Neither prince commanded his army in person; each in fact was employed in weaving alliances against the other. The main body of the Moskovite troops was under the direction of the voevoda Yakov Zakharievitch; the Letts were generalled by the hetman Konstantin Ostrojhskie. All the advantage of preparedness lay with the Moskovites, who in fact had taken possession of several Lit’uanian places while the Grand Duke was still in the negotiating stage. Alexander awoke from his chafing and peeving and yielding to find that his _parent terrible_ was ensconced on the wrong side of the border, and the detestable Mengli-Girei, who hunted in couple with the Grand Prince, was careering unchecked through Podolia and Galicia; also the interesting champion of Christendom, who loved the Poles no better than he loved the Turks, was preparing to make a hostile incursion upon the same provinces. The Grand Duke on his part made overtures to the Order and dispatched couriers to Shikh-Akhmat, Khan of Astrakhan, and mortal enemy of Mengli. [Sidenote: July 1500] The superiority in warfare which had distinguished the Letts under their early princes seemed to have been lost at this juncture, and the first collision between the opposing forces--on the plain of Mit’kov, by the banks of the Vedrosh--resulted in a complete victory for the Moskovites.[106] The hetman and many Lit’uanian pans were taken prisoners, and there was joy in the bulb-topped city. The position of the long-time enemies was exactly reversed; the Moskovite and Tartar armies swept all before them in the open country, but the fortified citadels of Polotzk, Smolensk, Vitebsk, and other border strongholds resisted the attacks of the invaders, as the Kreml had defied those of Olgerd and Vitovt in bygone days. In the south-west the Krim hordes, led by Mengli-Girei’s son, burnt Kremenetz, Lublin, and many other towns and gorodoks. Unable to make a respectable resistance to his enemies on either side, Alexander engaged himself in a feverish activity of negotiation. In January 1501 ambassadors from Ladislav of Hungary-Bohemia and Albert of Poland journeyed to Moskva on a fruitless errand of mediation. Urgent remonstrances were dispatched from Vilna to Moldavia, begging the _Athlete du Christ_ to be athletic in any other direction than that of the grand duchy, while anxious endeavours were made to enlist the aid of the German Order against the victorious Moskovite. The office of Land-Master of Livland was filled at this moment by the able warrior Walter von Plettenberg, and though crippled in power and dominion since the disastrous field of Tannenberg, the knights were still a formidable fighting force. Little reason had they to love the Yagiellos, but at this moment Teutonic feeling was more inflamed against the phœnix-growth of the new Russian power that had arisen from the ashes of Mongol devastation. The Order saw the hand that armed Pskov and Izborsk against its territories; the Hansa