Ivan's rule is marked by vastly expanding the territory of Moscow. Ivan brought the independent duchies (kniažestva) of different Rurikid princes under the direct control of Moscow, leaving the princes and their posterity without royal titles or land inheritance. His first enterprise was a war with the Republic of Novgorod, with which Muscovy ("Moscow") as a Northern district of Golden Horde had fought a series of wars stretching back to at least the reign of Dmitry Donskoi. These wars were waged over Moscow's religious and political sovereignty, and over Moscow's efforts to seize land in the Northern Dvina region. Alarmed at the growing power of Moscow, Novgorod had negotiated with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Rus in the hope of placing itself under the protection of Casimir IV, King of Poland and Grand Prince of Lithuania, a would-be alliance that was proclaimed by the Moscow rulers as an act of apostasy from Orthodoxy (in part, because Poland and its monarchs were Catholic). Ivan took the field against Novgorod in 1470, and after his generals had twice defeated the forces of the republic – at the Battle of Shelon River and on the Northern Dvina, both in the summer of 1471 – the Novgorodians were forced to sue for peace, agreeing to abandon their overtures to Lithuania and to cede a considerable portion of their northern territories, while paying a war indemnity of 15,500 roubles.