Yulbaris : Part 3
The Ottomans had prepared for this war too and their invasion came quickly. Thirty thousand angry Turks crossed the border into Tabaristan. Another twenty thousand poured out of the Caucasus and into the province of Volgograd. They thought they had broken the frontlines of the Golden Horde with speed. They couldn't have been proved more wrong. On the plains near the old capital they ran headlong into Yulbaris and twenty six thousand Tatar horsemen. It was like a battle of old and the outcome was truly worthy of Ulugh the Great himself. Not that the Turks in Istanbul would ever hear of for every single one of the invaders was trampled, cut and generally slaughtered in the good old fashioned Golden Horde way.
With the stunning victory under his belt Yulbaris continued his march on into ex-vassal Shirvan who had unwisely left their capital virtually unguarded in favour of an invasion of Kolkhis.
Yulbaris sieges while the Shirvanese scurry back only to suffer another defeat
Further west the war was progressing finely. Bujak was being marched on whilst Crimea was close to falling.
War in the west
All was not quite so rosy on the southern front. There the Ottomans and her ally Transylvania kept pouring more and more troops into the siege of Tabaristan whilst the Horde's armies could do nothing but watch.
Big numbers of invaders and thankfully big numbers of attrition
Shortly into 1588. The Golden Horde suffered her first loss. The army in Bujak was defeated by a much smaller Ottoman force. However the news was offset by the positive outcome of the siege of Crimea as the last bastion of Bakchi-Sarai was taken by Horde footsoldiers.
Yulbaris succeeded in Daghestan. The entire state of Shirvan was in his control. A peace was reached with the little sultanate whereby she paid 75 ducats in reparations to the Horde and for the third time in her existence submitted to the Golden Horde as a vassal. Yulbaris was determined that it should be the last.
After this victory good news became scarcer and scarcer for the Khan. Tabaristan, the highly valuable province was lost in April.
On the western front Jedisan was invaded and on the central front Kolkhis (Georgia) was laid siege by a considerable Ottoman force that, like cockroaches resisted repeated attempts at extermination.
Elbruz was laid siege by a force of eighteen thousand Transylvanians. Their siege succeeded in capturing the province early into 1589 and only a month later Kolkhis was captured.
The war was going badly. Golden Horde armies were regularly losing to the enemy. Twenty thousand cavalry attempted to lift the siege of Jedisan that was being conducted by only five thousand Ottomans. The attack was a disaster as the Ottomans used an innovative technique of leaving a dummy siege about the walls of the city. As the Horde's army approached, the Ottomans ambushed from behind and quickly repelled the Tatars.
As Jedisan was lost at the end of the year Yulbaris withdrew to Astrakhan to analyse the war and find a tactic to turn the tide.
. I'm planning to iron out the borders. Crimea, Khwarizm and Karakum are all Ottoman pockets within my territory so will be handy to remove, I hope.
