an immediate retreat. Second Timurid invasion into the Golden Horde and its aftermath Timur now determined that a second campaign into the Golden Horde was necessary. After some diplomatic dissimulation on both sides, Timur set out with a great army towards Derbent in March 1395. After crossing the pass, Timur's army ravaged the area up to the Terek, where it encountered the forces of Tokhtamysh. After Timur's troops destroyed Tokhtamysh's vanguard, the main battle took place on 15–16 April 1395. Like the battle on the Kondurcha four year earlier, it was a hard-fought engagement between nearly equal forces. Although Timur, who fought like a common warrior, was nearly captured or killed, he once again emerged victorious, after a dissension among Tokhtamysh's emirs. Tokhtamysh fled north to Bolghar and later perhaps to Moldavia. Part of Timur's forces gave chase, catching up with some of the enemy by the Volga and driving them into it; Timur's local allies, led by the Jochid prince Quyurchuq, a son of Urus Khan, advanced on the opposite, left bank of the Volga, to take over the area. Timur probed north, as far as Yelets, before turning to ravaging the cities of the Golden Horde. At Tana, he was happy to receive rich gifts from the Italian merchants before enslaving all Christians and destroying their facilities. Passing though Circassia, he proceeded to pillage and destroy the cities along the Volga, from (old) Astrakhan to Sarai, to Gülistan, in the winter of 1395–1396; the surviving inhabitants were enslaved and "driven like sheep." Timur set out for Samarkand via Derbent in the spring of 1396, laden with plunder and accompanied by herds and captives, including merchants, artists, and craftsmen, leaving the Golden Horde exhausted and pillaged. Tokhtamysh had survived Timur's onslaught, but his position was far more tenuous than before. The ruined capital, Sarai, was in the hands of Timur's protégé Quyurchuq, while the area of Astrakhan and the eastern portions of the Golden Horde were under the control of Tīmūr Qutluq and Edigu, who had joined forces once again. They soon expelled or eliminated Quyurchuq, taking over Sarai in 1396 or 1397, but mollified Timur by assuring him of their submission through an embassy in 1398. Meanwhile, Tokhtamysh had set about reasserting his authority in the southwestern portions of the Golden Horde, killing his cousin Tāsh Tīmūr, who had declared himself khan in the Crimea, and fighting the