Golden Horde

The Golden Horde was a Tatar state established by a grandson of Ghengis Khan named Batu Khan.  It was one of the later [Mongol] kingdoms.

When Ghengis Khan died, he divided his kingdom (the Mongol Empire) amongst his four sons (He gave the ones he didn't like the crappy lands).

In 1236, (near when he ascended to power) Batu invaded Russia.  He quickly gained control of the steppe regions new modern-day Turkey.  He sacked nearly all of some place named Ruthenia (In all reality, this was basically Russia).  The only city that didn't fall was that of Novgorod which was left under the control of the Russian king Alexander Nevsky.  Alexander was allowed to survive because he paid tribute to the vastly superior Mongols and acknowledged their greatness.

Batu's army, called the Blue Horde invaded Poland and [Hungary].  All was going very well for them, but Khan Ogedei (the ruler of the Mongol empire) died, and Batu turned back to go deal with the sucession, and the Blue Horde broke up (and that would be the last time the Horde would ever venture so far West).

Batu established a capitol city at Sarai and ruled in relative peace from 1242 to 1255 when he died.  After his death, the Horde lost a great deal of its Mongol identity (since many Turks and other nationalities had been swallowed up).

Over the following few centuries the Horde lost its grip on Asia.  This occured largely due to numerous civil wars that erupted within the Horde's empire.  One of these civil wars lead to an Ursurping of the territory of the Blue Horde by a guy named Tokhtamysh who lead the White Horde.  He then established the Golden Horde and sacked Moscow (cause they'd been mouthy).

The Golden Horde had had the success it had largely because it did a good job of fragmenting the nations around it and pitting them against each other.  In doing so, they kept the Russians down better than anyone (except Russians themselves) have ever been capable of doing).

In 1783, after 550+ years of existence, Catherine The Great wiped the remnants of the Horde of the maps for good.

To discover how this relates to anything we might know or experience is going to be a stretch, but here's what I think: 

The Golden Horde demonstrates the damage of greed.  They over-extended their empire and in the process lost their identity.  That, mixed with their unstable method for choosing the succession of leadership, lead to an instability which inturn caused civil wars which weakened their empire.  In that weakened state, the surrounding nations rose up (Russia was arguably the strongest in its history in the centuries after they quashed the Horde) and removed them from the picture.  Had the Mongols focused more upon stability rather than empire building, perhaps they'd still be around.  It points out the need for stability to be a primary factor in a nation's outlook.