f the Grand Princedom, wrested from
the branch of Tver by dint of denunciation and assassination, was picked
up at the feet of Usbeck Khan by Yury, the elder brother of Ivan Kalita.
Ivan I. Kalita, and Ivan III., surnamed the Great, personate Muscovy
rising by means of the Tartar yoke, and Muscovy getting an independent
power by the disappearance of the Tartar rule. The whole policy of
Muscovy, from its first entrance into the historical arena, is resumed
in the history of these two individuals.

The policy of Ivan Kalita was simply this: to play the abject tool of
the Khan, thus to borrow his power, and then to turn it round upon his
princely rivals and his own subjects. To attain this end, he had to
insinuate himself with the Tartars by dint of cynical adulation, by
frequent journeys to the Golden Horde, by humble prayers for the hand of
Mongol princesses, by a display of unbounded zeal for the Khan's
interest, by the unscrupulous execution of his orders, by atrocious
calumnies against his own kinsfolk, by blending in himself the
characters of the Tartar's hangman, sycophant, and slave-in-chief. He
perplexed the Khan by continuous revelations of secret plots. Whenever
the branch of Tver betrayed a velleite of national independence, he
hurried to the Horde to denounce it. Wherever he met with resistance, he
introduced the Tartar to trample it down. But it was not sufficient to
act a character; to make it acceptable, gold was required. Perpetual
bribery of the Khan and his grandees was the only sure foundation upon
which to raise his fabric of deception and usurpation. But how was the
slave to get the money wherewith to bribe the master? He persuaded the
Khan to instal him his tax-gatherer throughout all the Russian
appanages. Once invested with this function, he extorted money under
false pretences. The wealth accumulated by the dread held out of the
Tartar name, he used to corrupt the Tartars themselves. By a bribe he
induced the primate to transfer his episcopal seat from Vladimir to
Moscow, thus making the latter the capital of the empire, because the
religious capital, and coupling the power of the Church with that of his
throne. By a bribe he allured the Boyards of the rival princes into
treason against their chiefs, and attracted them to himself as their
centre. By the joint influence of the Mahometan Tartar, the Greek
Church, and the Boyards, he unites the princes holding appanages into a
crusade against the mos