the men ready to drop their swords through sheer
fatigue, an unlooked-for diversion inspired their shrinking souls. The
grand prince had stationed a detachment of his army as a reserve, and
these, as yet, had taken no part in the battle. Now, fresh and furious,
they were brought up, and fell vigorously upon the rear of the Tartars,
who, filled with sudden terror, thought that a new army had come to the
aid of the old. A moment later they broke and fled, pursued by their
triumphant foes, and falling fast as they hurried in panic fear from the
encrimsoned field.

Something like amazement filled the souls of the Russians as they saw
their dreaded enemies in flight. Such a consummation they had scarcely
dared hope for, accustomed as they had been for a century to crouch
before this dreadful foe. They had bought their victory dearly. Their
dead strewed the ground by thousands. Yet to be victorious over the
Tartar host seemed to them an ample recompense for an even greater loss
than that sustained. Eight days were occupied by the survivors in
burying the slain. As for the Tartar dead, they were left to fester on
the field. Such was the great victory of the Don, from which Dmitri
gained his honorable surname of Donskoi. He died nine years afterwards
(1389), having won the high honor of being the first to vanquish the
terrible horsemen of the Steppes, firmly founded the authority of the
grand princes, and made Moscow the paramount power in Russia.

_IVAN, THE FIRST OF THE CZARS._

The victory of the Don did not free Russia from the Tartar yoke. Two
years afterwards the principality of Moscow was overrun and ravaged by a
lieutenant of the mighty Tamerlane, the all-conquering successor of
Genghis Khan. Several times Moscow was taken and burned. Full seventy
years later, at the court of the Golden Horde, two Russian princes might
have been seen disputing before the great khan the possession of the
grand principality and tremblingly awaiting his decision. Nevertheless,
the battle of the Don had sounded the knell of the Tartar power. Anarchy
continued to prevail in the Golden Horde. The power of the grand princes
of Moscow steadily grew. The khans themselves played into the hands of
their foes. Russia was slowly but surely casting off her fetters, and
deliverance was at hand.

Ivan III., great-grandson of Dmitri Donskoi, ascended the throne in
1462, nearly two centuries and a half after the Tartar invasion. During
all t