Possibly the result of the battle was not so one-sided as the glowing accounts of the Russian historians painted it, but the immediate effect gave fair hope for the future. Yagiello withdrew his forces into Lit’uania, and thither fled the traitorous Oleg of Riazan; the Mongols vanished across the Oka, and the enemies of Dimitri seemed melted like snow before the summer of his victory. The Russians dreamed that they were free. Not so lightly were they to be rid of these dusky wolf-eyed warriors, who teemed in the wide, arid plain-land of Asia like rats on an old threshing-floor. In the East had arisen a new star of battle to lead them in the footsteps of the mighty Jingis, Timur the Lame, “conqueror of the two Bokharas, of Hindostan, of Iran, and of Asia Minor.”[77] At the Golden Horde appeared one of his captains, Tokhtamitch, who routed and hunted to death the ill-starred Mamai, and seized upon his khanate. Following on this revolution came a message from the new Khan to the Russian princes, couched in friendly terms, but requiring their presence at his Court. This was too much for the Grand Prince and his proud Moskovites to stomach, and Dimitri returned an answer befitting the victor of Koulikovo. But the defiance of the capital found no echo in the other Russian lands; not a second time did they care to face in doubtful conflict foes who were so terrible in victory, so easily recruited after defeat. Too many brave boyarins and bold spearmen had perished on the field of the woodcocks, too many gaps had been made in their ranks which could not be filled at such scant notice. Dimitri of Souzdal sent his two sons to the Horde; Oleg, pardoned and restored to his province, intrigued once more with the enemies of Moskva. [Sidenote: 1382] Against that city marched the Khan with his Tartar army, guided thither by the traitorous Kniaz of Riazan, and bearing in his train the young princes of Souzdal. Dimitri took the prudent, if unheroic part of leaving his capital to defend itself, and seeking meanwhile to gather an army capable of threatening the Mongol flank. The flight of the Metropolitan, Syprien (successor of S. Aleksis), was not open to so favourable an interpretation. The Kreml, ably defended by its garrison, under the command of Ostey, called in the Chronicles a grandson of Olgerd, held the enemy at bay for three days; on the fourth the defenders weakly opened the gates to a ruse of the wily Khan, and the capital of the new Russia received a baptism of blood. When the invaders withdrew, bearing with them all that was worth removing, it was a silent city that they left behind them--a city peopled by 24,000 corpses, meet gathering ground for wehr-wolf, ghoul, and vampire, a wild Walpurgis Nacht for the Yaga-Babas of Slavonic lore. Nor was Moskva alone in her desolation; Vladimir, Zvenigorod, and other towns were sacked and burnt by detachments of the Mongol army. The defeat of one of these bands by a Russian force under Vladimir of