Russia gained an important victory over the Turks in 1569. Moscow, her capital, was indeed burnt by invading Mongols as late as 1571, but in the year following the conquerors were themselves defeated. The other Slav State, Poland, gained a great accession of strength by absorbing the large territories of Livonia and Lithuania. During the sixteenth century we do not find the Scandinavian nations taking much direct part in the big story, but in 1587 the King of Sweden was King of Poland also. The general tendency of affairs in that part of the world's stage, however, was for those two, Poland and Russia, to be forming themselves into two strong nations of Slav people, {67} on the eastern border of the Teutonic people of Germany. That is an element in the story to be borne in mind. [Sidenote: Affairs in the East] Farther eastward again, Russia was extending her power in Siberia and working out towards that China of which there is still little story to tell, because, of all nations of the world, she has ever changed least and most slowly. The day had not yet come for Russia's reaching southward towards Constantinople on the one side or towards India on the other. The Turk was as yet so strong that she had to fight hard to keep him out of her own borders. She was still on the defensive in that south-western corner of her empire. But India had to suffer invasion nevertheless in this sixteenth century by a people coming down from Afghanistan and the north. They were Mongols, usually given the name of Moguls. They were a Mahommedan people, and under the reign of the Grand Mogul, Akbar, which covered nearly all the latter half of the century, they were continually extending their rule over the Hindus. It is in this Mahommedan invasion that we see the real beginning of that division and opposition in India of Hindus and Mahommedans which has played a large part in the story of that country ever since, and which is a principal cause of her troubles even to-day. There were Moslems in India before the coming of the so-called Moguls, but not in anything like the same force or number.