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While Lithuania and Poland were busy in their war against the Teutonic Order, interesting, and at the same time terrifying, developments were happening far to the east, in the steppes where the Tatar nomads reside. Tokhtamysh's war against his former master, Tamerlane, turned out disastrous for the recently installed Khan of the Golden Horde. His territorial ambitions in Central Asia were crushed as the Timurid army attacked his lands directly after pushing back weak enemy raids, and laid a great defeat to the Tatars in the Battle of the Kondurcha River in 1391. Two years later, Tatar and Turkish armies faced off against each other again in North Caucasus, near the Terek river. This time, the defeat was decisive - Tokhtamysh's forces scattered and were crushed, Tamerlane attacked and razed numerous cities of the Horde, like Azaq, Astrakhan and Sarai, installing Temur Qutlugh, one of Tokhtamysh's political opponents, as Khan. Allying himself with Edygu of the Nogai and remaining Timurid forces, Temur hoped to reconquer the wayward principalities of the Rus' and restore the strength of the Tatar horde, while at the same time owing a favor to the man who installed him.

Tokhtamysh, who survived the battle at Terek with some of his followers remaining, decided to flee west. To Jogaila. Here, the fallen Khan arrived to plead for help against the usurpers from Central Asia, but a response from the Lithuanian Grand Duke did not arrive. While Tokhtamysh camped near Kiev with his 3000 Tatars, worryingly watched over from the city by the guards who still weren't sure whether this Easterner was right or not, Temur's forces began their first incursions into the Rus'. On January of 1395, their raiders attacked Bryansk, and later that spring they raided Kursk. The reason for Jogaila's absence was simple - after 10 years of marriage, his first child with Sophia of Moscow was about to be born. According to horoscopes, it was going to be a boy, but it turned out to actually be a girl instead. Baptized as Julijona after her paternal grandmother, the heir apparent of Lithuania... died two weeks later. It was quite a shock, indeed. The succession of the massive land was still not certain, and with Jogaila already 50 years old, it even started to look a little threatening.

In spring of 1395, Jogaila arrived to Kiev, where the renegade Tokhtamysh, upon the sight of the Lithuanian lord, fell of his knees and pleaded for help. The Tatar offered many things - tribute, abandoning the yoke over all of Rus', ceding the Black Sea port of Khadjibey and most of Crimea among others, he just wanted Jogaila's help in reclaiming the throne. Tokhtamysh's point was proven even further of Edygu's forces raiding Ryazan and attacking Vladimir-Suzdal, with no stopping. In response, the Grand Duke sent a messenger to Muscovy, calling Vasily I, the son of Dmitry of Moscow and his brother-in-law[1], to war, finally fulfilling the promise of an anti-Mongol coalition he made upon marrying Sophia and accepting Orthodoxy. Vasily agreed, and in turn also called the other Russian princes to this "great crusade against the Tatars". A hasty mobilization of all Lithuanian and Ruthenian troops was issued, to gather in Smolensk.

This was not just a war in defense against renewed Mongol raids. This was a Crusade in it's own right. Not an official crusade sponsored by neither the Pope in Rome nor the Patriarch of Constantinople, but a crusade nonetheless. A Crusade to take down the Mongol yoke, a Crusade to end Tatar dominance. Within less than a year, almost all Russian principalities, with Lithuania under Nikolai I Jogaila and Muscovy under Vasily Dmitryevich leading the war. Dlugosz mentions that Tokhtamysh was baptized as an Orthodox Christian right before the operation, and his remaining followers joined up with the Slavs and Balts. Despite having already fought a great battle in Ilava against the Teutonic Order, the Lithuanian nobility and people answered the call, and an army was assembled. In summer of 1395, the Lithuanian-Ruthenian-Russian force moved south, towards the Golden Horde. Despite the massive size of this army - up to 50 000 men according to some accounts - the Tatars weren't planning to back down.

At the right bank of the Vorskla River, on the border between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Golden Horde, the two armies met face to face. The Battle of Vorskla River had begun.

The forces under Jogaila and Vasily, as stated before, numbered up to 50 000 men, with Lithuanians and Russians fighting side by side, as well as a few thousand Tatars under Tokhtamysh. The Horde mustered about 80 000 men, most of them mounted archers. While the numbers this time were not on Jogaila's side, he had the advantage of the terrain surrounding him. The field of the battle was covered in sparse forests and had hills scattered around it, with the Coalition force basing around one of them. The Vorskla River in the southeast, the river that Edygu and Temur Qutlugh had crossed the day before and entered Lithuanian lands, prevented any major retreats for the attackers. Jogaila's forces, upon hearing the news of an approaching Tatar force from their scouts, stopped in their tracks and built a wagon fort to defend against the incoming mounted archers. Numerous sources from that time reported the Battle of Vorskla as the first major use of cannons in Eastern European warfare - this was the card that the Lithuanians bet on against the Tatars, hoping to use the artillery to spook the horses and tear the attackers to shreds.[2]

The battle started out near noon, with a surprise frontal strike by Temur's forces. Soon after reaching the wagon fort, the Tatars fired a volley of arrows, but it proved ineffective against the fortified defenders. The Coalition responded with a volley of their own, but it didn't do as much damage as expected, and yet the attackers turned around and started fleeing... Numerous Russian princes wanted to order an attack to chase the enemies, but Jogaila, instructed by Tokhtamysh, ordered to not to - this was a feigned retreat, a famous and well tested tactic by the Tatar hordes. The allies remained in the wagon fort, patiently waiting for a second round. Expecting Temur's horde to return from the front, though, they were heavily mistaken... Edygu's own force suddenly flanked the fort, attacking the Russians and Lithuanians from the sides! A fierce battle begun, but the element of surprise alone tipped the scales in Tatar favor. Especially when Temur returned to the battle, too. The Tatars were targeting the cannons, hoping to eliminate them from the battle, and firing waves of arrow volleys! Jogaila still insisted on patiently holding out, perhaps even pulling the cannons inside and defending there, but in the heat of the moment, his orders were overturned. With a Russian cavalry charge, led by Vasily of Moscow in the front, the Coalition forces stormed out of the wagon fort, shocking the Tatars, who didn't expect such a sudden strike, just as much as they had shocked the Allies.

This attack gave the Lithuanian artillery and remaining defenders enough time to launch a second cannon volley, spooking the horses across the battlefield and turning it into outright close-quarters chaos - great for the Lithuanians and Russians, not so much for the Tatar mounted archers. While the reports on this battle remain a source of contention, it is agreed upon that this cavalry charge managed to salvage the tough situation of the Allied forces - had Jogaila won over Vasily and the Russians with his defensive focus, who knows what could've happened at that day? But what we do know is that the Lithuanian and Russian anti-Tatar coalition won, and in one of the greatest battles of the end of the 14th century, too.

Won with a cost. Vasily I Dmitryevich of Moscow was gravely injured by a Tatar arrow right after the cavalry charge[3], though denied any and all effect on the injury to himselfd uring the battle to save the morale of the men. No doctor or physician alive in Jogaila's court could save the Prince of Muscovy - the wound was already infected, and five days after the Battle of the Vorskla River, he parted the mortal world to rest in the heavens. Even with such a loss at their hands, the Allies continued the war. While the Tatars were in shambles, Temur nowhere to be found and Edygu fleeing to Central Asia, Jogaila's forces began moving forward. A detachment from the main force arrived to the coasts of the Black Sea, capturing Khadjibey and building an outpost by the mouth of Dniepr. The territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania now reached from coast to coast, from the cold Baltic to the dark, salty Black Sea. Jogaila arrived to Sarai in autumn of 1395 and restored Tokhtamysh to the throne, who signed numerous treaties with his "ally" practically holding him hostage. This included a lifting of the Mongol yoke over the Rus' and surrendering the steppes around Dniepr and Crimea to Lithuania. A permanent Lithuanian garrison based itself in Sarai, reporting to the Grand Duke.

The Golden Horde never regained it's former might. While Tamerlane was still planning to gain the mouths of Volga for himself, his unsuccessful campaign against the Ottoman Turks and later his death in 1402 destroyed these plans. An Orthodox Christian, even if only a nominal one, reigning over a Muslim and Pagan population was a recipe of disaster, and the 15th century saw the formerly mighty nation fracture and collapse into numerous small khanates and hordes, each one vying for supremacy, but ultimately weak against their common western neighbor. Of course, in 1395 the Horde still appeared strong, but it was only a matter of time...

Jogaila's campaigns were not finished, though. After learning the death of his brother Vasily, Yuri, the last remaining son of Dmitry of Moscow, immediately laid claims on the throne of Muscovy, but the Grand Duke of Lithuania had other plans. Using a... less than perfect logic that his marriage to Sophia made him a "partially a son of Dmitry" - not that he really needed much of a justification, - and thus according to the brother-to-brother succession laws of the House of Rurik, made him legitimate as a successor to the throne, moved north from Sarai towards Moscow. On the way, Jogaila reestablished dominance over Ryazan that he lost during the Civil War, and arrived to Moscow with his army of 20 000 men to gain the throne, whether by persuasion or by force. Yuri Dmitryevich, the last Rurikid ruler of the Principality of Muscovy fled to Suzdal to avoid the Lithuanian ruler's fury, and after a set of negotiations with the boyars, the Principality of Muscovy was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania - a process that started with Algirdas's raid on Moscow almost 30 years earlier.

The Battles of Vorskla and of Ilava solidified Jogaila's prestige not only across the realm, but also beyond it. This Schizmatic, Orthodox ruler, the christianizer of a massive pagan land, bringer of Western ways into the Lithuanian nation, a great leader and commander, participated in two of the greatest battles of medieval Eastern Europe. He expanded Lithuania's territory into East Prussia and into the steppes of Crimea, and made many great lords and leaders bow before him. It is no surprise that years later, even in the Renaissance, his image was glorified and placed by the Lithuanian people as the greatest and most capable ruler of medieval Lithuania - Jogaila the Great/Nikolai the Great.[4]

As for Russia... Who could have predicted that by "escaping the Mongol yoke", they will merely put on a new overlord on their shoulders?

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1. Dmitry Donskoy died at age 38 in 1389, same as OTL, though in TTL he achieved far less than his counterpart - no Kulikovo, only getting plundered by Lithuanians.

2. The same tactic was employed by Vytautas in OTL Vorskla, expect that time he failed by falling for the Tatar feigned retreat trick. Jogaila is far more patient and passive than his hot-headed cousin, so it's more likely that he'd stay in the wagon fort this time.

3. Allusion to the Battle of Kulikovo, where Dmitry Donskoy was badly injured during a cavalry charge. Except that time he survived...

4. Step aside, Vytautas, there's a new 'the Great' in town!