It is impossible, according to the ancient annalists, to imagine a spectacle so terrible.  Young and old, fathers and children, were buried in the same grave.  Entire families disappeared in a day.  Each curate found, every morning, thirty dead bodies, often more, in his church.  Greedy men at first offered their services to the dying, hoping to obtain their estates, but when it was found that the disease was communicated by touch, even the most wealthy could obtain no aid.  The son fled from the father.  The brother avoided the brother.  Still there were not a few examples of the most generous and self-sacrificing devotion.  Medical skill was of no avail whatever, and the churches were thronged with the multitudes who, in the midst of the dying and the dead, were crying to God for aid.  Multitudes in their terror bequeathed all their property to the church, and sought refuge in the monasteries.  It truth, it appeared as if Heaven had pronounced the sentence of immediate death upon the whole human family.

Five times, during his short reign, Simeon was compelled to repair to the horde, to remove suspicions and appease displeasure.  He at length so far ingratiated himself into favor with the khan, that the Tartar sovereign conferred upon him the title of Grand Prince of all the Russias.  The death of Simeon in the year 1353, caused a general rush of the princes of the several principalities to the Tartar horde, each emulous of being appointed his successor.  Tchanibek, the khan, after suitable deliberation, conferred the dignity upon Jean Ivanovitch of Moscow.  His reign of six years was disturbed by a multiplicity of intestine feuds, but no events occurred worthy of record.  He died in 1359.

Again the Russian princes crowded to the horde, as, in every age, office seekers have thronged the court.  The khan, after due deliberation, conferred the investiture of the grand principality upon Dmitri of Souzdal, though the appointment was received with great dissatisfaction by the other princes.  But now the power of the Tartars was rapidly on the decline.  Assassination succeeded assassination, one chieftain after another securing the assassination of his rival and with bloody hands ascending the Mogol throne.  The swords of the Mogol warriors were turned against each other, as rival chieftains rallied their followers for attack or defense.  Civil war raged among these fierce bands with most terrible ferocity.  Famine and pestilence followed the ravages of the sword.

While the horde was in this state of distraction, antagonistic khans began to court the aid of the Russian princes, and a successful Tartar chieftain, who had poignarded his rival, and thus attained the throne, deposed Dmitri of Souzdal, and declared a young prince, Dmitri of Moscow, to be sovereign of Russia.  But as the khan, whose whole energies were required to retain his disputed throne, could send no army into Russia to enforce this decree, Dmitri of Souzdal