Golden Horde Army

The army of the Golden Horde, the Mongol successor khanate ruling the western Eurasian steppe, Russia and the Caucasus, descended directly from the forces Genghis Khan granted his son Jochi and was built into a conquering power under Jochi's son Batu Khan, who, together with the veteran Mongol general Subutai, launched a westward campaign in 1235 that first subdued the Bashkirs and Volga Bulgaria in 1236 before turning on the Russian principalities, taking Ryazan in December 1237. Continuing into Eastern Europe, the Golden Horde's army won decisive victories at Legnica and Mohi in the spring of 1241 against combined German, Polish and Hungarian forces, and by early 1242 Mongol columns had crossed the Danube into Austria and Dalmatia before withdrawing on news of the Great Khan Ogedei's death in December 1241. The Horde's military strength peaked under Ozbeg Khan from 1312 to 1341, when it launched further campaigns into Eastern Europe and the Balkans including invasions of Hungary in 1285 and Poland in 1287 to 1288, and the khan Nogai conducted extensive independent operations across the same region through the 1270s to 1290s. Golden Horde military power was broken by Timur's invasion of 1396 and the subsequent fragmentation of the khanate into smaller successor states through the fifteenth century, a decline that culminated in Muscovy's own independence at the bloodless Great Stand on the Ugra River in 1480.