Of the Princes who strove in this way to increase their influence, the most successful were the Grand Princes of Moscow.  They were not a chivalrous race, or one with which the severe moralist can sympathise, but they were largely endowed with cunning, tact, and perseverance, and were little hampered by conscientious scruples.  Having early discovered that the liberal distribution of money at the Tartar court was the surest means of gaining favour, they lived parsimoniously at home and spent their savings at the Horde.  To secure the continuance of the favour thus acquired, they were ready to form matrimonial alliances with the Khan’s family, and to act zealously as his lieutenants.  When Novgorod, the haughty, turbulent republic, refused to pay the yearly tribute, they quelled the insurrection and punished the leaders; and when the inhabitants of Tver rose against the Tartars and compelled their Prince to make common cause with them, the wily Muscovite hastened to the Tartar court and received from the Khan the revolted principality, with 50,000 Tartars to support his authority.

Thus those cunning Moscow Princes “loved the Tartars beyond measure” so long as the Khan was irresistibly powerful, but as his power waned they stood forth as his rivals.  When the Golden Horde, like the great Empire of which it had once formed a part, fell to pieces in the fifteenth century, these ambitious Princes read the signs of the times, and put themselves at the head of the liberation movement, which was at first unsuccessful, but ultimately freed the country from the hated yoke.

From this brief sketch of the Mongol domination the reader will readily understand that it did not leave any deep, lasting impression on the people.  The invaders never settled in Russia proper, and never amalgamated with the native population.  So long as they retained their semi-pagan, semi-Buddhistic religion, a certain number of their notables became Christians and were absorbed by the Russian Noblesse; but as soon as the Horde adopted Islam this movement was arrested.  There was no blending of the two races such as has taken place—­and is still taking place—­between the Russian peasantry and the Finnish tribes of the North.  The Russians remained Christians, and the Tartars remained Mahometans; and this difference of religion raised an impassable barrier between the two nationalities.

It must, however, be admitted that the Tartar domination, though it had little influence on the life and habits of the people, had a considerable influence on the political development of the nation.  At the time of the conquest Russia was composed of a large number of independent principalities, all governed by descendants of Rurik.  As these principalities were not geographical or ethnographical units, but mere artificial, arbitrarily defined districts, which were regularly subdivided or combined according to the hereditary rights of the Princes, it is highly probable that they would in any