Vitovt’s uncle, Olgerd, had been ally, by marriage and in war, with one of the Mikhails of Tver, successor of that prince whose martyrdom we have narrated.[I] Thrice during the reign of the Donskoï, had Olgerd led his brother-in-law, Mikhail, up to the walls of Moscow; but the prudence, both of the offensive and defensive leaders, withheld them from a decisive engagement that would prove certainly ruinous to the party who should suffer defeat. The same rôle was repeated between Vitovt and Vasili Dimitriévitch: this time with the result of a settlement of boundaries, in which Vitovt was careful to retain his valuable conquest, Smolensk. Before and after these conflicts, Vasili acquired certain cities from the State of Tchernigof, and large territories on the northern Dwina[J] in the territory of Novgorod, where the Good Companions, _Bravs Gens_, adventurous military bands, and commercial settlers, frequently came in conflict with Muscovite subjects, themselves pioneers upon the wastes and toward the ports or harbors of the far north. Vasili, pursuant to the policy of his dynasty, had recourse to undisguisedly severe methods to break the power of the free principality, and to incorporate it as much as he might, within his own. He obtained control of the Republic of Viatka, and framed treaties advantageous for Moscow with the princes of Tver and Riazan. These politic measures, with his unvarying _entente cordiale_ with the dominant khan of the Horde, and the marriage of his daughter to the Greek Emperor, John Paleologus, strengthened his firm government, and widened the reputation of his industrious, wealthy, well-ordered state. Vitovt, whom we have named as the last of four chieftains, who secured unity to the tribes of his country, and sought to establish an independent nationality, did not lose courage nor ambition by the disaster at the Vorskla (1399). The Russian provinces of his country were under the religious direction of the metropolitan of Moscow. Vitovt procured that a learned Bulgarian monk should be installed metropolitan of Kief, in his time within Lithuanian boundaries—thus obtaining for his possessions a religious independence. He had designs also to free his country from its subordination to Poland; and by cultivating the friendship of Sigismund (1429), emperor of Germany, he obtained the favor of that monarch in helping him to become king of Lithuania. His court at Troki and Vilna was regal, in truth, in its magnificence, where the old man, an octogenarian, presided at long-continued festivals, at which seven hundred oxen, fourteen hundred sheep, and game in proportion, were consumed daily; where his grandson, Vasili Vasilèvitch, prince of Moscow, Photius, metropolitan of Moscow, the princes of Tver and Riazan, Iagello, king of Poland, the khan of the Crimea (one of the divisions of the ancient Kipchak), the hospodar of Wallachia, the grand-master of Prussia, the landmeister of Livonia, and embassadors from the Oriental empires,