Line Of Fire (11/41) : Genghis Khan Mongol Conqueror "1206"
For educational purposes
The story of the Universal Ruler - the man who succeeded his chieftain father at age 13 and had to struggle to overcome hostile tribes.
Who then could have predicted the glories to come ? His military victories included the conquest of China and other empires stretching from the Black Sea to the pacific.
A remarkable administrator and ruler, Genghis Khans system of khanites- the means by which he ruled conquered lands - lasted for more than 400 years after his death.
The story of the Universal Ruler - the man who succeeded his chieftain father at age 13 and had to struggle to overcome hostile tribes.
Who then could have predicted the glories to come ? His military victories included the conquest of China and other empires stretching from the Black Sea to the pacific.
A remarkable administrator and ruler, Genghis Khans system of khanites- the means by which he ruled conquered lands - lasted for more than 400 years after his death.
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LearningTranscript
00:00In the 13th century, a new and devastating plague struck at the heart of Central Asia,
00:10rippling outwards to envelop the lands from China to Poland.
00:15This was a plague of unbridled terror, not of rats and disease, but of men.
00:21The Mongolian tribes exploded out of the Central Asian steppes with a ferocity never seen before.
00:27A campaign of bloodthirsty conquest that would last for the next 100 years.
00:34The Mongolian battlefield tactics and their remarkable courage and resilience have become
00:39the stuff of legend.
00:40They were simply natural warriors.
00:43But it took one leader to unite and lead them on the path to power.
00:49That leader was Genghis Khan.
01:19I think Genghis Khan's legacy today is his reputation as a great conqueror and ruthless
01:47ruler.
01:49Under him, the Mongols were able to sweep out of Central Asia and take over most of
01:55the known world.
01:57I'd say that when Genghis Khan was alive, he would claim that he had conquered the world
02:02and conquered the people who talked 720 languages.
02:06And he conquered the states of five different colors so that he proclaimed Mongolia's independence
02:10throughout the world.
02:12One of the common myths about Genghis Khan or Genghis Khan is that he was a sort of barbaric
02:18strongman who managed to somehow unite fierce and free nomadic tribes into this horde that
02:25then rampaged across Europe.
02:27But the reality is something I think much more interesting.
02:30So I think we could compare him to someone more like William the Conqueror.
02:35He's a nobleman effectively.
02:36He's an aristocrat.
02:38And at that time, steppe society was divided between aristocrats and commoners.
02:44And high office was only held by aristocrats.
02:50Genghis Khan was born about the year 1167 with the original name of Temujin.
02:56His father was a local chieftain and nephew of the former khan, or ruler, of the Mongol
03:01tribe.
03:03At the tender age of nine, his family escaped to safety after a rival tribe murdered his
03:08father.
03:09And it was while he was in exile that Temujin met Borte, his bride-to-be.
03:15The young man was given a black sable coat to use as a dowry.
03:20He used the coat to buy influence and favor with tribal elders and with the leader of
03:25the Karaites, a tribe in central Mongolia.
03:31The tribal leader took Temujin under his wing, but the new alliance was tested when
03:35the Merkit, a rival tribe from the north, raided the Karaite camp and kidnapped Borte.
03:44Mustering all the support he could, Temujin and his new tribal allies met and defeated
03:49the Merkit in battle and rescued Borte.
03:55By now, Temujin was growing in status and power, making alliances with other tribes
04:01and calling in the favors once owed to his father.
04:04In 1202, he surrounded and crushed the Tatars near the river Kalka in eastern Mongolia.
04:11In an early example of his distinctive style of military rule, he forbade his troops to
04:17loot until the Tatars had been completely crushed.
04:21He even went as far as to confiscate the spoils of those who disobeyed him.
04:27With this significant victory under his belt, and helped by the constant warring between
04:32other tribes, Temujin became the dominant figure in the region.
04:36Soon other Mongol leaders had pledged their allegiance to him and had proclaimed him universal
04:42ruler, Genghis Khan.
04:45History has forever known him as Genghis Khan.
04:49I think that Genghis Khan's success really depends upon his ability to produce, plunder,
04:57conquests for his supporters.
05:01And the wider his territories grew, the more he was able to recruit subject nations who
05:07also benefited from Mongol expansion.
05:10Although we might think of the steppes as marginal, faraway, distant places, and it's
05:15very easy to think of them as remote and desolate, actually these are centres of power.
05:21They might look geographically very dispersed, you might have difficulty seeing settlements
05:25and so on.
05:26But taken together, if you gathered together the horses and the people from these steppelands,
05:32you had the most enormously powerful capabilities militarily.
05:39In the year 1206, with most of the Mongol tribes united under one ruler for the first
05:44time in their history, Genghis Khan was declared king, or Khan, of Mongolia.
05:49His reputation alone earned him many followers, who, weary of constant tribal conflict, flocked
05:55to his banner to share the comradeship and the unrivalled spoils of his military campaigns.
06:04The charismatic new king was physically very different to most of his Mongol subjects.
06:09He was comparatively tall and powerfully built, with piercing grey-green eyes.
06:15Sure as he could be of his domestic position, Genghis was able to set his sights on foreign
06:20conquests, and he first cast his eyes towards neighbouring China.
06:26Conquest may have seemed impossible, even suicidal to attempt, but in the early 13th
06:31century, China was stricken with internal divisions.
06:35The nation was carved up into three fragments, the Qin Empire in the north, the Xiexie in
06:41the northwest, and the Song state in the south.
06:44A lot hinged on the success of the Chinese campaign.
06:48It would be the Mongols' first test against a land of settlers.
06:52They could not be certain that their nomad battle tactics would work.
06:59Genghis was well prepared before he set off to fight the Qin state.
07:03Firstly, to test the Mongol army, his commanders fought and took the Tamgut and Urgut states
07:09without him taking the field.
07:11This meant that Genghis was able to assess his army's strengths and weaknesses.
07:18He also used the Tamgut and Urgut campaigns to practice and refine his methods for attacking
07:24and destroying fortified places, and using their resources to build and test his siege
07:29engines.
07:31So Genghis was well prepared to face the Qin Empire.
07:37After subduing the weakest of the three empires, the Xiexie, in a brief campaign during 1209,
07:43Genghis Khan turned on the Qin state in 1211.
07:48Armed with 180,000 men, the Mongol force plundered and looted to within 25 miles of Beijing.
07:55However, the Mongol advance was slowed by one weakness that would haunt them for years
08:00to come, the inability to besiege fortified cities.
08:07An aspect of war that was new to the Mongols, Genghis Khan and his men struggled at first
08:12to adapt their battlefield tactics to the requirements of siege warfare.
08:17But Genghis Khan was unafraid of new ideas, so with the aid of Chinese prisoners and their
08:22knowledge of engineering, he had siege machines built and troops specially trained for besieging
08:27cities.
08:28The new tactics worked handsomely as the cities of Hebei, Shandong and Shanxi all fell.
08:39Genghis improved the engineering part of his army by utilizing the skills of the artisans
08:44and craftsmen of the lands he conquered.
08:48Members of the Mongol force would search for any advantages in armaments that the defeated
08:52enemy possessed, and instead of shutting it down, would develop the technology and
09:00channel it back into their own force.
09:06By doing this, the more people the Mongols conquered, the greater the improvements in
09:10their army's capabilities.
09:17In 1214, the exhausted Chinese emperor finally surrendered, giving his daughter to Genghis
09:23Khan along with 1,000 child slaves, 3,000 horses and vast amounts of gold, silver and
09:31silk.
09:32Beijing threw its gates open to the Mongols, who showed no mercy as they savagely ransacked
09:39the city.
09:43With the capital safely conquered, Genghis Khan felt confident enough to leave one of
09:47his generals to oversee the rest of the China campaign.
09:55So in the spring of 1216, he decided to focus his attention on Central Asia.
10:03By this time, the most western reaches of the Mongol territory shared borders with the
10:07Islamic state of Khwarazm, a vast but disorganized empire covering modern-day Iran.
10:14Its leader, Shah Muhammad, had foolishly executed a caravan of Mongol traders at Uttar, and
10:20had then made matters worse by having the envoy sent to his court to demand an explanation
10:25put to death.
10:27With these ruthless murders, the Shah had signed his own death warrant and signaled
10:31the end of his empire.
10:35The response of Genghis Khan was chillingly curt.
10:39You have chosen war.
10:41That will happen which will happen, and what it is to be we know not.
10:49The success of the Mongol military machine lay in its disciplined, skilled and well-equipped
10:54army.
10:55At the heart of the Mongol army was the horse, which was not only crucial to the army but
11:00central to the Mongol way of life.
11:03Mongol children were taught to ride horses from a very early age, and horse thieves were
11:08summarily executed.
11:12With saddles and stirrups, Mongol riders had all the stability they needed when shooting
11:17arrows on horseback at high speed.
11:20As a result, it was possible to inflict heavy, sometimes crippling losses on an enemy during
11:25the skirmish phase of battle, long before the main armies actually clashed in combat.
11:31A herd of horses, if you like, was a supercarrier at that time.
11:39Thousands of horses meant the ability to move and strike much more quickly than the agricultural
11:46and urban defenders could catch up with you.
11:50One of the key Mongol techniques was to use not just one or two horses, but whole strings
11:55of remounts.
11:56So a single soldier would often lead several horses, and this allowed them to change horses
12:03when the first horse was tired and to keep moving.
12:06This allowed unparalleled mobility.
12:08They were able to cover the sorts of distances that in medieval times armies couldn't usually
12:13hope to cover.
12:17Advances 50, 60, 70 miles a day were recorded for whole Mongol armies, and these were enormously
12:23quick, especially when they're kept up over many days, so that in some cases Mongols could
12:28move ahead of the news of their arrival.
12:31They'd appear unexpectedly in front of a town or city before the messengers had even had
12:37a chance to arrive from their previous conquest.
12:43Each Mongol cavalryman was equipped with a horn and sinew bow that gave an impressive
12:48firing range of around 300 metres.
12:51Two types of arrows were kept in separate quivers, 30 light arrows for firing at a distance
12:57and 30 heavily tipped arrows for use at close range.
13:01Some arrows even had incendiary heads.
13:04Nomadic life was a perfect training for warfare.
13:09Everyone was a consummate horseman and also knew how to use a strong bow.
13:16This meant that they were very mobile and could put down literally a barrage of arrows
13:21on an enemy.
13:23In addition, the Great Khan sponsored something called the Great Hunt, in which everybody
13:28was encouraged to go out and round up a huge quantity of game.
13:33This encircling manoeuvre could then be translated into military strategy and used to defeat enemies.
13:44Genghis's army had a 10 system, so he had divisions of 10,000, 1,000, 100 and platoons
13:51of 10.
13:53This system meant that his army was easy to control and formations were organised effectively.
13:59Also one division had the job of scouting ahead and collecting information on the geography
14:04of the area they were to attack, where would be the best place to attack the enemy force,
14:09how many men made up the force and what were its strengths and weaknesses.
14:18The Mongolian army was very disciplined and if one soldier disobeyed an order then the
14:23whole 10 or platoon was punished.
14:27That's why Genghis's soldiers tried not to make any mistakes as they did not want their
14:31fellow soldiers punished because of them.
14:35This is why discipline was a strong characteristic of Genghis's force.
14:42Mongol warriors were issued with small swords, a wickerwork shield, two or three javelins
14:48and a dagger strapped to the inside of the left forearm.
14:53Each soldier wore a raw silk undershirt, which acted as a protective vest.
14:58If a warrior was struck by an arrow, the silk would wrap itself around the arrowhead, reducing
15:03the impact and enabling it to be removed easily and painlessly.
15:08Each man was also issued with a waterproof hide saddlebag, which could be inflated for
15:13river crossings.
15:15The bag contained enough supplies and rations to enable a Mongol warrior to exist completely
15:20independently of the main army.
15:24What the Mongols also possessed was the psychological weapons of terror.
15:29They were utterly ruthless, they devastated territory, and this meant that people who
15:34faced them in war were already half-beaten, you might say, before they encountered them.
15:40We could also compare it, if you like, to modern strategies.
15:44After all, at the time, that was an accepted sort of approach to strategy and to politics.
15:51Much as mutually assured deterrence was so important in the Cold War, we've got a situation
15:56where over the heads of the various nations was held the destruction of whole cities in
16:02both cases, so deterrence also provided a key plank in Genghis Khan's strategy to convince
16:11the subject and his conquered subjects that if they did revolt, they would not be spared.
16:20Not only was the individual Mongol warrior well-prepared and equipped for battle, the
16:25army of which he was a part was also a highly organised fighting machine.
16:30But it would not be long before this effective fighting force would meet its first challenge
16:35on the banks of the Indus River.
16:38Although the Khawazam Shah ruled a great empire, it should not be forgotten that this was a
16:43recent creation of fairly uncertain loyalty, and this explains perhaps why Shah Mohammed
16:50didn't really want to engage the Mongols in battle in 1219.
16:56Another problem was that he had very extended front along hundreds of miles on his eastern
17:01border.
17:02He had to spread out his defensive army formations because he really had very poor intelligence
17:10when it came to what Genghis Khan's intentions or routes were.
17:18Genghis Khan left Mongolia in the spring of 1219 with an army of 150,000 men.
17:25Meanwhile his enemy, Shah Mohammed, deployed 300,000 well-equipped troops along a 500-mile
17:31stretch of what is now the Jaxartes River.
17:34But still, the Khawazamian border was dangerously vulnerable.
17:39From 1219 to 1220, in a sustained, highly-coordinated three-pronged attack, the Mongols systematically
17:46destroyed the Shah's empire.
17:49Genghis Khan and his master tactician, Subedai, had devised an extraordinary plan to conquer
17:57the Khawazamian empire.
17:58They divided into separate columns.
18:00These were separate independent armies that were able to move over hundreds of miles to
18:05attack the Khawazam Shah's empire from different directions.
18:10One column was led by Genghis and Subedai himself.
18:15Another was led by his eldest son, Jochi.
18:17And Jochi's job was to move up and down the eastern border of the Khawazam Shah's realm,
18:23creating a defensive screen, if you like, raiding towns, taking cities.
18:29And this generated a real sensation of panic on one side, pressure on one side of the Khawazam
18:37Shah's realm.
18:40But at the same time, he was being outflanked through the Kizilkum desert itself, which
18:46was thought to be impossibly inhospitable and quite impassable.
18:50Genghis Khan and Subedai found a route to emerge at the gates of Bukhara, where the
18:56Khawazam Shah was, quite unexpectedly.
19:02After two days, the Mongols made their move.
19:0750,000 Tajik infantry poured out of the city to meet the Mongols, but resistance was futile.
19:15Five days later, the king's uncle defected, along with tens of thousands of mercenaries,
19:21joining the seething Mongol horde to batter down the city gates.
19:25The Shah managed to escape his Mongol pursuers, only in the spring of 1221 to die a broken
19:32and defeated man on a remote island in the Caspian Sea.
19:39In the summer of 1221, Genghis scaled the Hindu Kush to search the Khawazamian king's
19:45son, Shah Jalal ad-Din, who, it was rumoured, was trying to raise troops near Ghazni in
19:52Afghanistan.
19:55Genghis Khan sent 40,000 men ahead to gather intelligence.
20:01North of Kabul at Pawan, the Mongol reconnaissance troops had been beaten by a force twice the
20:06strength of their own.
20:08But by the time Genghis Khan had reached Ghazni, defections had caused the Khawazamian army
20:13to shrink to half its former size.
20:17In an attempt to regroup, Jalal ad-Din had fled to the Indus Valley, but this time the
20:23Mongol forces were in hot pursuit.
20:26They caught up with Jalal ad-Din and his soldiers at night as they made preparations to ford
20:31the river Indus the following day.
20:36At daybreak, 50,000 Mongol warriors faced 50,000 Khawazamian troops.
20:43Then the Shah ordered Emir Malik on his right wing to charge the Mongol left, driving it
20:49back.
20:50Seeing that the Mongols' right flank did not seem to pose a threat, Jalal ad-Din weakened
20:55his left flank to reinforce Malik's success on the right.
21:00The Shah then prepared to land what he believed would be the fatal blow for the Mongol army.
21:06Leading from the front, Jalal ad-Din headed an enormous charge aimed at breaking the Mongol
21:11center.
21:14Now the Shah had the chance to avenge his father's death.
21:17He directed his troops straight at Genghis Khan himself.
21:21For the first time, the hitherto unthinkable prospect of defeat for the great leader and
21:25his army was very real indeed.
21:30In the great battle with the Khawazam Shah, Genghis Khan actually adopted quite a cautious
21:36strategy and allowed Jalal ad-Din to launch an attack on him.
21:41Of course, this was a deception, and so it meant that the Islamic army was really sucked
21:47into the center of the Mongol army, allowing an outflanking maneuver which really had not
21:52been anticipated.
21:57As Muhammad and his men thundered into the Mongol center, Genghis Khan, leaving his hard-pressed
22:01center to defend themselves, led his imperial guard in a charge so fierce that it completely
22:08shattered the force of Emir Malik, who had previously been so successful on the Mongolian
22:13left flank.
22:15Then came the tactical masterstroke.
22:18Unknown to Jalal ad-Din, Genghis Khan had also ordered a division detached from his
22:23right wing to scale the mountains, encircling the Khawazamian left flank.
22:28It was this force that fell upon the Shah's men, who were unprepared for the sudden savage
22:34assault.
22:35Soon, the Mongols had blocked the king's retreat to the south.
22:44The role of the respective leaders in battle is a little bit difficult to identify from
22:49the sources that we have today, but I think we must see Genghis Khan as having the kind
22:56of energy and ability to direct his forces which the Muslim commander seems to have lacked.
23:04In essence, though, when Jalal ad-Din committed himself to a headlong charge, he lost command
23:09of his ability to run the battle, you might say.
23:13It's important to remember that in this period, communication is essentially personal.
23:16It's tempting to view Genghis Khan as a man who could sort of move the pieces on the chessboard
23:22at will, and perhaps if anybody could command battlefield troops in this area, he did as
23:29well as any.
23:30But in actual fact, it was more like a clockwork toy that you wound up and then set on its
23:36way, hoping that people would carry out their instructions to the letter.
23:43Jalal ad-Din himself had escaped the carnage, but his army had been torn apart.
23:48Doubtless concluding that discretion was the better part of valour, he flung off his armour,
23:53mounted a horse, and with 700 lucky survivors, forded the Indus River to escape to freedom.
24:00In his desperation to flee from the Mongolian army, Shah Muhammad had been forced to leave
24:05behind his young family, and the unfortunate infants were shown no pity.
24:10They were unceremoniously flung into the swirling waters of the Indus River.
24:15The eldest was just eight years old.
24:21It was in the year 1227 that Genghis Khan finally breathed his last.
24:27He was 65 years old, and he left behind an empire that stretched from the East China
24:32Coast to the Caspian Sea.
24:36The first Mongol incursions had already been made into Russia, and the states of modern
24:40Pakistan and northern India conquered and ransacked.
24:47The driving force behind Mongol expansion in the 13th century has to be the standard
24:53nomadic desire for plunder, for slaves, for domination, managed by a leader who can deliver
25:04that, who can organise the balance of power between conflicting tribes, between ambitious
25:10warlords and so on.
25:12And so Genghis Khan has to play a big role in ensuring Mongol success, but if you like,
25:19he uses the natural forces of his type of communities, the nomadic tribes, in order
25:25to achieve empire.
25:27But he was also able to do something else.
25:29He was able to organise the resources of the regions he conquered to generate springboards
25:34for further conquests.
25:36So this is, if you like, not just a victory of wild barbarians from the steppes over civilisation,
25:43nothing of that case at all.
25:45Instead it's a victory, if you like, of long traditions of statehood, of careful diplomatic
25:53leadership, and of a real coming of age of steppe leadership, where Genghis Khan was
25:59able to make use of the conquered nations as well to increase the size and extent of
26:05his empire.
26:10With Genghis Khan gone, it was eight years before the great Mongolian war council called
26:15the Quiraltai assembled to determine the next stage of Mongolian expansion.
26:21They decided to turn their attention to Russia and Europe.
26:26It's true to say that by the 1230s Western Europe was pretty well uninformed about the
26:32danger of the Mongol threat.
26:34The Russian principalities had a much keener awareness of the presence of Mongol military
26:41power because they had been defeated in the Battle of the Kalka River, which lies just
26:47to the north of the Sea of Azov, in 1223.
26:52But then the Mongols left because Genghis called back his commander Subodai, perhaps
26:58suspecting him of getting too big for his boots, and it may be that the Russians thought
27:03the nomadic threat had gone away, as it had done frequently in the past, and certainly
27:07they did not unify and present a determined front when the Mongols returned 20 years later.
27:18Politically and strategically, the Mongols could not have timed their campaign any better.
27:22The struggle between the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the Pope was nearing its
27:26climax, weakening any hope of assembling a united European force to repel the eastern
27:32invaders.
27:36This was more the last attempt by Europe's monarchs to form a united front against an
27:40alien enemy. The Fifth Crusade had collapsed in disarray some years earlier.
27:47This was a time when Europe was bitterly divided. All the monarchs of the region ruled sets
27:54of nobles who were more or less independent from them. So there were real problems with
27:58Europe getting its act together in the face of a Mongol threat.
28:01There was a basic division along religious grounds between the Latin West and the Orthodox
28:07East. The Crusaders had actually conquered Constantinople in 1204, and in so doing destroyed
28:13the balance of power which had been maintained by the Byzantine state for eight centuries.
28:20This meant that the nomadic dwellers of the steppe and the Islamic East, with its great
28:26city-states, were played off against one another. This was something that the Westerners simply
28:32couldn't manage. Crusades were useful military tools, but they often had specific objectives
28:40and also they were quite temporary acclamations of troops. So they didn't necessarily help
28:46in the long term.
28:50Thanks to raids made in the early 13th century, the Mongols probably knew as much about their
28:54prospective enemies as technical limitations of the age would allow. This intelligence
29:00was used to good effect on the campaign trail, with light cavalry leading the way up to 100
29:05miles ahead of the main force, thereby decreasing the possibility of any unwelcome surprises.
29:12The Europeans, on the other hand, were in blissful ignorance of the terror lying in
29:16store for them. Rumours had reached them about a new military force destroying parts of the
29:22Islamic world, and these were welcomed as confirmation of the legend of Presta John,
29:27who would one day come to the assistance of the besieged Christian nations battling the
29:32Islamic powers in Spain and the Middle East. Others thought that they were probably pagans,
29:38but held the tantalising idea that the Mongols might be converted to Christianity and brought
29:43into a giant coalition to crush the Muslim world.
29:48The legend of Presta John was that somewhere far to the east, on the other side of the
29:54Islamic nations by which the West felt so threatened, there was a great Christian king.
30:03When the Mongols appeared and were attacking and destroying Islamic states, people in the
30:08West thought, ah, at last, the Christian king has come to save us. But of course it was
30:14a complete fantasy, and when the Mongols themselves arrived, they proved to be worse
30:19than the Islamic nations.
30:22Marco Polo states that the material, the reality behind the myth, was actually a man called
30:28Wang Khan. Now, there was a Christian ruler of a steppe polity, Toril Khan of the Karait,
30:36and Toril himself was a Nestorian Christian, and Nestorians were a sect of Eastern Christians
30:44who'd split very early on when a patriarch of Constantinople had to leave as a result
30:50of religious disputes in Constantinople and fled into the east.
30:57When the armies marched from the east, the Mongols included a number of different Karait
31:02peoples. Some of these were Nestorian Christians. So the strange reality, the weird reality
31:08is that the reality behind these myths ended up as being the fearsome Mongol conquerors
31:15from the steppes of Asia.
31:22After spending the summer of 1236 subduing the Bulgars and the Kipchaks, the Mongols
31:27decided to mount a military campaign that hundreds of years later would be beyond the
31:31armies of Napoleon and Hitler. Once the ravages of winter had taken hold, the Mongols invaded
31:38Russia.
31:40The Mongols were different sorts of invaders. They were very well adapted at moving around
31:45in winter. They came from the freezing steppes of Mongolia, even colder than the Russian
31:50steppes, and the frozen rivers actually formed highways through the otherwise very difficult
31:58terrain of woods and hills, poor roads. So what appears to be a barrier, a river, can
32:05turn into a highway, and the Mongols used this. Their ponies were not shod, they could
32:11keep their grip on the slippery ice, and they used these channels to move through Russia
32:18to surprise their Russian opponents to emerge outside towns and cities, often before the
32:25news had got to those cities that the Mongol invasion was underway.
32:30The Mongols had a supremely efficient intelligence system which enabled them to infiltrate the
32:37countries and the courts of potential victim states, if you like, and to choose the moment
32:43to attack. The Russian principalities did not help themselves because they allowed their
32:49nomadic allies, the Pelopians, to execute Mongol ambassadors, and this really was an
32:57important stimulus to the Mongols turning their beady eyes upon Russia.
33:05Thirteenth century Russia was in disarray, with most of its population living in about
33:09a dozen principalities sharing little but a common religion. After crossing the river
33:14Volga with the force of 120,000 men, Genghis Khan's grandson Batu and Subedai, a veteran
33:21commander of the Khwarezmian campaign, carved through central Russia with the aim of driving
33:26a wedge between the principalities of Novgorod and Kiev.
33:31The cities of Ryazan, Moscow, Kolomna, Suzdal and Vladimir all received demands for surrender
33:39from the rampant Mongolian invaders. Each and every city refused to surrender, believing
33:46no doubt that, like other nomadic invaders before them, the Mongolians would not be able
33:51to break down the city walls. The Mongolian army thought otherwise and swiftly
33:59set about battering their way in with their siege machines. Every city was sacked, plundered
34:09and burned, and its inhabitants put to the sword.
34:16The Mongols are famous, if you like, for the great terror that they inspired in their enemies,
34:22and there's no getting away from the fact that this was an element, a part of their
34:27strategy. Genghis Khan was famous for being very resolute when it came to enforcing what
34:33he thought of as the honourable surrender of cities. If a city surrendered straight
34:39away, it was almost always left unharmed. Plundering might take place, but it was generally
34:44controlled and well-ordered, and often there wasn't any substantial plundering. If cities
34:49resisted, they risked being annihilated, and worst of all was if a city surrendered and
34:56then revolted. In this case, the Mongol forces made a point of annihilating the population,
35:03including women and children. So there's no doubt that this was important, and of course
35:09if a Mongol envoy appears at a city demanding surrender, people were bound to take it pretty
35:15seriously when they'd heard about the fates of other cities. But I think we have to get
35:19this in perspective. It seems barbaric, of course it was, but it was also not unknown
35:25at the time as a fairly standard tactic. Four months into the campaign, the Mongols
35:32discovered one of Russia's most formidable natural defences, as in the spring thaw of
35:371237, the ground transformed itself into a bottomless quagmire of mud. The appalling
35:44conditions underfoot forced them to abandon their main objective in northern Russia, and
35:49so Novgorod was spared. Batu and Sobodai took the opportunity to rest their weary troops,
35:58and it was not until the summer of 1240 that they resumed the Russian campaign. The power
36:09of the rejuvenated Mongol army was undiminished, and the area around Kiev was devastated in
36:14the same way as much of central Russia had been in early 1238. In early December of that
36:21year, Kiev itself was stormed, and although it was by far the largest and richest of all
36:27Russian cities, it succumbed after only two days of savage fighting, and was razed to
36:33the ground. Only the Cathedral of St. Sophia, a symbol of the faith shared by all Russians,
36:39was spared.
36:43The Mongols were very tolerant of different religions. Their own background was pagan,
36:47if you like, eclectic. They were quite happy to mix one religion with another. The Mongol
36:54imperial capital of Karakorum, for example, eventually had chapels, churches, mosques,
36:59Buddhist temples, all in the same location. So this became, if you like, one of the diplomatic
37:05cards which Genghis Khan was able to play. It was well known, and he made sure that it
37:10was well known in the surrounding regions, that the Khan was tolerant of all sorts of
37:15religion.
37:18Genghis could conquer people with the sword, but couldn't conquer their minds. So he decided
37:25to play with religion. In Karakorum, he gave representatives of many different faiths the
37:32freedom to practice their religions. By doing this, he thought the people of the lands he
37:41controlled would be less hostile to the Mongols, and enable his rule to continue for many years
37:50to come.
37:58With Kiev in ruins, and the rest of western Ukraine in tatters, Batu consolidated his
38:06forces in southeastern Poland, and it was here that Subodai revealed his plans for his
38:12most daring campaign yet. An invasion of Hungary, with 100,000 men, by way of the Carpathian
38:19mountains. Unstable Hungary offered excellent grazing land for the horses of the Mongolian
38:26cavalry. The same fertile land had been used by Attila the Hun some 800 years earlier.
38:33In any case, Hungary would have to be crushed if the Mongolian drive westward was to continue.
38:40Subodai's strategic plan to invade Hungary was daring and vast. The campaign called for
38:47a force of about 20,000 to invade Poland, acting as the army's northern flank. Subodai
38:53would lead a long-range group through the Romanian plains and up the Danube valley
38:58to attack Hungary from the south. Bela IV, the young Hungarian king, gathered an army
39:05at Buda, later to become Budapest, to face the Mongolian invasion. He may even have been
39:11confident of success. After all, the Hungarian army was well prepared and trained. And anyway,
39:17the Mongolians would first have to cross the treacherous Carpathian mountains. Any
39:25hope that the mountains would slow the Mongolian advance was ended on the 14th of March 1241,
39:32when Bela received the unwelcome news that the Mongols had not only scaled the Carpathian
39:37mountains, they were advancing towards Buda at a rate of 50 miles a day. Bela's position
39:45was even worse than he imagined, for unbeknown to him, a second Mongol force under Batu was
39:53heading towards him from the west. By the end of March, the Mongol armies had reunited
40:02outside Pest. In panic, King Bela sent his wife to Vienna. His barons, an unruly and
40:10disloyal collection, were not slow to spot an opportunity, and made a series of demands
40:17to the king before they would pledge to fight. Eventually, the stage seemed set for a bloody
40:26and momentous battle. It was then that the Mongol army seemed to vanish into thin air.
40:34In the context of the Hungarian campaign of 1241, the Mongols' feigned retreat really
40:43was a classic tactic. They were capable of doing this at a tactical level, their horse
40:47archers riding forward and then seemingly running away and drawing people into a trap
40:52or an ambush, but they also did it at a strategic level by advancing into Hungary and then retiring
40:59to some well-watered grazing lands and waiting for the Hungarian king to come and attack
41:04them. On the 10th of April, the Mongols retreated
41:09to Mohi, near the Carpathian Mountains. With plentiful grazing alongside the river Sajo,
41:15abundant marshes and a forest canopy, the Mongol army simply set up camp and waited.
41:22They had found a battlefield that suited them perfectly. The trap had been set, and it was
41:29completed when Subodai led 30,000 men around and behind the Hungarian army, leaving it
41:36completely surrounded. Sadly for Bela, he remained in complete ignorance of the Mongolian
41:42movements. King Bela of Hungary had very poor intelligence
41:49of Mongol movements. In part, this was his fault, because his Kuman allies, who were
41:55nomads themselves, were quite capable of rapid movement and discovering what the Mongol
42:01intentions were, but they simply weren't trusted by the Western Hungarian nobility, and in
42:08fact had been expelled as fifth columnists, if you like. So King Bela simply had very
42:15poor intelligence because he didn't use the tools at hand to improve his options.
42:25On the 11th of April 1241, Batu's men, although vastly outnumbered by the Hungarian army,
42:32began their slow advance. Even by their standards, the Mongols were facing fearful numerical
42:38odds, and they were beginning to suffer terrible casualties when Subodai's force suddenly
42:43appeared to the rear of the Hungarian positions. They surged forward behind a hail of arrows,
42:49and before long the Hungarian army had been driven back into their own camp, now superior
42:55numbers meant nothing. Hungarian morale began to collapse.
43:01The Hungarians were trapped in their fortified camp under a constant murderous barrage of
43:06catapult projectiles. However, the Mongols did not storm the Hungarian positions. Instead,
43:13they formed lines opposite the camp that were punctuated with gaps. Many Hungarians, seized
43:19by panic, made a frantic dash to escape through the gaps in the Mongol line, presenting easy
43:26targets for the pursuing Mongol archers, who picked them off one by one as they surged
43:32through. Some Hungarians, including the Knight's Templar, chose to stand their ground and die
43:40fighting for the last man. King Bela himself managed to escape with a handful of survivors
43:46to the Croatian island of Trogir. Behind him lay an army in ruins and a battlefield soaked
43:54with blood. Of the 100,000 strong Hungarian army, 70,000 men had been killed and 25,000
44:02had been taken captive. After a break of eight months, the Mongols
44:10resumed their campaign on Christmas Day, 1241, by advancing into western Hungary. Clearly,
44:16Austria and Croatia were firmly in their sights. The city of Zagreb was sacked and preparations
44:22were being made to besiege Vienna when fate came to take a hand.
44:28Fortune favoured Europe because in 1241, the Khan, son of Genghis Khan, Ugedei Khan, died
44:36back in the Mongolian capital, far away in Karakorum. And the Mongol generals who were
44:42leading the attack on Europe withdrew their armies and returned east to work out who would
44:49succeed Ugedei Khan as the new leader of this imperial juggernaut of the Mongolian Empire.
44:56And they took their armies with them. They might need them for a trial of strength if
45:01this dispute became violent. And so Poland and Hungary were abandoned.
45:08Europe had been spared by pure chance. The Mongols never threatened the west again.
45:17One of the abiding questions of history is whether the Mongols could have conquered western
45:21Europe if the great Khan had not died when he did. One argument is that once they ran
45:27out of the grazing land, which was necessary to support a nomadic army, and you don't
45:32really find that east of the Hungarian plain, that they wouldn't have been able to maintain
45:37the logistical support. In contrast to that, if you look at the way the Mongols conquered
45:42China, they adapted within a couple of decades to fighting a fortress-based warfare, and
45:50so maybe they could have done it in the west. But they were getting a very long way from
45:55their Asian and steppe land heartland. And at some point, what had already been conquered
46:03became an important enough prize worthy of internal dissent and squabble. So by that
46:11point, if you like, the Mongol Empire was already on the verge of breaking into its
46:16constituent parts. And that's in fact what happened over the next few decades.
46:21So maybe Europe would have been ruled by the Mongols, but there's a good chance, I
46:28think, that even if Ögedein had not died, that the Mongol conquests might have stopped
46:34somewhere in central Europe, rather than running right through to the Atlantic coast.
46:42The next war council convened by the great Khan Manku in 1251 decided on twin campaigns
46:49against Song China and the Islamic empires of the Middle East. It was during the Middle
46:55Eastern campaign that a Mongol army 25,000 strong that was advancing on Egypt was met
47:01and defeated in battle. Even though they were crushed by sheer weight of numbers, such a
47:07defeat was without precedent, and the myth of Mongol invincibility was shattered.
47:14Under the inspired leadership of the first great Mongol leader Genghis Khan, the Mongolian
47:23Empire expanded at a rate never before witnessed in human history. Dismissed as nomad barbarians
47:30by the Islamic and Western worlds, the Mongolian army proved themselves to be adaptable, resourceful,
47:37astute and disciplined. By the year 1300, the Mongol Empire stretched from the eastern
47:44Polish border to the Sea of Japan. Genghis Khan summed up perfectly the philosophy of
47:52the Mongolian soldier. His words provide a chilling reminder of why the Mongolian warrior
47:58was so feared by his enemies.
48:00The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob
48:07them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses
48:15and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.
48:30Thank you for watching!