Battle of the Terek: Timur breaks Tokhtamysh

April 1395

On the steppe river in the northern Caucasus, Timur destroyed the Golden Horde army of his former protege. Tokhtamysh fled into the Lithuanian forests. Timur then sacked Sarai and Astrakhan, ravaging the Volga trade cities that had sustained the Horde's commercial power. The Horde never recovered its dominance, and Russian principalities began drifting freer of Tatar overlordship.