The fog hung thick over the waters of the Don River on the morning of 8 September 1380. Long columns of Russian soldiers filed through a ford on the Don just below where the Nepravda River fed into it. They tramped a mile past the ford and deployed for battle opposite the waiting Mongol army of the Golden Horde.
The leader of the Russian host, Grand Prince Dimitri of Moscow, addressed his men, urging them to fight for their Orthodox faith. Then, out of the view of his troops, he discreetly exchanged suits of armour with a young Muscovite aristocrat, Mikhail Brenok. Brenok would take the grand prince's place at the centre of the army beneath the banners of the Virgin Mary, St George and St Andrew.
Dimitri did this because he knew that his Mongol adversaries on the battlefield would seek to kill him as quickly as possible. If the Mongols could cut down the charismatic leader of the Russian army, it was likely his men would panic and flee. For that reason, the 30-year-old grand prince decided it was better to fight in the centre of the army as a nondescript nobleman rather than risk death at the outset of the battle. Accompanied by mounted aides to carry messages to his captains, he took up a position not too far from where Brenok was located under the grand prince's banner.
GOLDEN HORDE RIVALRY
Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, had undertaken a two-year conquest of Kievan Rus that ended in 1240. This had begun what would be nearly two-and-a-half centuries of Mongol overlordship over the divided Russian principalities in Eastern Europe. Batu Khan founded the Khanate of the Golden Horde, the westernmost of the four appanages given to Genghis Khan's four eldest sons upon his death.
The Mongols allowed the
