This developed into a life-and-death struggle, similar to that between Louis XI.

and his nobility.

His elevation meant their humiliation.

It was a terrible clash of forces--a duel in which one was the instrument of fate, and the other predestined to destruction.
It was of less importance during the period between Andrew Bogoliubski and Ivan IV.

that Mongols were exercising degrading tyranny and making desperate reprisals for defeat--that Lithuania and Poland, and conspirators everywhere, were by arms and by diplomacy and by treachery trying to ruin the state; all this was of less import than the fact that every vestige of authority was surely passing out of the hands of the nobility into those of the Tsar.