Dan Snow's History Hit - How and Why History: Genghis Khan

Episode Date: September 8, 2020

Genghis Khan was one of the most feared and most famous warrior kings in history. But how did he rise to power to become the Emperor of the Mongol Empire? How did he unite many of the nomadic tributes of North-East Asia, and then conquer most of Eurasia? Why is he considered a hero in modern-day post-Communist Mongolia? Rob Weinberg asks the big questions about this notorious figure to military historian Major Gordon Corrigan.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. It's that time of the week when we give you an episode of How and Why History, our sister podcast. This episode is all about Genghis Khan, the one and only, the great Khan. If you like it, search for How and Why History over your pods, and subscribe and all that stuff. Coming out this Friday actually, we've got a really good episode on the Black Death, the How and Whys of the Black Death. If you like that one, there are 30 more episodes to enjoy on History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history. It's got audio and video. It's awesome. You just head over to historyhit.tv, use the code POD1. You get a month for free, then you get your second month for just one pound, euro or dollar. It's awesome. So please go and check that out. But in

the meantime, let's hear all about Genghis Khan, one of the most formidable, one of the most remarkable and important military political leaders who has ever lived. Impressive guy, but you wouldn't want to be one of his enemies. Let's gallop back to the steppes of Mongolia. Enjoy. A monarchist song from Mongolia in praise of Genghis or Genghis Khan, one of the most feared and most famous warrior kings in history. But how did Genghis Khan rise to power to become the emperor of the Mongol Empire? How did he unite many of the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia and then go about conquering most of Eurasia? And why is he considered a hero in modern-day post-communist

Mongolia? I'm Rob Weinberg, and to answer the big questions about this notorious figure, I'm joined by military historian Major Gordon Corrigan. This is How and Why History. Gordon, thank you for joining me. How did Genghis Khan rise to power to become the emperor of the Mongol Empire? It's an extraordinary story because Temujin, Genghis Khan, of course, is a title. Temujin was born into a very insignificant little Mongol tribe. We tend to think of the Mongols as nomadic herders, but in fact Temujin's tribe was static. They lived by a river and they lived by fishing and trapping.

He was the son of the junior wife. His father had two wives. And when his father was killed in one of those endemic clashes that are constantly going on between the various Mongol tribes, the tribe threw them out. There were two women and a bunch of children. They weren't contributing anything. They were useless mothers. Out they went. So there they were in absolute abject poverty and squalor. And Temujin, although he was a younger boy, seems to have been the one who looked after them.

And they managed to survive, but just at one period he was in fact enslaved by another tribe and managed to escape from slavery which was regarded as rather good form he then probably in his early 20s took service under a much larger tribe the Karaites were one of the larger Mongol tribes, commanded by a man called the Ong Khan, who was the leader. And Temujin absolutely thrived in this world of endemic treachery, constant skirmishing, betrayal, and everything else. And he did exceedingly well and sort of moved gradually up the ranks until he was in a position where he could actually challenge the Ong, challenge the Khan. he was in a position where he could actually challenge the Ong, challenge the Khan. And in those days, you could do that. Now, whether he fought the Khan himself, or whether he fought the Khan's champion, I think it's more likely that he had to fight the Khan's champion. But in any event, he won, killed the Khan, the Ong Khan, and became leader of that particular tribe. And he then starts to take on smaller tribes, one at a time,

and he defeats them with his little army. And he says to them, you've got a choice, join me. If you don't join me, I'll kill you. And most of them, being sensible, joined him. The women that were left over from the people that he'd killed, he married them into his own tribe, which of course is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And eventually, and it takes on about 20 years, so he would have been in his mid-40s. In 1206, the Mongol council, which was really a meeting of the leaders of all the clans, it wasn't a unified government, decided that Temujin would be appointed as the leader of all the Mongols and given the title Genghis Khan, which means the great Khan, the powerful Khan. So he's about 45, 46, and he now finds himself in command of all the Mongols.

For the first time ever, the Mongols have one government and one leader and one army. But of course, they're still surrounded by potential enemies, but it's an extraordinary story. So how did he go about uniting many of the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia? Well, again, he does much the same thing. He's very careful to pick them off one at a time. And he spends quite a lot of time sending spies and agents into neighboring tribal areas saying, look, we're going to take on the Xixia Chinese, for example. And before he does that, he sends people in to see the Qin Chinese and says, look, we're going to take on the Xixia Chinese, for example. And before he does that, he sends people in to see the Qin Chinese and says, look, we're going to take on the Xixia,

but we're not concerned with you. You keep out of it. And provided you do, you'll get a cut of the loot. And that's the way he operates. And of course, as he takes on more and more of the neighbouring tribes, again, they're given the choice, join or kill you. And we're now talking about an empire as it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And a lot of it is because the Mongol army, initially every Mongol is a soldier. But as time goes on,

he has to, in fact, have a regular army. And there's an army with a structure that we would recognise today, and that was pretty unusual, a rank structure. There's a sort of military law. They're disciplined, they're trained, they're mounted, they're all on horseback, so they can move very, very quickly. And they managed to defeat quite often much, much larger armies, but which are not much more than armed rebels, militias, not regular armies. But he's got a regular army. And of course, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger as time goes on. You mentioned that he was expert at gathering intelligence using an extensive spy network. How important was that to his military strategies? Larger enemies. I mean, taking on small Mongol tribes wasn't too much of a problem. But when

you start taking on the Persians, for example, or some of the larger Chinese kingdoms, China then was a number of separate kingdoms, all owing loyalty to an emperor, but separate, then you couldn't simply invade. So what he would do is he'd send in agents who'd go around trying to spread dissatisfaction with the existing government. So they'd say, your government, you know, all the taxes they raised, they're just building more palaces or buying more wives. I mean, none of it's being used to look after you. You're not being properly treated at all. So by the time his army entered, already, you know,

what Franco called his fifth column had been at work for quite some time. And the edifice was more likely to crumble. Having done that, he made a lot of use of that sort of intelligence gathering and that sort of spreading dissension amongst potential enemies. When we think of Genghis Khan, we think of these large-scale massacres of civilian populations. There's controversy. Was he the greatest conqueror of all time or was he a genocidal ruler? There's a number of factors there. I think first of all we want to look at the numbers. For example when he invades the Persian Empire it's said that he personally led an army of 200,000. Now let's just think about that for a

minute because could you keep an army of 200,000 in the field at that time in that sort of terrain? I would say no, particularly when the Mongol army was mounted. Every Mongol soldier rode one horse and led four per man. So that number clearly is a huge exaggeration. Now, when he takes over Bokhara, the last battle in the Khanate of Bokhara is in a place called Urgench, and they had to fight through buildings. Now, fighting through built-up areas is something you don't want to do. You didn't want to do it in the 1200s, you don't want to do it now. Even today, it's very difficult. Control is difficult. Where are your own troops? Where

are the enemies? It's expensive on casualties, expensive on ammunition, whether it's arrows or it's bullets or whatever. And there were a lot of Mongol casualties after the battle of Argench and he is said to have told 50,000 of his Mongols you are to kill 24 civilians each and off they went and each of these 50,000 Mongols killed 24 civilians and they made great pyramids of the heads now again let's look at the. 50,000 Mongols killing 24 each, that's 1.2 million people murdered in Bukhara. The population of the entire Turkestan, that's what is now Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, was under a million.

So there certainly weren't 1.2 million civilians to be killed in Bukhara. But if you are in the next town down the line and you hear that the Mongols have killed 1.2 million people, you're possibly less likely to resist when the Mongol army appears over the horizon. So I think there's a lot of that. There's a lot of propaganda. It was in their interests to let people believe that huge numbers were being killed. Now, there's no question an awful lot of people were killed. There's no doubt.

I mean, he would give people the option, join me or I'll kill you. But nothing like the numbers that were told. So genocide, well, genocide is the elimination of a race. And he certainly didn't do that. But of course, it was an age where health and safety, human rights simply didn't exist. So what he did by the standards of the time was

pretty severe, but not as horrific as we might think today. And certainly the numbers have been hugely exaggerated, both of his troops and of the people he killed. History tells of a warrior who was born to rule an empire, of the enemy who vowed to destroy him, of the brother who enslaved him, and of the woman who fought to reclaim his destiny. his destiny. For love, he raised an army. For vengeance, he went to war. For greatness, he conquered the world. Did he break with Mongol tradition in any way, in the way that he ruled and conquered rival tribes? Yes, he did.

The first thing he did very early on was to remove the feudal system. Now, there was a feudal system amongst Mongol tribes where the leadership tended to be centralised in one family, or one extended family. And he stopped all that, and he said that the promotion would be by achievement, by merit, and of course by loyalty. You had to be loyal to the government, which meant to him.

So he changes that. He brings in a thing later on called the Great Law. Now, the Great Law said things like selling women into marriage, illegal, kidnapping women, illegal. There used to be an awful lot of kidnapping women from other tribes. Now, that, although they probably didn't realise it, was to prevent inbreeding, basically. That's got to stop. You don't need to do that anymore because we're all one. We're not separate little tribes. So kidnapping women, illegal, selling women into marriage illegal adultery illegal but didn't apply to the head of a household so he

could deal with his servants wives and that was all right but otherwise it was illegal all children were legitimate whether they were born inside marriage or outside of it and all this is designed to stop this internecine squabbling that goes on between the various tribes but there's one thing that part of the great law which is extraordinarily modern and he said there was to be no hunting between march and october and the purpose of that was to allow the animals to reproduce and restock the population now that's extraordinarily modern i mean that's sort of law we have now. You know, we have hunting seasons, we have shooting seasons

designed to ensure that the bird population, the fox population, the deer, whatever it is, have got time to restock. So that was extraordinarily modern. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories,

listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. So beyond his military accomplishments, he seems to advance the Mongol Empire in other ways. Was there a cultural aspect to his transformation of the society? Well, the Mongols were extraordinarily curious people. If they came across something they hadn't seen before, instead of rejecting it, as many civilizations or races would have done, they said, what is this? What does it do? Can we use it?

And they were quite happy to absorb these sort of things. I mean, as an example, militarily, when they start off, it's entirely an army of mounted archers, pretty well. But as time goes on, they need engineers to get across obstacles. They need siege engines to besiege cities. They haven't got any, but the Chinese have. So when they come across these things, they say, ah, that's very interesting.

We will send you craftsmen, you artisans who operate these things, plus your kit, back to Mongolia. You can show us how to use it. So that's the sort of thing that's going on. Genghis Khan himself was almost certainly illiterate, but he believed in education and they set up universities and schools. They're very keen on learning because education is the way out of poverty. They use a lot of the Chinese skills. They're not illiterate people. They're not people who left any great records of their achievements. But they used Chinese scholars to do that sort of thing.

I mean, history is usually written by the victors, but not in the case of the Mongols. In the case of the Mongols, most of the history is written by the defeated, the people that he conquered. But all that is spread across the empire empire there's free trade right across the empire so there are no taxes no tolls as you go from one area to the other taxes are generally low lower than they had been before medical doctors don't pay any tax priests of any religion don't pay any tax education establishments don't pay any tax and for some extraordinary reason funeral directors don't pay any tax i don't some extraordinary reason, funeral directors don't pay any tax. I don't know why. So that sort of thing, I mean, some quite modern aspects of civilisation are being spread. So he's not just a butcher. He's a man who understands the importance of teaching and modernisation and trying to unify people.

And it seems he was religiously tolerant as well. Yeah, they themselves were animists, really. Later Buddhist, much, much later on they become Islamic. But Jews, lots of Jews in their empire, they were perfectly happy. They were tolerated. Lots of Muslims, they were tolerated. They could build mosques, no problem at all. Christians, they really didn't mind.

And unlike some other races, the Ottomans, for example, were very tolerant of Christianity, but they taxed them. The Mongols were tolerant. It didn't tax them. At least they paid taxes like everybody else. So, yeah, it was a remarkably tolerant society. You mentioned his many wives and concubines. How important and influential were they, as indeed his children, in running the empire when he was off on his expeditions? They were very important. The wives, essentially, many of them were the power behind the throne.

They didn't necessarily have an overt position. The sons were certainly very important. Sons and grandsons. I mean, a grandson led the Golden Horde. A grandson became Kublai Khan, became the first emperor of the Yuan dynasty in China. And of course, his officials, who again were promoted on the basis of merit. And many of them were Chinese. And of course, with an empire of that size, you needed to delegate. Now, that said, they had a very comprehensive system of communications called the Yam, which was actually a postal system. So you wanted to send a message.

You got on a horse and you galloped for 10 miles, changed your horse, galloped another 10 miles, and that meant that actually they could move information backwards and forwards across this huge empire really quite quickly. But yes, I mean, the sons and the grandsons were certainly very important, and unlike the sons of many rulers, many dictators, of course he was a dictator, they don't seem to have declined. I mean, so often you find that the children of great men are actually useless, either because they're spoiled or they become corrupt or whatever.

But actually, James Kahn's descendants seem to remain reasonably competent for quite a few generations. I mean, his last direct descendant was the Emir of Bukhara, whom the Bolsheviks sacked. But the answer, yes, his descendants were very important. To what extent did the Mongol Empire consolidate the Silk Road communication and trading route? Well, the Silk Road, of course, had been there for centuries, and they very much made use of it. They travelled along the Silk Road. And of course, because they had free trade throughout the empire,

then that helped enormously, because previously trade moved along the Silk Road, I mean, all the way from Xi'an in China, right up to King Oswald of Northumbria. And through each area, there were tolls and taxes and customs and that sort of thing. Now there aren't. So trade moves even faster. And the fact that there's one law which applies to the whole area,

as opposed to each area having its own legal code, all that enhances and consolidates the Silk Road. How did Genghis Khan himself die? We really don't know. There are all sorts of theories. He was struck by lightning. He drowned crossing a river. He fell off his horse.

He died of wounds in battle. The most fantastic version, there was a rebellion in China and he went off himself and put it down. Now he's 72, early 70s at this stage, and he takes a Chinese princess as yet another wife. And of course, this is something you did. It was a dynastic thing. And it is said that the Chinese princess had within her person a sort of mousetrap that the Chinese princess had within her person a sort of mousetrap device with very sharp spikes and that when Genghis Khan attempted to perform his marital duty, the trap was sprung and it cut off an important part of his anatomy

and he bled to death. That is nonsense, but it's something you will read occasionally. I personally think there's no reason to believe that he didn't die in his bed of old age. I mean, he was in his early 70s, which now, of course, you'd be a spring chicken. But in the 13th century, if you hit 70, you were doing very well indeed,

particularly when you think of his record of leading armies. And I mean, when he invaded Persia, he was 60. So I think he'd simply died in his bed. But we simply don't know. We don't know where he was buried. His body was taken back to Mongolia, buried in secret. The burial party were all killed, so they couldn't say where he was buried. Several regiments of horsemen were sent off to gallop over the whole of the area to turn up the ground. When the Soviets took over and stationed

Soviet troops there, the area where he may have been buried in was a Soviet tank training area. So we have absolutely no idea. We don't know how he died and we don't know where he's buried. What sort of size was the Mongol Empire then at the time of his death? It stretched from Persia in the west right over to China in the east

and up through what was known Transaukania, Auxania as the Greeks called it, between the Caspian and the Black Sea. They had raided further. They'd raided right up the Volga, right up into the land of the Rus, the people who gave their name to Russia. And that later on, his descendants would conquer.

But it was still enormous. And of course, it gets even bigger. I mean, his grandson gets as far as the gates of Vienna. And then Ogedai, Genghis Khan's son, who was the next Khan, died. And the custom when a Khan died was that all the Mongols had to go back to Mongolia to elect a new Khan. What they really meant was they wanted to get back to Mongolia to make sure that their interests were represented. So they were at the gates of Vienna, off they went, and that's as far as they ever got. If Ogedei hadn't died, it's interesting to speculate what might have happened. The empire, I think, would have got even further.

How is he regarded today in Mongolia? And how does that reputation differ from, say, in China? He is regarded as a great hero in modern Mongolia. They make a great play of him. I said earlier that history was written by the victors. There is one exception, a thing called the secret history of the Mongols. Now, the Mongolian government say, this is history, this is fact. The original document was supposed to have been written a couple of years after Genghis Khan's death. That original document's never been found.

What we have is a Chinese translation from the late 14th century. The Mongol government say it's paka, it's true, it depicts the life of Genghis Khan and how he built his empire. A very strong body of academic opinion says it's not. It's a medieval forgery. It's a good read, I've read it, but I'm rather inclined to believe that it probably is a forgery and not an original document. But when Stalin died in 1953 and things were getting a bit more relaxed, Mongolia, of course, had a communist government imposed upon them by the USSR. And one Mongolian official thought, ah, things have relaxed. So he started to put up a monument to Genghis Khan. And they issued a stamp with Genghis Khan's spirit banner on it.

And this was going too far. And there was a big clamp down. And the monument was taken down. And the stamp was withdrawn. And the official who had the idea disappeared. It was never seen again. But once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, they were then able to recognise Genghis Khan.

And every town in Mongolia has got a statue to them. They've built an extraordinary... Just outside Ulaanbaatar, there's a 164 feet high stainless steel statue of Genghis Khan on a horse. And that's on top of a three-story building. And there's a lift inside it, which will take you right up to the head of the horse. I actually walked up the stairs. I shall take the lift next time. So he is very much, he's part of their tradition. Their three main sports are archery, horse racing, horse riding and wrestling. And their horse racing, I mean, we think that, gosh, a mile and a half flat race, that's quite a long race.

When I was last in Mongolia, which was last year, I went to see a 10-mile horse race, 10 miles at the gallop. There were 116 entrants. Most of the jockeys rode bareback to save weight. And I only saw... And it was a gallop on ground that was like concrete. I only saw one loose horse and I only saw one lame horse. And I thought, crikey, but of course these are the animals on which Genghis and his successors

conquered most of the known world I mean in 20 years he created an empire before he died that was bigger than the Roman Empire and it had taken the Romans 400 years to build theirs so he's very much a hero in Mongolia as to what he's thought elsewhere Chinese will be very suspicious of

too much talk about the Mongols and the Manchus. But, of course, they do want the raw materials in Mongolia. And there's a lot of Chinese interest. The Chinese are buying up a lot of the raw materials from Mongolia. Russia is concerned about Chinese influence in Mongolia. Communist Russia, of course, would have been very anti-Djengis Khan. Putin's Russia, I think, is ambivalent. But Mongolia today really is a

buffer between Russia and China. And that's something that I think one wants to keep an eye on. Gordon, thank you very much for joining me. Not at all. Thank you. How and why history? you