on the Cheryokha River in 1436, captured and blinded. Soon after, Shemyaka entered into an agreement with Vasily II, recognizing him as his suzerain ("older brother"). Next year, he was sent by Vasily II to expel the exiled Golden Horde Khan Ulugh Muhammad, but was defeated in the battle of Belyov. When Ulugh Muhammad in his turn besieged Moscow in 1439, Dmitry didn't send his troops to Vasily and only the mediation of a Trinity hegumen could forestall a new civil war between the cousins. The two men maintained an uneasy peace for much of the next decade until 1445, when Vasily II was taken prisoner by Olug Moxammat after the Muscovite forces were surprised by the Tatar prince outside Suzdal, Shemyaka seized Moscow, had the recently released Vasily blinded and proclaimed himself the Grand Prince of Vladimir. He could claim this by right of lateral inheritance since his father had sat on the throne. (A prince was excluded from the succession (izgoi) if his father had not sat on the throne before him.) Shemyaka's lack of support among the Muscovite boyars forced him, however, to leave the city for Lake Chukhloma, but he continued to press his claim to the grand princely throne. Despite several peace treaties, Shemyaka continued to plot against his cousin. He suffered a series of defeats in 1450 and 1452 which forced him to seek refuge in Novgorod. There, on July 17, 1453, he was poisoned while eating a dinner of chicken in the Gorodishche, the princely compound south of the Market side of the city, his cook having been bribed by Muscovite agents. Delighted at the news, Vasily II ennobled a herald who had first brought him the message of Shemyaka's death. Nikolai Karamzin famously wrote in his history that the grand prince showed "indecent joy" at the news of his rival's untimely demise. According to chronicle sources, Shemyaka was buried in the Church of St. George in the Yuriev Monastery south of Novgorod, however, twentieth-century archaeological excavations of the necropolis of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom in the Novgorod Kremlin suggest that the prince was actually buried there and his grave has been misidentified since at least 1616 as that of Prince Fedor Yaroslavich (died 1233). In the aftermath of Shemyaka's murder, his wife and son fled Novgorod to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where they were given Rylsk and Novgorod-Seversky in appanage.