Polotsk avoids the Mongol invasion, but falls into the structure of the Lithuanian principality Western Russia. Many princes who disagree with the doctrine of Nevsky leave for Livonia (modern Lithuania is the former province of this state), together with the squads. Here they experience the action of two centers of gravity Muscovite Rus and Poland. Separated from the Horde by the Wild Field, as well as by the state that is already paying tribute, they are left to their own devices.
Russian lands at the end of the fourteenth century. The Grand Duchy of Moscow is highlighted in green. To the left and below is the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a kind of reflection of Russia, a Slavic state, not like it
Due to their geographical location, the steppe southern principalities are exposed to the most powerful blows of the Mongols, lose their importance and are no longer able to recover on their own. Since the thirteenth century, Kiev has been ruled by the Baskaks of the Nogai ulus, local administrators who do not even need to appear at the khans headquarters to approve the label. The city ceases to be the residence of the metropolitan. In the middle of the fourteenth century Kiev captures and includes the Principality of Lithuania. To do this, he has to fight with the Horde troops weakened in civil strife.
Cash is again becoming a low-expressive two-hundred-gram elongated ingots. In the North, due to the custom of cutting such money into several parts, the name «ruble» appears.
The era of Dmitry Donskoy, opening from the second half of the fourteenth century, is controversial. The victory over the troops of Mamai, the father-in-law of the ruler of the Horde, Berdibek, in 1380, does not really change anything. The remnants of Mamais troops, gaining strength in the Crimea, are finished off by the heir of Genghis Khan, Khan Tokhtamysh. Mamai lives not far from Kafa, gets involved in a fight with the Genoese who sheltered him, and as a result loses his head. Jagiello (Yakov), Mamais ally, he is also Vladislav II Jagiello, Prince of Vitebsk, Grand Duke of Lithuania, later King of Poland, does not take part in the battle. In 1384, on one of the facets of History, an important issue was resolved. Union with Poland, or an alliance with Russia? The first option drops out. Two years later, the Lithuanian principality was converted to the Catholic faith. The Grand Duke marries 13-year-old Polish princess Jadwiga. His descendants (from the second and fourth wives) form the Jagiellonian dynasty, which ruled the Commonwealth until 1572.
Vasily the First Dmitrievich, the eldest son of Dmitry Donskoy (13711425) is held as a hostage in the Horde, flees to the Moldavian principality, successfully marries the daughter of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Vitold, Sophia. In 1389, he received a label at the headquarters of the khan, and became the Grand Duke of Moscow. Witold, meanwhile, decides to measure strength with herself, the Golden Horde, reeling in internecine strife. The prince refuses to extradite Tokhtamysh, who has been deprived of his post, to another applicant for the khans title, Edigei. The maximum task is to plant Tokhtamysh in the Horde, and to take the throne of Russia with the help of a powerful protégé. Forces of the parties. Vitovt, knights of the Teutonic Order, Tokhtamysh 38 thousand fighters. Golden Horde 90 thousand soldiers. The battle will take place on the Vorksla River. The interest of the Order is Pskov, promised by Vitovt, in case of victory. Heavily armed knights pursue a feigned retreating enemy. Their lightly armored horses then receive a shower of arrows from their bows and crossbows. On the shoulders of the now quite sincerely retreating Teutons, the Horde crashes into the infantry and completes the rout. The loss of the «Litvin» 18 thousand, the Horde, according to the chronicle «very few.»
Vitovt, together with his rival friend, the Polish king Jagiello, still dreams of being known as the unifier of the Eastern Russian lands. In 1408, the first standing on the Ugra River (somewhat north of modern Kaluga) takes place. For some reason (the attack of Edigeis troops on the territory of Russia and Lithuania itself), in view of an even more formidable enemy, the battle does not take place. Then the Horde, dissatisfied with the delay in the payment of tribute, approaches Moscow, ruins the neighborhood and, having received solid ransom payments, returns to its steppes.
Obliged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for his initial advancement, his wife, and who knows what else, Vasily the First easily yields to his western neighbors Vyazma, Smolensk, and other Russian lands.
Vasily the Second Vasilyevich (Dark), 14151462, son of Vasily the First and Sophia Vitoldovna. He spends a lot of time in a tough struggle for the throne. One of the competitors is the prince of Zvenigorod Yuri Dmirievich Shemyaka («Shemyaka», the one who can change his neck a generic nickname), the son of Dmitry Donskoy. The rival is also his eldest son, Vasily Yuryevich (nickname «Oblique»), the grandson of Donskoy, and the younger son Dmitry Yuryevich Shemyaka. The Golden Horde court in this dispute issues a label to Vasily Vasilyevich. A series of battles with an uncertain outcome followed, repressions against supporters of opponents, giving rise to a «fifth column», and new coups. All princes designated here have occupied the Russian throne for some time. Vasily the Second is the one who manages to hold out on it longer than others.
The second most successful is Prince Dmitry Yurievich. Having lost the Moscow reign, he heads the prestigious Novgorod Republic. But, in the end, the people of Vasily the Dark bribe the prince's cook (nicknamed "Toadstool") and that "armor" potion (apparently, arsenic) into the chicken served to the ruler.
The right of inheritance becomes direct, not "ladder" as before, but from father to son, bypassing younger brothers.
An important event of the time the Russian Church becomes autocephalous. In 1435, Isidore (Kievsky), a Greek by origin, was proclaimed Metropolitan of the Grand Duchy of Moscow (formally Kiev and All Russia), at the suggestion of the Patriarch of Constantinople. In Moscow, he convinces Vasily II of the urgency of convening an Ecumenical Council, where the contradictions between Catholics and Orthodox will be erased. The prince gives the Metropolitan a hundred of his entourage, money and sends them to Italy, with the order: "So that nothing new happens with us." In March 1441, having driven around Europe, Isidore returned to Moscow. Here he gives Basil II a message from Pope Eugene the Fourth with a request for help in the reunification of the Catholic and Russian Churches. During his episcopal service in the Assumption Cathedral, Isidore mentions the Pope as one of the primates of the Church. Three days later, by order of Vasily II, the Metropolitan was transferred to the Miracle Monastery, used as a prison for noble persons. Later, probably with the secret permission of the prince, Isidore fled to Europe, Byzantium, then Rome, where he controls the revenues of the Holy College of Cardinals.
So, the first serious misunderstanding in Russia between the power of the church and the secular, ends in the victory of the earthly prince. Vasily the Second, through the council of Russian bishops controlled by him, in 1448, confirms the unquestioning Patriarch Jonah, who had long been conceived by him, on the spiritual throne. Russia is losing its spiritual connection with Europe, refuses to disputes altogether, and stops in development. This leads to the subsequent, two hundred years later, hasty and fierce reforms of Nikon, the schism of the Orthodox Church, which has not healed until now.
An important problem of Russia is the absence of vassalage as such. In Western Europe, to some extent on its own, the links of the social hierarchy conclude contracts of service. Knight, baron, count, duke, king swear oaths to each other. The oath obliges to endanger life for the faith, protect the clergy and churches, widows and orphans, avoid unworthy fellowship and dirty earnings, go to a duel to save the innocent, serve the emperor, live blamelessly before the Lord and people. In Russia, there are no people galloping through the kingdom in the hope of accomplishing a feat. The homage procedure was replaced by the natural concept of belonging of subjects, from a slave to a boyar, to a prince. No contracts are made with slaves. This state of affairs is deduced as a reflection of the order of the Horde in Russia. Among the eternal military there is obedience, iron discipline, but there is no honor as such.
Ivan the Third the Great ruled in the Principality of Moscow from the middle of the fifteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. He erects the Moscow Kremlin, strong, complex, impressive to this day. The final liberation is achieved from the Golden Horde, which devoured itself, battered by Tamerlane (the second standing on the Ugra River, 1480). The invasion of the Crimean Khan Mehmet Girey the First crumbles into bloody sparks on the outskirts of the capital. Further, with the powerful Khanate, Muscovite Russia establishes friendly diplomatic and trade relations. Wars flare up and go out with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, campaigns will take place against Smolensk (principality of Lithuania), Novgorod, Kazan and Pskov.
Basil the Third the Great, the first Russian tsar with legal grounds
The son of Ivan the Third, Basil the Third (also the Great), in a treaty with the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, under the patronage of his mother, Sophia from the Byzantine dynasty of the Palaeologus, was first named as a king. In a marriage with Elena Glinskaya, the daughter of a prince leading a family from the temnik Mamai, Yuri and Ivan, the future Grozny, are born.
A week after the death of Basil the Great, the boyars kill Yuri, the main contender for the throne. Five years later, perhaps from the poison of the Shuiskys, the mother who took the reins dies. Another eleven years of the board of trustees, and Ivan the Fourth (1530 -1584) was crowned king in the Assumption Cathedral. The era of princes, equal only to princes and dukes in the European table of ranks, is generally coming to an end. The title is recognized by England and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, but rejected by the Vatican, who in the thirteenth century conferred the title «Rex Russiae» on the prince of the lands of South Russia, Daniel Galitsky.
Ivan Vasilievich the Fourth (15301584). Art painting
Further events are as follows:
The capture of Kazan, the destruction of the capital of the Golden Horde, eighty kilometers from modern Astrakhan, Saray-Berke. The beginning of the kings mental degradation. Oprichnina and terror, over forty years of which, eight thousand people part with their lives (relatively few for that era by European standards).
Second half of the sixteenth century. Again the invasion of the troops of the Crimean Khan, now Devlet Giray. Prior to that, in alliance with the Turkish sultan, the Tatars conquered the mountainous principality of Theodoro on the western coast of the peninsula, inhabited by 200 thousand Christians, and are fully prepared for large-scale conquests.
The suburbs of the capital are burned, except for the Kremlin and Kitai-gorod. A year later, the second campaign and the battle of Molodya, one hundred and fifty kilometers south of Moscow, will take place. Crimean Tatars and Turks are carrying out a disastrous frontal attack on the Russian «Gulyai-Gorod», made up of fortified wagons. The extermination of the 120-thousandth Turkish-Tatar army leads to the fact that the Crimean Khanate loses most of its male population. However, in order to avoid small raids, the Russian state still has to pay a «commemoration», a tribute, that is, after all, a tribute, until the very epoch of Peter the Great.
The Zavolzhsky shaft is located slightly east of Kazan and is an earthen embankment 89 meters high, with a moat 3 meters wide and deep, 2400 km long. Every 12 km. fortresses are located. It is not known exactly who built this gigantic structure. New settlers build their fortifications on top of the first. The first written records of such a construction appear in 1521.
Destruction of the oprichnina, which did not justify itself in the struggle against external enemies (1565 1572). The capture of Isker, the capital of the Siberian Khanate, in alliance with the free Cossack Ermak. The incorporation of the remains of the Jochi ulus into Russia. The capture of Polotsk in 1653 poses a threat to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (despite the fact that life in the regions captured by the tsar is not getting better), and determines many not entirely pleasant consequences for Russia. This is a practical, and not just a written, creation of a union state the Uniate and Catholic Polish-Lithuanian «Rzeczpospolita». King of Poland, Prince of Lithuania, formally a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, Stefan Batory conquers Polotsk, moves into the depths of Muscovite Rus. Here he gets bogged down in the siege of Pskov (15811582). About 16,000 defenders of the fortress oppose 50,000 besiegers. Huge traveling tours, large-caliber artillery, mines and mine galleries are in use. In the end, the Polish-Lithuanian-Swedish army loses 2024,000 people and lifts the siege (the Yam-Zapolsky peace treaty is signed).
Jagiellonian Europe at the end of the 15th century. Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania will soon become a single Rzeczpospolita. Ukraine «Terra Nulius» for settlement
For the last six years of his life, the tsar was unable to walk on his own due to a shameful illness and moved on a stretcher. Ivan the Fourth is treated for syphilis with the usual for the Middle Ages and the beginning of our days, mercury ointments.
Mercury is mixed with animal fat, sulfur and rubbed into the legs. Alternatively, general mercurization is carried out by placing the patient in a closed room with a bowl of heated mercury. If the person does not die, a positive result appears. Mercury is an antiseptic, and the causative agent of the disease, treptonema, is very sensitive to it.
Ivan the Terrible dies. On the throne, according to the decision of the Zemsky Sobor, the middle son Fyodor ascends, «a fasting man and a silent man, a saint on the throne.» He reigns for 14 years, establishes peace in the Russian land with endless prayers. In fact, his guardian, the well-born boyar Boris Godunov, rules. At forty years old (1598), the tsar dies, leaving no heirs and no written will. Seven years earlier, as a result of an accident, the youngest son of Grozny died from his seventh marriage, an illegitimate and not entitled to the throne, Tsarevich Dmitry. The dynasty of the main, Moscow branch of the Rurikovich is interrupted. Fyodors wife, Irina Godunovs sister, a week after her husbands death, announces her desire to get a haircut in a monastery. Indeed, she leaves for the Novodevichy Convent, clearing the way for her brother to the throne. The beginning of Godunovs reign is successful. However, the prayers of his predecessor are apparently lacking. In 16011603, after endless rains and early frosts that ruined the harvest, a severe famine began. The cost of grain rises a hundred times. Household gentlemen and abbots of monasteries keep it in barns, waiting for prices to rise. The tsar does not dare to order to put the bread on sale. Half a million people die.