Dress
Rehearsal for Master and Margarita.
The Rise and
Fall of the Golden Horde.
A Historical
Note Continued.
Christmas 1386 saw Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy of
Moscow embarking on a punishing expedition against the city of Novgorod, whose
people had looted the city of Kostroma (where Dmitry had stayed during the
plunder of Moscow by Khan Tokhtamysh), which was one of the cities loyal to
Dmitry. In the confrontation between Dmitry and the city of Novgorod,
amazingly, no blood was spilled to reach a favorable for Dmitry solution.
But what a coincidence! Already in the year 1387
(sic!) Tokhtamysh, for some reason, decides to attack the great city of
Bukhara, his powerful sponsor Tamerlane’s domain.
Meanwhile, as a tribute from Novgorod, attacked by
Donskoy, the grand Prince of Moscow gets precisely 8,000 rubles, the amount of
tribute he owes, but hasn’t paid in five years to Tokhtamysh. (Actually, the
amount paid by the city of Novgorod was only 3,000, whereas the rest of the
money was coming from the Dvina Territory. A rather complicated, but very modern-sounding
business transaction!)
At the same time, Tokhtamysh, having plundered the
fabulously rich city of Bukhara, gets himself a very angry customer in the
person of his former benefactor Timur, aka Tamerlane (1336-1405).
A strange story indeed! In an effort to figure out the
situation we must first point out that Khan Tokhtamysh, although definitely
inferior to Tamerlane in all respects but one, was an uncontested Genghiside,
that is, a direct descendant of the great Genghis-Khan, which amounted to a
great deal in the Mongol hierarchy. Meanwhile, the great Timur was merely a son
of a minor Mongol nobleman, which means that his résumé for supremacy was
lacking an admittedly essential ingredient. The fact that Timur was born in the
vicinity of Samarkand was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it was far away
from the mainstream dwelling place of Mongol royalty, but on the other, it
awarded Timur with an uncontested home turf of value. For a lesser figure this
would not have meant much but for Tamerlane it turned out to be a decisive boon
in establishing a home base, where he first matured and then excelled.
Most interestingly, the fact that Grand Prince Dmitry
in 1387 would demand from the extremely wealthy merchant city of Novgorod the
exact amount that he had all this time owed to the Horde, proves that all these
years since the Tatar burning of Moscow in 1382, the great Moskal had been
pulling the Khan’s leg.
***
Prince Dmitry's 1383 delegation, of which he himself
was no part, did not bring Khan Tokhtamysh any money (the owed tribute amounted
to a hefty 8,000 rubles), but Dmitry’s elder son Vasili remained at the Horde
as hostage, with all implied consequences. Having come to the Sarai, the
Russians did not show any expected submission. As for the taxes, they pointed
out to the Khan that having been plundered and devastated by none other than
Tokhtamysh himself, shortly before, in 1382, they were in no position to pay.
With no taxes coming in from the Russians, while facing his financial
obligations to his army, Tokhtamysh found himself in a very difficult position.
As for the Grand Prince of Moscow who was desperately
seeking a way out of his own crisis, having won a historic battle in 1380, but
gaining nothing from it, Dmitry Donskoy had to try some desperate measures of
diplomacy, which, ironically, boiled down to the “Genghis-Khan” trump card now
in his possession.
Thus, a Machiavellian theater plays out before the
reader’s eyes, 87 years before the birth of the great Florentine. It is quite
clear that being faced with the Russians’ inability to pay taxes, Khan
Tokhtamysh was increasingly tempted to turn his gaze to some greener pastures
belonging to his Southern neighbor and benefactor Timur/Tamerlane. Having on
several occasions fled to Samarkand from the pursuing enemies, Tokhtamysh was
familiar with those lands. His experienced eye had undoubtedly taken in the
great wealth of Tamerlane’s Ulus. There was a second major factor, of course,
which was the lack of respect on Tokhtamysh’s part, a direct descendant of
Genghis-Khan for Tamerlane who was not a Genghiside.
Having underestimated both his enemies, namely, the
Grand Prince of Moscow Dmitry Donskoy and, even worse, the great Tamerlane,
Khan Tokhtamysh committed two horrific mistakes, which were bound to take him
down.
Regarding Tokhtamysh underestimating Dmitry, this is
what N. I. Kostomarov writes:
“Tokhtamysh must have counted on the
[mistaken impression] that, having shown himself a faint-hearted coward [sic!],
during the Tatar Khan’s raid on Moscow, and as the ruler of a devastated land,
Dmitry posed a lesser threat…”
But this is exactly what Dmitry wanted Tokhtamysh to
think!
On the other hand, Tamerlane’s domain was a choice
morsel, and overestimating the man’s handicap of not being a Genghiside,
Tokhtamysh reckoned that attacking him now was a clever thing to do.
On top of this, adding an insult to injury, Dmitry’s
son Vasily, after two years of being in Khan’s custody, managed to escape from
the Ulus into Moldavia, and from there to Lithuania, and thus Tokhtamysh lost
his most valuable hostage.
To be continued…
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