Download PDF | (Men At Arms 105) Stephen Turnbull - Mongols-Osprey (1980).
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The Rise of the Mongols
The history of the Mongol armies is a catalogue of superlatives. No armies in history have ever won so many battles or conquered so much terri- tory. No army has ever provoked such justifiable terror and loathing in its victims, or slaughtered so many of its vanquished. No other army has made and later carried out to the letter strategic plans so grand as those conceived at the great kuriltai or Council of War in 1235, with simul- taneous attacks on both Poland and Korea. What other army in history has marched on Russia in the winter and survived, let alone won victories? What other army, indeed, could have attacked Russia in winter by choice, because the frozen rivers and deep snow made communications easier?
These are the achievements that have made the Mongols the object of admiration and loath- ing ever since they crupted on to the world scene in 1206 when Genghis Khan, 'under the com- mand and guidance of heaven', set out to conquer the world. It was a world far wider than that subdued by the great Alexander, who, we are told, wept because he had no world left to conquer. By the end of the 13th century Mongol armies had been in action in countries as far apart as Poland, Japan, Hungary. Russia, Palestine, Persia, India, Burma and Vietnam.
Teutonic knights of Germany, and samurai of Japan, while ignorant of each other's existence, had in fact fought a common enemy. The story of the Mongol armies begins with Genghis Khan, who was born in c.1167 in the wild steppr-land of Mongolia, where it is winter for nine months of the year and the fierce winds almost blow a rider off his horse. The child who was to become the Great Khan was the son of a warrior called Yesugei, who had captured anenemy called Temujin, and in the custom of the time bestowed this name upon his new-born son.
When Temujin was nine years old Yesugei was poisoned by rivals, and, as the Mongols would not submit to the rule of a boy, Temujin, with his mother and family, was exiled from the tribe. The boy was now a fugitive, and led many exciting adventures which demonstrated his future mili- tary promise. In the fullness of time he came back in strength to claim his inheritance, making political alliances and defeating rivals. In 1204 he summoned a kuriltai to plan the campaign which was to give him supreme power over all the nomad tribes, and in 1206 he received the title 'Genghis Khan', acknowledging him as the ruler over 'all who dwell in felt tents'. It is from this date that the Mongol conquests begin.
If the Mongols had felt a certain affinity with their nomad neighbours in a common life-style which no doubt helped cement alliances, their relations with the nations of the south were historically those of confrontation, symbolized and realized by the Great Wall of China. China was at this time divided into three parts: the Sung in the south; the Ch'in in the north, whose capital was at Peking; and the smallest and weakest of the three, the Hsi-Hsia, on the western flank of the Great Wall. The Hsi-Hsia became the first civilized sedentary society to feel the force and fury of the Mongols, who crossed the Gobi Desert to attack them with huge success in 1211. In the same year Genghis Khan was acquainted with the news that a new Ch'in emperor had ascended the throne, and that as a vassal Genghis Khan would be expected to make some public display of servitude.
The Great Khan's reply was to turn to the south, spit on the ground, and order a general advance against the Ch'in Empire. The war thus begun was to continue for 23 years, ending, after Genghis Khan's death, in the total destruction of the Ch'in. At first the cam- paign appeared to be no more than a series of raids through the Great Wall-but raids with a purpose beyond that of merely collecting booty. Soon Peking was threatened, and the Ch'in emperor moved south. This desertion dis- couraged the defenders, and, with the help of skilled engineers pressed into Mongol service, Peking fell in 1215.
The conquest of China was interrupted at this point by the need to defeat an old enemy, a certain Kuchlug, who had fled from defeat at the hands of the Mongols during Genghis Khan's war of unification, and now lorded it over the Kara-Khitay Empire to the west. Genghis Khan entrusted the expedition to his general and old comrade Jebe, who performed his task with consummate loyalty and skill. One feature that was always to characterize Mongol warfare was the readiness with which responsibility was given to a general and the honourable manner in which it was accepted. The defeat of the Kara-Khitay gave Genghis Khan a common frontier with the Shah of Khwarizm, a Muslim state stretching from modern Iran to the southern part of the Soviet Union in the neighbourhood of the Caspian and Aral seas.
The Shah had executed a Mongol trade mission in 1218, believing, probably correctly, that they were spies. This was sufficient pretext for war, if pretext were needed; and in 1219 the Mongol hordes gathered to begin their first operation against a Muslim state. With excellent strategic foresight and execution Gen- ghis Khan completely outflanked his enemies. Bokhara fell in 1220, to be followed shortly by Samarkand and Nishapur, every victory being accompanied by hideous slaughter on an im- mense scale. The Shah fled, pursued by the Mongol generals Jebe and Subadai, who harried him to his death. An example of the confidence Genghis Khan had in his generals is shown by the campaign that followed. Having ensured the death of the Shah, Jebe and Subadai received permission for an armed reconnaissance in force, taking four tumens with them (one tumen was 10,000 men) on an extraordinary campaign through southern Russia. They wintered in Armenia and in the spring crossed the Caucasus Mountains, where they defeated a large army of Georgians who had gathered for the Fifth Crusade.
They then crossed t.he Don and raided into the Crimea and the Ukraine; but in 1223 their luck appeared to turn when they were attacked by 80,000 men under the Prince of Kiev and his Kipchak allies. After a feigned retreat the Mongols easily de- feated them at the battle of the River Khalka, then returned to rendezvous with the main Mongol army after three years and 4,000 miles. Meanwhile Genghis Khan had crossed the River Amou Daria and captured Balkh. In 1221 Merv was captured, and 700,000 people were murdered. In a manner that was to become commonplace in this war, the bloodiest of all that Genghis Khan conducted, none but useful artisans, especially siege engineers, was spared. At Merv the Mongol rearguard returned later to 'mop-up' any unfortunate civilians who had managed to escape the slaughter. The city was then destroyed so utterly that the site could have been ploughed upon, and in an extreme of S vengeance for the death in battle of one of c Genghis Khan's sons-in-law not even cats and dogs were left alive.
In Herat 'no head was left on a body, nor body with a head'. Such atrocities led ■ the Persian historian Juvaini to write: 'Even - though there be generation and increase until the - Resurrection the population will not attain to a tenth part of what it was before.' In November 1221 the Persian campaign ended with a battle on the banks of the River Indus, where the defeated young prince, Jalal-al- din, son of the late Shah, cast off his armour and swam his horse across the river, a feat which impressed Genghis Khan.
From 1223 until 1225 the Khan spent a restful period hunting animals instead of people; but in 1226 his energies were once more turned against the Hsi-Hsia and the Ch'in, whose remnants had united against the Mongol yoke. While conduct- ing the siege of a town called Ning-hsia Genghis Khan felt his death approaching and named his son Ogedei as his successor. The Great Khan died in 1227, and when Ning-hsia fell the entire population was slaughtered, in accordance with his dying wishes. Unlike Genghis Khan's predecessor Attila the Hun, his great Empire did not die with him. After the defeat of the Ch'in a great kuriltai was held at which details were discussed for the conquest of the Sung, the reduction of Korea, and the invasion of Europe.
The Mongol invasion of Europe, which occu- pied the great general Subadai from 1237 until 1242, is discussed in detail in the final chapter of this book as an example of a classic Mongol campaign. As the years went by the successive Mongol khans became more convinced than ever that their supremacy had been ordained by heaven, and that at the name of the khan every knee should bow. The third khan, Kuyuk, reigned from 1246 until 1248, and his successor Mongke (1251-59) continued the Mongol conquests. In spite of the massacres carried out during the campaign against the Khwarizm Empire, Mongol power in Persian lands was limited to a few areas.
The Abbasid caliphs held Baghdad, and a sect of Muslim heretics called the Ismai'ilis terrorized their neighbours from their fortresses in the Elburz Mountains. This group were also called the Assassins, from their use of the drug hashish, a term which has entered our own language as a synonym for cunning political murder.
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