The newly risen Orthodox Muscovy stood alone against Roman Catholic Sweden in the north-west and Lithuania in the west, the Islamic Golden Horde and its successor khanates of the Crimea and Astrakhan' in the south and Kazan' in the east. Except for the western borderlands which were overwhelmingly populated by the Christian communities, Moscow was surrounded by a vast non-Christian world. It is here, on its non-Christian frontiers, that Moscow enjoyed its major military successes, acquired new confidence, crystallised its own identity, and built its first empire. In the middle of the fifteenth century several branches of the Chingisids seceded from the Golden Horde. They used traditional commercial hubs to establish new political centres on the fringes of the Golden Horde: thus emerged the khanates of the Crimea, Kazan', Astrakhan' and Siberia. Throughout the early 1550s, the envoys of various Kabardinian princes from the Piatigorsk region in the North Caucasus arrived in Astrakhan' and Moscow.