief sketch of the Mongol domination the reader will readily
understand that it did not leave any deep, lasting impression on
the people. The invaders never settled in Russia proper, and never
amalgamated with the native population. So long as they retained their
semi-pagan, semi-Buddhistic religion, a certain number of their notables
became Christians and were absorbed by the Russian Noblesse; bu