It was by virtue of his authority as collector for the Tatars that Ivan Kalita practised extortion upon his subjects. We see him requiring a double tribute from the Novgorodians, under pretext that such was the will of the khan. Armed against the Russians with the dread inspired by the Tatar name, and against the Tatars with the money of the Russians; intoxicating the khan and his courtiers with gold and adulation in his frequent journeys to the horde; he was enabled, as lord paramount, to bring about the first union of all the appanaged princes against his competitor, the prince of Tver, whom he drove from Pskov and from Russia, being aided by the primate with the thunder of the church, then heard in the empire for the first time. The nobility imitated the clergy. Impelled either by fear, or cupidity, several boyars of other princes rallied round this grand prince, preferring the fiefs of so rich and so potent a lord paramount to those of the petty princes whom they abandoned. Ivan Kalita pushed forward with horrible vigour in his ambitious career. “Woe, woe to the princes of Rostov!” exclaims Nicon, “because their power was destroyed, and everything was concentrated in Moscow.” In fact, from the Kremlin, which he fortified, Ivan proclaimed himself the arbiter of his kinsfolk; he reigned in their principalities by the medium of his boyars; he arrogated to himself the right of being the sole distributor of fiefs, judge, and legislator; and if the princes resisted, and dared to wage against him a war of the public good,[15] he hurried to the horde, with purse in hand, and denunciation on his lips; and the short-sighted Usbek, deceived by this ambitious monitor, was impolitic enough to disembarrass him of the most dangerous of his competitors, whom he consigned to frightful torments. The prince of Tver and his son were the most remarkable victims of this atrocious policy. Meanwhile, Lithuania, which, from the period of the first overwhelming of Russia by the Tatars, had emancipated itself from its yoke, had now become a conquering state. About 1320, Gedimin, its leader, seized on the Russian appanages of the south and west, which had long ceased to be dependent upon the grand principality of Vladimir. Kiev, Galitch, Volhinia, became sometimes Lithuanian, sometimes Polish or Hungarian: driven to despair, their inhabitants emigrated; they formed the two military republics of the Zaparogians and Cossacks of Don. Rallying around them the unfortunate of all countries, they were destined to become one day strong enough to make head against the Turks and Tatars, between whom they were situated; and thus to embarrass the communication between those two peoples, whom a common religion, origin, and interest conspired to unite.