Caucasian mountains had, thus far, maintained their independence. The
Tartars called upon Russia for troops to aid in their subjugation; and
four of the princes, one of whom, Andre of Gorodetz, was a brother of
Dmitri the king, submissively led the required army into the Mogol
encampment.

Andre, by his flattery, his presents and his servile devotion to the
interests of the khan, secured a decree of dethronement against his
brother and his own appointment as grand prince. Then, with a combined
army of Tartars and Russians, he marched upon Novgorod to take
possession of the crown. Resistance was not to be thought of, and
Dmitri precipitately fled. Karamsin thus describes the sweep of this
Tartar wave of woe:

"The Mogols pillaged and burned the houses, the monasteries, the
churches, from which they took the images, the precious vases and the
books richly bound. Large troops of the inhabitants were dragged into
slavery, or fell beneath the sabers of the ferocious soldiers of the
khan. The young sisters in the convents were exposed to the brutality
of these monsters. The unhappy laborers, who, to escape death or
captivity, had fled into the deserts, perished of exposure and
starvation. Not an inhabitant was left who did not weep over the death
of a father, a son, a brother or a friend."

Thus Andre ascended the throne, and then returned the soldiers of the
khan laden with the booty which they had so cruelly and iniquitously
obtained. The barbarians, always greedy of rapine and blood, were ever
delighted to find occasion to ravage the principalities of Russia. The
Tartars, having withdrawn, Dmitri secured the cooeperation of some
powerful princes, drove his brother from Novgorod, and again grasped
the scepter which his brother had wrested from him. The two brothers
continued bitterly hostile to each other, and years passed of petty
intrigues and with occasional scenes of violence and blood as Dmitri
struggled to hold the crown which Andre as perseveringly strove to
seize. Again Andre obtained another Mogol army, which swept Russia
with fearful destruction, and, taking possession of Vladimir and
Moscow, and every city and village on their way, plundering, burning
and destroying, marched resistlessly to Novgorod, and placed again the
traitorous, blood-stained monster on the throne.

Dmitri, abandoning his palaces and his treasures, fled to a remote
principality, where he soon died, in the year 1294, an old man
battered