long lances could break pikemen lines, but this was rather an exception. After wars with Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, when he fought often against superior mounted troops, King Gustavus II Adolphus started using successfully cavalry melee charge more often instead of caracole like during Battle of Breitenfeld. The cavalry charge remained an important part of battle tactics for the rest of 17th century and until the modern area, and its shock value could be decisive when implemented properly like during Battle of Vienna (1683). However, the power formerly wielded by a heavy cavalry-focused army was at an end. For the first time in millennia, the settled people of the agricultural regions could defeat the horse peoples of the steppe in open combat. The power of the Mongols was broken in Russia and, no longer threatened from the east, Russia began to assert itself as a major force in European affairs. Never again would nomads from the east threaten to overrun Europe or the Middle East. In the Siege of Kazan (1552), Russia had employed artillery, sappers, cavalry and infantry armed with arquebus (Streltsy), while the Khanate of Kazan had only employed cavalry. The use of sappers proved decisive. The one exception to this was the Ottoman Empire, which had been founded by Turkish horsemen. The Ottomans were some of the first to embrace gunpowder artillery and firearms and integrated them into their already formidable fighting abilities. As European infantry became better armed and disciplined, by about 1700, the Ottoman forces began to be regularly defeated by the troops of the Austria and Russia. Naval warfare The Age of Sail (usually dated as 1571–1862) was a period roughly corresponding to the early modern period in which international trade and naval warfare were dominated by sailing ships and gunpowder warfare, lasting from the mid-16th to the mid-19th centuries. The spread of European power around the world was closely tied to naval developments in this period. The caravel for the first time made unruly seas like the Atlantic Ocean open to exploration, trade, and military conquest. While in all previous eras, European navies had been largely confined to operations in coastal waters, and were generally used only in a support role for land-based forces, this changed with the introduction of the new vessels like the caravel, carrack, and galleon, and the increasing importance of international waterborne trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The new