Download PDF | Da Pian Del Carpine Giovanni, Erik Hildinger - The story of the Mongols whom we call the Tartars-Branden Books (1996).
70 Pages
PREFACE
The modern state of Mongolia lies to the west and north of China. Seven hundred years ago those who spoke the Mongol language, Tungisic in origin, also lived on the steppes further north and west in what is now Russia and Siberia, and many still do. These Asian people competed for a living with their more numerous Turkic-speaking cousins and _ their occasional incursions into the civilized lands surrounding the steppes had generally had horrifying consequences for sedentary nations.
The Mongols were a nomadic people living from their herds and flocks. Thus they moved between two areas summer and winter, to find grazing for the animals. Their homes were (and some still are) gers, round felt tents easily disassembled or moved from place to place. They travelled by horse which had first been domesticated in southern Russia perhaps three thousand five hundred years ago. They fought interminably among themselves and the bow was their weapon— metal is hard to work and scarce in the steppe. In any case they were superb archers.
Mongol society, like that of other steppe peoples, was simple. The religion was shamanistic, an ancient and primitive belief in a multitude of spirits such as is found in northern Asia and among the natives of the Americas who had crossed the Bering straight from Asia so long before.
The steppe has three distinct areas. To the north a forested belt, then the great grasslands, and finally the desert regions. The better areas were the object of constant struggles among the steppe tribes, whether Mongols, Turks, Merkits, Tatars, Naimans, or any of a dozen nations who are only names today. The trigger of such a conflict might be a political shift among the tribes, or a period of drought, a common occurrence on the steppe, which caused one tribe to seek better territory at the expense of another. Thus, every man was, of necessity, a warrior. War is the profession of the steppe and, among pre-industrial peoples, no one is better at it. Europe knew this from the incursions of the Huns and Magyars in the fifth and eighth centuries; it was revisited by this scourge in the thirteenth, and it was stunned.
In April 1241 Mongol armies had killed some one hundred thousand European knights and men-at-arms in Poland and Hungary. They had beaten every western army they had come against. Henry II of Silesia was dead, Boleslav IV, Count of the Poles, was in hiding, and the kingdom of Hungary no longer existed; its king, Bela IV, was fleeing to the Adriatic coast pursued by a Mongol army determined to kill him. As for the country itself, the Mongols began to systematically strip and depopulate it and to strike coins. It belonged to Batu, grandson of Jinghiz Khan, the Emperor of All Men.
Meanwhile, Pope Gregory IX and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II prepared to continue their personal war while Mongol scouts approached Venice. There was no army the Europeans could muster to oppose them. There seemed no reason to suppose that western Europe would not suffer the fate of central Europe and Russia.
In February 1241 the Mongol army had left its base in southern Russia and begun to cross the frozen rivers into central Europe. It consisted of about seventy thousand men, all of them cavalry. Nominally commanded by Batu, a grandson of Jinghiz Khan, he was guided by his grandfather's famous lieutenant, Subotai, a brilliant campaigner. This general had commanded in the campaigns against the Northern Sung of China and had helped in the destruction of the Kwarizmian Empire. He had planned the campaign against Europe for a year and the results would show.
The Mongols had defeated every major Russian principality and had spent a year resting and regrouping in what is now the Ukraine before crossing into central Europe. Their target was Hungary, though to achieve its defeat the Mongols wished to remove opposition from other quarters. To that end the Mongol army was divided into two unequal forces. The smaller part of about thirty thousand men started off first at the beginning of March and went north into Poland to draw off any support for Hungary that might be found there. It was commanded by two of Jinghiz Khan's grandsons, Baidar and Kaadan, and swept in a northward arc past the edge of the Carpathians and into Poland. The larger army of about forty thousand advanced under the command of Subotai and Batu a few days later and was itself broken into two contingents each of which entered the Carpathians by a different route and crossed into Hungary.
Mongols scouts were seen ranging Poland and Hungary and the European nobility began to muster armies. Count Boleslav IV of Poland, one of several lords who claimed to be its king, assembled one. It consisted of Polish knights, foreign knights from as far away as France and Germany, and members of the military orders. These last, such as the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers were monks who submitted to rigid personal discipline and fought as knights for the protection of the church. They were Europe's most disciplined and professional soldiers. This army numbered about thirty thousand.
Duke Henry of Silesia drew up a similar, somewhat larger army. To the south, King Bela of Hungary gathered his forces, but found it difficult as his nobles mistrusted his power and were uncooperative.
The Mongol column which had gone north began to search for resistance in Poland. Baidar and Kaadan were aware of Duke Henry's army and determined to meet and prevent it supporting Bela in Hungary in his contest with Batu and Subotai. Far to the south Subotai and Batu's forces approached the guarded Hungarian passes of the Carpathians.
After slow going in the snow for a few weeks the northern column under Baidar and Kaadan split into two. On March 18 they met the first resistance, the combined armies of Boleslav and Prince Mieceslas. The Mongols split the Europeans apart at the battle, the Poles heading south, the Slavs west. The Mongols then swept ahead to Kracow from which the inhabitants were fleeing; they burnt the city. This done, they tossed a bridge across the Oder and took Breslau only to discover that the Duke Henry of Silesia had gathered his army near Liegnitz, now Legnica in modern Poland. Henry's army numbered about forty thousand and awaited support from a Bohemian army of fifty thousand under King Wenceslas. The Mongols were outnumbered and knew of Wenceslas's approach. Baidar and Kaadan decided to attack at once before the western armies could join.
Meanwhile, in Hungary, King Bela had thought to stop the Mongol advance by cutting trees across the paths in the Carpathian mountains and by strengthening the fortress garrisons which defended the passes. He used the tune he supposed he had gained to contend with his nobles and prepare for the campaign. On March 10 he received news that the Mongols, or Tartars as he knew them, had begun to attack the passes. Four days later Nador Denes, the commander of the passes arrived to announce that they had fallen and that the Mongols were advancing. Indeed they were. They came down the mountains covering forty miles a day in the snow, a speed unlike anything the Hungarians had ever seen. Bela began to marshal his army in the German town of Pesth across the Danube from his fortress at Buda.
In Poland, Duke Henry and his Polish-German army left the safety of Liegnitz on the morning of April 9 to try to join up with Wenceslas. Instead they were confronted by the Mongol army on a plain south of Liegnitz, a place afterwards called the "Wahlstatt", or chosen place. The Europeans took up positions on level ground and prepared to fight. Their army, made up of both knights and infantry was arrayed in conventional fashion with the mounted soldiers in the van and the infantry behind.
When the engagement began the Europeans were disconcerted at the enemy's moving without battle cries or trumpets— all signals were given by pennant and standard. It was difficult to gauge the Mongols’ numbers: their formations were denser than those of the knights and they appeared half as numerous as in fact they were. The first of Duke Henry's divisions charged and was beaten back by Mongol arrows. The heavily armored knights not only could not close with the lightly equipped horse archers, they were driven into a retreat.
A second charge followed. This one, unlike the first, seemed successful, the Mongols fleeing before the knights. Encouraged, the knights pressed on their attack, eager to meet the Mongols with lance and broadsword. The enemy continued to melt away before them, evidently unable to face the charge of such heavy horsemen. However, things were not as they seemed; the knights had fallen victim to the steppe tactic of the feigned retreat. The Mongols, unlike the knights, had been taught to retreat as a tactical move and as they did so they drew the knights into a line separated from the infantry. The Mongols then swept to either side of the knights who were strung out, and showered them with arrows from their powerful composite bows. Other Mongols lay in ambush, prepared to meet the knights as they fell into the trap. Where the Mongols found the knights' armor effective against their arrows they simply shot horses. The dismounted knights were then easy prey for the Mongols who ran them down with lance or saber with little danger to themselves.
There was a final trick: smoke drifted across the battlefield between the infantry and the knights who had charged ahead so that neither force could see the other. The Europeans suspected sorcery and this explanation is found in the chronicles. The Mongols slaughtered the Europeans on their own terms and virtually annihilated them. Duke Henry was killed trying to escape and, following a Mongol custom used to count the dead, an ear was cut from each dead European. The Mongols filled nine sacks with ears. Contemporary records state twenty-five to thirty thousand of Henry's men were killed.
Wenceslas and the Bohemians prudently halted their approach and retreated to a defensive position. Baidar and Kaadan, satisfied that there was no longer any serious threat from Poland, headed south to Hungary to rejoin the other Mongol army.
On April 9, 1241, the very date of the Battle of Liegnitz, Bela left Pesth with his army of one hundred thousand to meet the Mongols who ravaged his country. Unlike Henry he would escape with his life, though for a time the Kingdom of Hungary would no longer exist.
The Hungarians advanced on the Mongols who retreated slowly ahead of them for several days. The retreat went on toward the plain of Mohi near the river Sajo where the Mongols pulled back further past woods beyond the opposite bank and disappeared. The Hungarian scouts could find no Mongols, only their horses' tracks.
Bela camped in the plain of Mohi and drew his wagons into a laager around the camp for protection. To his back and on either hand were woods. Should the Mongols wish to attack they would first have to cross the river to his front and there was only one bridge. Bela sent his brother Koloman, a capable soldier, to hold it with a thousand men.
Before light the Mongols had begun to move. They attacked the bridge, but were driven off. Meanwhile, though the Hungarians did not know it, other Mongols had moved upriver. The Mongols again attacked the bridge, but this time with catapults. Some reports tell of incendiary missiles pitched by these machines: flashing and smoking pots that disconcerted the Hungarians and drove them away. The Mongols took the bridge and by the time Bela could respond thousands of them had crossed the river ready to engage. The Hungarians charged into the mass of Mongols who, because they had little room to maneuver and were outnumbered and lightly armored, took a beating from the knights. The other Mongol force, led by Subotai, had meanwhile crossed the river unobserved. Batu received the Hungarian attack and then swept to the Hungarians’ left flank, causing them to turn. Subotai appeared at the Hungarian rear. The Europeans had been completely outmaneuvered and they pulled back to their camp where the Mongols then attacked once more with catapults throwing burning tar and naphtha. As fires and smoke spread through the camp and it became more difficult to remain there, an odd thing happened: the Mongol army showed a gap to the west. Cautiously, a few of the Hungarians left the camp to escape through it. Those who went first were allowed to pass. Others followed. Many threw down their weapons and equipment to lighten their horses' loads for the run. More and more fled. The flight quickly became uncontrollable as the Hungarians tried to race back to Pesth, a hopeless task for the city was three days away. As they ran they became strung out like the knights who had chased Baidar and Kaadan's army during its feigned retreat in Poland. What had happened to the Poles and Germans happened to the Hungarians. The Mongols rode along their flanks and shot them with arrows or rode them down and killed them with lance and saber. This went on, some say, for two days. In the end as many as sixtyfive thousand men had been killed. Bela escaped, unrecognized, and fled, ultimately to the Adriatic coast. Eight months later, for no apparent reason, the Mongols pulled out of central Europe and did not return. The withdrawal was fortunate for the west; the Europeans never grasped who the Mongols were or how they fought. Another attack might have been even more disastrous. Very little would seem to have favored Europe in such a military contest. The Mongol Empire was a unified state stretching from northern China to the Ukraine while Europe was a patchwork of states at constant odds with each other.
The nominal leader of Europe, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, never seemed particularly concerned by the Mongol threat. Frederick was called by his contemporaries Stupor Mundi, or "The Wonder of the World". A German by descent and master of most of the German world, his domains included his native Sicily where, in the thirteenth century, Greek was still spoken and where there was a significant Muslim population. Frederick spoke six languages fluently, among them Greek and Arabic. He got on well with Muslim rulers whom he considered his only cultural equals, he kept a harem, and was rumored to have written a book called De Tribus Impostoribus, or About the Three Impostors. These, so the story went, he considered to be Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. The story was false, but seems to have captured the essence of his views: it was said he did not to believe in God. Certainly he did not believe that he should be second to the pope. Furthermore he had led a crusade while excommunicated and freed Jerusalem by negotiation rather than bloodshed, something which incensed Pope Gregory-Pope Gregory was as proud as Frederick and just as determined that papal authority should not be second to Frederick's secular authority. The two had fought a bitter war for years in Italy which was still unresolved in 1241 when the Mongols swept into Europe. In fact, it may be that Frederick saw the Mongols as a force to weaken the papacy to his advantage and so did little to address it. Pope Gregory would die shortly, though the rupture between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire persisted.
So while the rulers of Europe knew, before they first encountered them, that the Mongols were a terrible threat, they could not respond effectively. Refugees from the Russian principality of Kiev had fled west into Poland from their devastated country with horrifying stories. Everyone had been stunned when Kiev had fallen. The destruction was so appalling that five years later the papal envoy Giovanni di Piano Carpini described the area surrounding the city as covered with the skulls and bones of the slaughtered townspeople.
Pope Innocent IV succeeded to the papacy in 1243, on the heels of the Mongols' withdrawal from Hungary. These Tartars might return at any time: they were, after all, just over the Polish border, holding all of Russia as a vassal state, and no army had been able to offer them effective resistance either in Europe or Russia. What is more, no one really knew who they were, what their history was, what their religion was, or how far their lands extended. European knowledge of geography at the time was extremely limited. Even the proper name of the Tartars was not known.
Innocent had inherited Gregory's war with the Emperor; the last thing he needed was a Tartar invasion. He needed to learn the Tartars' intentions, so far as that was possible, and he needed to convince them to maintain peaceful relations with the west, if this were within his power. Therefore, he decided upon an embassy to Asia to offer baptism to the Khan. The idea of offering confirmation into a parochial religion to the most powerful man on earth, without his solicitation, must sound naive to us today, however, a medieval pope was not in the business of doubting God's power, and so perhaps the Khan might accept. Besides, Innocent may have known of the tolerance that Mongols showed to all religions and may have felt that a churchman might travel in relative safety. Then too, there were the Russians. A persistent concern of the papacy was the split between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and a papal legate passing through orthodox lands could always try to reconcile the two churches. In fact, Prince Daniel of Galicia and Volhynia did agree to recognize the pope in the vain hope of western military help to free him from the Tartars.
So, on 16 April 1245 Brother Giovanni of Piano Ficaxnvee © howe ceutvy fe ot Hepeant scroey abel Carpini left Lyons at Pope Innocent IV's command on igen ned ear onc ar se ue poemaneds La a journey to the dreaded Tartars. He would not return esses Gor Hout et fee ye foot (ete OWN cannweee PPE Ke until November 1247. Explicitly, Carpini's mission was to offer baptism to the Tartars and tell them of Christianity. More important though, he was to them, find out their intentions, and report on them. He was in fact as much a spy as anything else. Brother Giovanni did as he was commanded and went to the Tartars with letters from the Pope. He could hardly have known, when he met Batu in Russia, that he would be sent three thousand miles further on into the heart of Central Asia to meet Guyuk, the Great Khan, the most powerful man in the world. When Carpini returned 11 (tin his embassy more than a year later he wrote of his trip and that work, the Historia Mongalorun,, is the first report by a European of a visit to Central Asia
Giovanni di Piano Carpini was not a young man when he undertook his mission. Born around 1180, he was over sixty years old by this time, overweight, and must seem a strange man to choose for such a task. Upon a closer look, however, he was well suited. As a young man Carpini had joined the Franciscan Order established by Francis of Assisi in Carpini's native region. He had, in fact, been a personal follower of Francis and as his career in the church progressed, Carpini was entrusted with diplomatic missions to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor. At some point Carpini had also worked in Spain, probably as Provincial.
The greatest part of his career was spent in Germany, however, where he was sent in the 1220's. He was a warden in Saxony in 1222 and became Provincial of Germany in 1228. He established Franciscan monasteries and was well known to the rulers of that part of Europe. He spoke different languages, perhaps an eastern European one (though not, apparently, Russian or Ruthenian as we see from the Historia). He had one further advantage as a friar: unlike noble ambassadors he could more easily mingle with common people and win their confidence. This was important since Carpini's brief was to find out as much as he could about the Tartars, and this meant he was to find out about their religion, clothing, habits, military techniques, government, and even the extent of their empire. Clearly, Pope Innocent grasped that many things which ought to be known might best be found out by an unprepossessing man free to wander about among the people. It is difficult to emphasize how little was known of the Tartars before Carpini's expedition, but it was because of this ignorance that it was so important that the Pope's ambassador see and learn as much as he could. What was there to see? The was the largest land empire the world had ever known, stretching from northern China to Persia and up into the steppes of southern Russia to the frontier with Hungary. Compared with this the land extent of Europe was insignificant.
Though Europeans of Carpini's day referred to these people as Tartars at that time (a play on the Latin word for hell, Tartarus"), they were more properly subjects of the Mongol Empire and would more often have been members of other, lesser known tribes from Central Asia. Carpini recognized this in the full title of his report, Historia Mongalorum Quos Nos Tarataros Appellamus, or The Story of the Mongols Whom We Call the Tartars. The Tartars, more properly the "Tatars", had been one of many steppe tribes defeated and amalgamated by the Mongols into their empire during the wars under their great leader Jinghiz Khan at the turn of the thirteenth century.
Jinghiz Khan (which seems to mean Oceanic or All Embracing Ruler) was born Temujin near Lake Baikal in what is now Russia around 1162 into a tribe of the Yekka Mongols. His name, derived from a Mongolian word for iron, suggests that his family may have had something to do, at one time at least, with metalwork. His father had been a khan, or chief, but had been poisoned while on a visit to the Tatars. After his father's death Temujin watched as most of his followers deserted to join other tribes where they could expect more protection than they could from the boy prince. Left almost entirely destitute, Temujin and his mother and brothers scratched out what existence they could on the steppe by hunting and fishing. An event happened at this time that illustrates Temujin's character. He squabbled with his half-brother Bekter over a fish that one of them had caught and Temujin and his brother Kasar later ambushed Bekter and shot him to death with bow and arrow. There may have been something of a dynastic character to this murder as illegitimacy was no bar to succession and Bekter was his elder; Temujin likely wanted no disputes over who was in authority, even in his reduced situation.
Temujin's fortunes had reached their lowest ebb when he was captured by the neighboring tribe of the Taijits. He was able to escape and began a slow process of attracting followers and finding a protector. He became the vassal of Toghrul, Khan of the Keraits (a Nestorian Christian who is probably the source of the persistent Prester John myths of Europe) and eventually went on to supplant him. Temujin fought and defeated the Merkits, the Naimans and the Tatars. It appears that he largely annihilated these latter people for their part in the death of his father, though the later tendency of Europeans to refer to Mongols as Tartars suggests that this may not be entirely correct; they might still have been numerous enough in the thirteenth century Mongol armies which ranged westward to give the confederation their name.
After many years of war he managed to gain supremacy over all of the steppe tribes of central Asia and took the title Jinghiz Khan. He became the "Khan of all who dwelt in felt tents" and, later, he styled himself "The Emperor of All Men".
Jinghiz Khan went on to conquer much of northern China, and to overthrow the wealthy and powerful state of Kwarizm, much of which lay in what is now Iraq. His army conducted a reconnaissance into Russia and Central Europe, and he undoubtedly wished to extend his conquests further into the west. His successes had convinced him at some point that he was divinely appointed to conquer the world. Fortunately for Europe neither he nor his successors did so. Nonetheless, when he lay dying in 1227 from internal injuries gotten in a fall from horseback while hunting, he was said to impart to his sons the task of conquering what remained since he was not to live long enough to do it himself. Carpini remarks on this mandate in the Historia.
Jinghiz Khan was succeeded by his son Ogedei who, when he became Great Khan, undertook to continue the work of conquest that his father had so successfully begun. The Mongol Empire had already been divided to a large degree among the sons of Jinghiz Khan. They were all to obey Ogedei as he was the Great Khan, but many of them ruled appanages spread over different parts of the steppe. Of these, the one of most consequence for Europe was that of Batu. Batu was Jinghiz Khan's grandson by his son Juchi, whose paternity was in some doubt. Jinghiz Khan's wife had been kidnapped shortly after their wedding and, until her rescue, had been given to the nobleman of another tribe. Juchi had been given an appanage to the west which had passed to bis son Batu upon his death in 1227. Batu's holdings were not as large as the others, and Ogedei decided to mount a campaign into the west to expand them. The expedition was nominally in charge of the young Batu, but Ogedei had chosen as general Subotai, Jinghiz Khan's great commander. It was he who planned and conducted the campaign in the west.
The campaign was the strategic and tactical masterpiece discussed above. The result was the utter defeat of the western armies sent against them, the devastation and depopulation of Hungary, and a sense of shock and despair throughout the west which did not understand who the Mongols were or what they planned.
When the Mongols mysteriously disappeared into the Russian steppe the west convinced itself that the barbarian had been driven back by western arms and the cost of taking Hungary. This was untrue. Ogedei Khan had died three thousand miles away in the heart of Central Asia and the Mongol leaders had halted their campaign to go to Karakorum for the election of the new Khan. Apparently, from the Mongol standpoint, Europe could wait. It was a great piece of luck, for it turned out to be more than a reprieve. Batu Khan now controlled Russia through his own state, Golden Horde, and after the death of Ogedei the imperial tumens, or divisions of ten thousand soldiers, which had been lent for the western campaign were returned to Asia. Without them Batu may have felt that he did not have the power to hold Hungary. Instead, aside from a few raids, he satisfied himself with consolidating his hold on the Russian steppe where the Golden Horde would impose the "Tartar Yoke" upon the Russians for nearly two hundred years.
Discord between the various branches of the Golden Family (Jinghiz Khan's descendants) would gradually cause the Mongol Empire to break into several autonomous khanates such as the Golden Horde, the White Horde, the Great Horde, the Little Horde, the I[khanate and the Khanates of Astrakhan, Kazan and the Crimea. Even while the Mongol Empire was still nominally unified, however, its incipient divisions were enough to prevent the Mongols' return to Europe.
It might seem odd that a tribe of barbarians could, through conquest and assimilation of others like themselves, eventually invade and defeat powerful civilized nations such as China, Kwarizm, the Russian principalities, Hungary, and later, Persia. However, steppe peoples do have certain natural advantages which, when properly harnessed, could turn them into the most formidable of military powers. Their first quality is simply that of toughness. Living as they did on the steppe, often in semi arid regions, and forced to move from winter to summer pasturage twice a year, they became much more toughened than sedentary peoples. They often had to fight over grazing lands with other tribes when climactic or political changes made it necessary. In short, they were always in fighting trim. Edward Gibbon said it as well as anyone in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire when discussing steppe peoples:
On this occasion, as well as on many others, the sober historian is forcibly awakened from a pleasing vision, and is compelled, with some reluctance, to confess that the pastoral manners, which have been adomed with the fairest attributes of peace and innocence, are much better adapted to the fierce and cruel habits of a military life.
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