BATTLE OF KULIKOVO FIELD

On September 8, 1380, at the Battle on Kulikovo, Moscow's great monarch Dimitri defeated the Mongols beginning the decline of the Tatars. A short excerpt from the article:

"Before the break of dawn on September 8, 1380, Grand Prince Dmitry-Ivanovich of Moscow, accompanied by his general, Bobrok, made a personal reconnaissance of Kulikovo Field near the Don River, approximately 300 kilometers south of Moscow. The wide field, which got its name from the multitude of small swamp birds, or kulik, that inhabited it, was crisscrossed by many gulches, with small hillocks topped by copses of trees and swampy lowlands nestled between the hills. It was here that he would arrange the 12,000 warriors from various Russian principalities who had agreed to fight for him and a cause that amounted to suicide. Approaching to engage him were some 18,000 Tatars of the Golden Horde, a branch of the Mongol empire that had dominated Russia for almost a century and a half. Russian princes and dukes had challenged the Tatars before. All had gone down in defeat followed by a terrible retribution from their Asiatic overlords."