234 chapter four
When the Grand Duke of Moscow sent tribute, this was nothing but
a tactical manoeuvre, forced by the fact that his military strength was at
that moment exhausted. even after toqtamïsh took the throne at Sarai,
the hero of Kulikovo did not give up hope that ‘the russias’ might tri-
umph. he continued to gather troops from all the russian knyazates with
the same vigour as he had shown before 1380, with an eye on the inevi-
table confrontation with the new khan on the Volga.359
these provocative mobilisations proved to toqtamïsh that the men-
ace had not vanished even though Dmitriy Donskoy had feigned submis-
sion, and he knew that war with the russians was inevitable. the defeat
inflicted on the Golden horde had to be avenged: the horde’s great power
prestige depended on a decisive victory to cancel the material and psy-
chological victory which the russians had won at Kulikovo.360
all of toqtamïsh’s foreign policies were triangulated around this point,
between autumn 1380 when the envoys were sent to Dmitriy and the sum-
mer of 1382 when the tartars burnt Moscow.
these were the prevailing influences when Ilyas Bey concluded the
treaty of february 1381 with the Genoese, at the khan’s orders. all the
evidence suggests that tartar concessions were strategic sacrifices made
for the sake of the russian campaign, and that the lengthy and complex
diplomatic and military preparations excluded opening a new front in
the crimea. even more convincingly, the third tartar-Genoese treaty
served the same end. tartar relations with the Genoese in 1381–1382 were
thus subordinated to russian concerns, and developed very smoothly, as
proven by frequent caffan contact with the authorities in Solkhat and
with the imperial capital in Sarai.
Ilyas Bey, who had been the commune’s mortal enemy in November
1380, became the consul’s close friend after the treaty of 23rd february
following was signed: the city’s public accounts registers contain a brief
account of the splendid feast which welcomed the lord of Solkhat to caffa
in autumn 1381.361 the same source reveals that the Genoese colonists had
frequent dealings of all kinds with notable tartars from Ilyas’ entourage
and that of his father Qutlugh Bugha.362
359 Grekov, Yakubovskiy, Orda, p. 327; very few responded to his call, however; the
new khan was evidently much stronger than Mamai, and russian military capacity much
reduced after Kulikovo, so that there was no doubt as to the outcome of the next battle.
360 Spuler, Horde, p. 128, emphasises this point, saying that the principle motive of
toqtamïsh’s russian campaign was to set an example.
361 Iorga, Notes, I, pp. 14, 18.
362 Ibid., pp. 11–19.