Tokhtamysh Burns Moscow
Kulikovo removed Mamai and cleared the way for someone worse. Tokhtamysh was a genuine descendant of Genghis, backed by Tamerlane, and when he crossed the Volga in 1381 Mamai's own army changed sides rather than fight a man of the true line. He then reunited the Horde and turned on Moscow, which had stopped paying tribute and had just demonstrated that the Horde could be beaten. He moved faster than the news of him, killing merchants on the Volga so that no warning could travel ahead. Dmitry left the city to raise an army in the north and the defence was organised by a Lithuanian prince who happened to be present; the new stone walls held for three days, and the defenders used firearms, the earliest recorded use in Russia. What took the city was not the assault. Suzdal princes in Tokhtamysh's camp - brothers of Dmitry's wife - swore that the khan wanted only to see the city and would spare it, and the gates were opened for a delegation. The army came through behind them. The chronicles put the dead at twenty-four thousand, and the city was burned; the manuscripts accumulated in its churches, where people had sheltered, burned with it. Dmitry returned to bury the dead and resumed paying tribute. The subjection lasted another ninety-eight years. The three days of siege are among the earliest recorded uses of firearms in Russia, fired from the new stone walls Dmitry had built a decade before. Contemporary accounts describe the townspeople breaking into the wine cellars and taunting the besiegers from the battlements before the negotiation that undid them. Tokhtamysh sacked Vladimir, Zvenigorod and Mozhaisk on the way home. Dmitry's son was taken to Sarai as a hostage for the tribute and held there for four years.
- Year: 1382 CE
- Category: Military
