On the evening of the 23d of August, 1382, the Tartars appeared before the gates of the city.  Some of the chiefs rode slowly around the ramparts, examining the ditch, the walls, the height of the towers, and selected the most favorable spot for commencing the assault.  The Tartars did not appear in such overwhelming numbers as report had taught the Russians to expect, and they felt quite sanguine that they should be able to defend the city.  But the ensuing morning dispelled all these hopes.  It then appeared that these Tartars were but the advance guard of the great army.  With the earliest dawn, as far as the eye could reach, the inundation of warriors came rolling on, and terror vanquished all hearts.  This army was under the command of a Tartar chieftain called Toktamonish.  The assault was instantly commenced, and continued without cessation four days and nights.

At length the city fell, vanquished, it is said, by stratagem rather than by force.  The Tartars clambering, by means of ten thousand ladders, over the walls, and rushing through the gates, with no ear for mercy, commenced the slaughter of the inhabitants.  The city was set on fire in all directions, and a scene of horror ensued indescribable and unimaginable.  The barbarians, laden with booty, and satiated with blood and carnage, encamped on the plain outside of the walls, exulting in the entireness of their vengeance.  Moscow, the gorgeous capital, was no more.  The dwellings of the city became but the funeral pyre for the bodies of the inhabitants.  The Tartars, intoxicated with blood, dispersed over the whole principality; and all its populous cities, Vladimir, Zvenigorod, Yourief, Mojaisk and Dmitrof, experienced the same fate with that of Moscow.  The khan then retired, crossing the Oka at Kolomna.

Dmitri arrived with his army at Moscow, only to behold the ruins.  The enemy had already disappeared.  In profoundest affliction, he gave orders for the interment of the charred and blackened bodies of the dead.  Eighty thousand, by count, were interred, which number did not include the many who had been consumed entirely by the conflagration.  The walls of the city and the towers of the Kremlin still remained.  With great energy, the prince devoted himself to the rebuilding and the repeopling of the capital; many years, however, passed away ere it regained even the shadow of its former splendor.

Thus again Russia, brought under the sway of the Tartars, was compelled to pay tribute, and Dmitri was forced to send his own son to the horde, where he was long detained as a hostage.  The grand duchy of Lithuania, bordering on Poland, was spread over a region of sixty thousand square miles.  The grand duke, Jaghellon, a burly pagan, had married Hedwige, Queen of Poland, promising, as one of the conditions of this marriage which would unite Lithuania and Poland, to embrace Christianity.[3] He was married and baptized at Cracow, receiving the Christian name of Ladislaus.  He