A few years later the Black Death, brought into the district of Nijhnie-Novgorod by travelling merchants, recommenced its ravages throughout Central Russia. Its victims were counted by thousands, and though the account of its sweeping effect at Smolensk, in which city there were said to remain but five survivors,[71] is probably an exaggeration, an idea can be formed of its destructive nature by the number of princes who were stricken down in a single year. [Sidenote: 1365] The Grand Prince’s brother Ivan, Konstantin of Rostov, Andrei, brother of the Prince of Souzdal, and four of the Tverskie family, were victims of the dread pestilence, more wholesale even in its work than the Mongols in the first fury of their invasion.[72] In its wake sprang up a crop of quarrels, the result of such a legacy of vacant fiefs. Boris of Souzdal having seized on his deceased brother’s appanage (Nijhnie-Novgorod), to the despite of his elder, Dimitri, the latter was driven to throw himself into the hands of his namesake and rival, the Grand Prince of Moskva, who forced the supplanter to disgorge his prey. In Tver, likewise, the death of Simeon had brought his brother Ieremiya, his uncle Vasili, and his cousin Mikhail, into competition for his territorial possessions. The last-named was pursuing in Tver the same policy of aggrandisement and centralisation that had obtained such successful results for Moskva; naturally his proceedings were watched with jealous eyes by Dimitri, the Metropolitan, and the Moskovite boyarins, who took up the cause of Mikhail’s opponents and drove him more than once from his province. Mikhail invoked the aid of his wife’s father, Olgerd. [Sidenote: 1369] The great Lit’uanian, whose arms had checked the tide of Teutonic conquest and driven the Tartars from the Western steppes, who had wasted the outskirts of Revel and laid classic Kherson in ashes, marched now against the might of Moskva, his rival in the Russian lands. With him came his loyal brother Kestout, and, because he must, the Kniaz of Smolensk. The might of Moskva contracted within the high stone battlements of its Kreml, which, in the depth of winter, was too strong a hold for the Lit’uanians to attack. Olgerd contented himself with sacking the surrounding country, and carried back a spoil of cattle and church furniture as witness of his triumph. [Sidenote: 1370] The following year, however, Mikhail, again driven from his hereditary dominions, again appealed to Olgerd for assistance, and with the first November snows came the Lit’uanian-Smolenskie host against Moskva. History repeated itself; a second time the Kreml, rising fair and glittering in its sheen of white stone and silvery frost, above the blackened ruins that lay around it, defied the force that gathered against its walls. Olgerd hovered in vain around the impregnable obstacle to his crowning triumph. Russian troops, under Vladimir Andrevitch, the Grand Prince’s