Eighteen months after Ediger’s winter campaign against Moskva the eyes of all Russia were turned towards the impending struggle between the rival powers of the Baltic lands, the Order and the dual Polish-Lit’uanian State. Vitovt, recovered from his reverse at the hands of the Tartars, was moving again, and had set his lance against the black cross shield of the German knights. A dispute anent the Order province of Samogitia furnished a pretext for a recourse to arms, and both sides gathered their hosts to fight out the deadly quarrel. No hole and corner combat was to decide the mastery of the Baltic basin; 163,000 men marched in the train of Vitovt and Yagiello, 83,000 rallied round Ulrich von Jungingen. At the famous battle of Tannenberg (15th July 1410) the iron-mailed knights of Mary went down in splendid ruin before the unstayable onset of the Slavic warriors; the White Eagle of Poland and the Charging Horseman of Lit’uania gleamed on their blood-red standards over the stark and gory corpses of the Grand Master and the flower of his chivalry, 600 knights and 40,000 men-at-arms; the sun went down on the hard-fought field, where Ulrich von Jungingen and his staunch comrades held their last pale Chapter, and the might of the Black Cross Order faded into the shadows of the past. [Sidenote: 1411] The Peace of Thorn, by yielding to the conquerors all they demanded, gave a temporary respite to the Teutons, but their power was broken for evermore.[86] The latter years of the reign of Vasili Dmitrievitch are distinguished by a dexterous peace with the several items which threatened at every moment to combine against and crush his struggling principality. The ambition of his father-in-law, the frowardness of Novgorod, the dissatisfaction of Tver, the exacting arrogance of the Horde, were successfully ignored or adroitly played one against the other. In like manner the Grand Prince’s brothers were studiously kept in the background, and the boyarins of Moskva and the allied fiefs were taught to look upon Vasili’s surviving son, who bore his father’s name, as future head of the State. [Sidenote: 1425] Thus scheming and contriving went the Prince of Moskva on his way, till one winter’s day the bells knelled for his passing soul, and Vasili Vasilievitch reigned in his stead.