TIMUR BEG. 
93 
snows to contend for Samarcand and his life. After 
a mild expostulation and a glorious victory,, the em- 
peror resolved on revenge, and, by the east and the 
west of the Caspian and the V olga, he twice invaded 
Kipzak with such mighty powers that thirteen miles 
were measured from his right to his left wing. In a 
march of five months, they rarely beheld the footsteps 
of man ; and their daily subsistence was often trusted 
to the fortune of the chase. At length the armies 
encountered each other; but the treachery of the 
standard-bearer, who in the heat of action reversed 
the imperial standard of Kipzak, determined the vic- 
tory of the Zagatais ; and Toctamish (I speak the 
language of the Institutions) gave the tribe of Toushi to 
the wind of desolation.* He fled to the Christian 
Duke of Lithuania; again returned to the banks of 
the V olga ; and, after fifteen battles with a domestic 
rival, at last perished in the wilds of Siberia. The 
pursuit of a flying enemy carried Timour into the tri- 
butary provinces of Russia : a duke of the reigning 
family was made prisoner amidst the ruins of his 
capital; and Yeletz, by the pride and ignorance of 
the Orientals, might easily be confounded with the 
genuine metropolis of the nation. Moscow trembled 
at the approach of the Tartar ; and the resistance 
would have been feeble, since the hopes of the Rus- 
sians were placed in a miraculous image of the Virgin, 
to whose protection they ascribed the casual and vo- 
* Institutions of Timur, pp. 123 — 125. “ Mr. White, the 
editor/’ says Gibbon in a note, “ bestows some animadversions 
on the superficial account of Sherefeddin, who was ignorant of 
the designs of Timour, and the true springs of action.” 
