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and external struggles, especially with Persia, wereconstant. After 1359, when there were fourteen khanswithin twenty years, disputes as to the succession fatallyweakened the Horde. For the upper class life largelyrevolved round prowess in fighting and hunting, andhunting included above all slave-raiding. When thecentral power was weak, as was frequently the case, itwas impossible to prevent the outlying Tatars ravagingat will.The Tatar yoke was a yoke, even though its resultswere not purely destructive or negative. In the memoryof the Russian people the Tatars remained as the personificationof all their foes throughout the long centuries;and their conqueror was no prince Vladimir but the freelancepeasant hero Ilya Muromets, who " swoops uponthe Tatar host . . . tramples down the Tatar with hishorse, pierces the heathen with his spear."The main burden was taxation, tribute elaboratelyorganized in the first generation by Tatar officials, thenfarmed out to Moslem merchants, then collected throughthe grand-prince, ultimately of Moscow, assisted byTatar emissaries. The grand-prince owed his title tothe khan, to whom he journeyed to secure investiture,and his rivals in their principalities similarly revolved inthe orbit of the khan, and frequently served on hiscampaigns. Revolts or recalcitrance from the princesbrought major raids far into Muscovy; at the least tenduring a hundred and fifty years (1259-1408), with theTatars " cutting down all Christians all the time like grass,"with some of the Russian princes aiding or abetting.Twice this was not so. In 1378 for the first time amajor raid was beaten off before the Tatars could crossthe Oka. Two years later Dmitri Donskoy, grandprinceof Moscow, defeated Mamai at Kulikovo, well tothe south of the Oka, in a pitched battle ever famous inRussian tradition (see map 4). The defeat was decisivefor Mamai, not for the Tatars. In 1382 under hissuccessful rival Tokhtamysh they swept north again, laidwaste the greater part of the principality of Moscow,captured the city itself, despite its new stone fortress, andreimposed tribute. Not Dmitri Donskoy, but Timur the38