Historically High - Genghis Khan

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

The man who would become Genghis Khan (a title he took after uniting the peoples of the Steppe) started out as Temujin. Born into one of the smaller nomadic tribes of The Steppe (the vast stretch of plains that cover the middle of the asian continent), he was able to conquer the Steppe people's over a 20 year period until there were all under the Mongol banner. Once that was complete he turned his attention toward the Dynasties of China, before traveling across his empire to wipe the Khwarazmian Empire in the Middle East off the map. What? You've never heard of the Khwarazmians? Yeah Genghis is the reason why. After that he decided to allow two of his generals to take 20,000 men on Mongolian Rumpsringa across some of Europe. It was supposed to be a scouting mission that ended up resulting in a lot of Eastern European and Russian's dead, including a couple of princes. They ended up traveling over 5,500 mi in all before regrouping with Genghis and then taking another crack at China. When all was said and done millions upon millions of people were dead, estimated at between 8-11% of the world's population at the time and Genghis sat upon the largest empire the world will ever see. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Giddy up. I'm starting this episode, or this episode, pretty caught in mouth. I just realized that as soon as I hit the bell. Oh, boy. We've talked about them a lot. Long time coming? Yeah. We have this list, this ranking of conquerors,

and we're going to put the first conqueror out that we can really tell. We've talked about some conquers in the past. We've talked about Napoleon. and but we talk about the kind of the golden, I don't even want to say age because there's thousands of years between some of these guys. Yeah, and you can't say the OG

because this is weirdly enough. The time frame that this takes place in the distance between Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Genghis Khan, it's going to be a lot of different ways of actually saying it during this podcast. It's, I think it's recognized as

Jengis Khan. J. H. Chengis. Changis, that's right. What do you mean, pilgrim? My name's Changas Khan. Famously played, portrayed by What was John Wayne's real name? Marion something.

Marion Barry? I don't know. All I know is John Wayne was a terrible. Well, it's a good cowboy name, but it's only a good cowboy name because of him. No, it's a good name because of Jackie Chan's character in Shanghai noon. Marion Morrison was John Wayne's real name. We made that guy, Genghis Kong.

What do you mean you're putting a white man playing, Jenghis Khan? Tough move by us. Tough move by the Americans on that one. But these conquerors, we have to find a list of bad. This is something that you and I have talked about quite a bit because it's kind of nice to be able to throw a dart on a map and be like, that's the worst guy. We've talked about Stalin, real bad guy.

Talked about Hitler, real bad guy. Talked about Leopold II, tremendously bad guy. I know that there's Mussolini, bad guy. But Changas Khan is in a league of his own compared to them, but also in a league of his own because his intentions weren't really the same as anybody else.

Buddy, the only person that might be on the level of this guy is the guy that Greenlit this movie because I'm looking at pictures of John Wayne as Jenghis Khan and this shit is hilarious. Probably not good. Probably not one of John Wayne's best movies. Listen, I'm going to take this topic seriously enough that we will not put a picture of John Wayne as Changas Khan, but treat yourself. Go online and just put them in together.

They even did the little mustache on the size. Yeah. I wonder if that's a prosthetic or they made him grow at himself. And he just had to shave it every 30 minutes to keep it that thin. That's ridiculous. No, this guy, like you said, I mean, we've talked about some people who, saw themselves as conquerors of a sort before, but I don't think we've talked about somebody who actually like spent their entire life, or for the most, most of their entire life,

just spreading an empire. Kind of congregating together an empire that was small enough to then go out and start dominating everybody. Yeah, and I mean, Caesar is different because Caesar was not always in a position of power like this. Changus Khan, once he becomes Changus Khan, because that's not his real name or that's not his original name, once he becomes Changs Khan, that's when kind of the work begins. And that's when his conquering starts.

He pretty much has to unite a group that are going to be known as the Mongols. His group is originally the Mongols, surrounded by a whole bunch of other groups that share different names. He then has to bring them all under his banner. And then at that point, they just spread it. everywhere. And kill everything. So many people.

Not even just people. Animals, dogs, pets, anything else that they can get their hands on. It was just wholesale. We're going to sterilize the area. It kind of feels like that, right? I,

yeah. I mean, it just, it was, but it wasn't like they were doing it because they enjoyed it. That's the weird thing is there wasn't a whole lot of joy I think they got in doing it.

It was just what they did. Yeah, and me and you talked about this a little bit before the podcast, kind of how much of this stuff was done to just kind of feed the beast that were the Mongols to keep him in that position and kind of, because that's again why you're going to keep a leader in powers because he's giving you what you want. Before we get too far into it, remember Patreon.com slash historically high. Get you guys' bonus content there. Sometimes we'll do stuff that accompanies weekly episodes. So it'll be like we did with the Challenger thing. Challenger and then inventions by NASA. Sometimes it's going to be all across the board.

You'll also get pretty much content every Friday, right? Yeah, it seems like it. It seems like we've been hitting that. Sprinkling a video here or there. We got our first camera, so that's pretty fun. Yeah, that's going to be nice. Also, if you listen to this, we're a couple weeks into our partnership with Believe. So, yeah, you guys are getting ads.

But you know, that's the deal. So thanks for hanging around. You got anything else? Ratings. Keep those coming. Five stars are excellent reviews. Love to hear from you. Good recommendations coming.

The Changs Khan episode has been suggested and recommended so much. And it's something that we've had up on the idea board for so long. Yeah, it's like four years into a podcast. I actually think it's more impressive that we've been four years into a history podcast and we haven't covered this guy. True. Also, by the way, first-time listener, welcome. If you guys are returning to the show, welcome back. Professor Chris, that's Professor Adam over there.

Did it again. Got it again. Let's get into the cons. All right. The Confather. Yeah, we got another fun birthday here. Maybe between 1155 and 1167. The best possible guess I think that I saw, and the one that I saw the most consistently was 1162. I think they just said, throw it in the middle. Yeah. 61, 62, just put it somewhere in the middle of the guess. Pretty close enough. A boy is born to father Yasugi and his second wife, Hoyloon.

Hoyloon was Yusugi's second wife that he had stolen from another clan called the Marquette clan. We're going to be talking about a lot of clans. We're going to be talking about a lot of different groups up in the steps. There's going to be a lot of names that sound very familiar or that sound the same. so we're going to try to pronounce him as close as possible. But apparently Mongolians way harder to do pronunciation on than just Chinese. And Chinese sucks. And we get both of them in here.

Yeah. And then we throw on some Arab on top of that. Yeah. Yusuge actually stole his mother. His original name is Timogen. So that's going to be Jenghis Khan's original name. So you're going to hear us refer to him as Timogen for a while. Then once he takes the title, that's when he becomes Jenghis Khan.

But his mother had actually. just gotten married to some other guy within the market, you know, tribe. And while they're basically on their honeymoon, they cross into whatever other territory, which I don't know why you're going outside your tribal territory during your honeymoon. This kind of stuff is like bound to happen. But yeah, the father is up there, sees her. He's with some guys. And basically as he takes off, the other guy has to kind of like run.

Because they're not going to like just kill the woman. They're going to steal her, but they'll kill the guy. He's like, sorry, babe. I'll try to come back for you at some point. I'll find you. Yusugi was the chieftain of this Borgesian clan. He had two sons with his first wife, and then he would go on to have three sons

and a daughter with his second wife, Hoilun. Again, as Chris said, he was born Timogen. He's said to have been born. holding a large blood clot in his hand, which, disgusting. Why do they say the size of a knucklebone? I get that that's what...

Like an animal knucklebone, I think, is what they meant, because apparently they used the knuckle bones of the animals that they killed to play like dice. So it's not a human's knucklebone. No, much bigger. But again, a blood clot in a baby's hand. That's weird as shit. Like, what...

Is that supposed to be... Because it's supposed to be an omen of him being destined for great things. But is that also to say that this blood clot could have killed the baby? and he grabbed it. Or it could have killed his mother and he saved for life. Yeah, I don't know how that's a good thing, but apparently it is.

And there's going to be so much of this that we talk about. Kind of the most complete source for Timujin's life comes from this Mongol writing after his death. It was known as the secret history of the Mongols. Dun, dun, done, do. And there are going to be other sources. There's going to be Arab sources. There's going to be some Chinese sources. But really, from the mouth or fingers of Changas, we don't have anything.

It's because he killed everything. Yeah, that he couldn't read or write, I'm assuming. It's lucky that there were, like, Arab references and things like that. Because there were some Chinese references, but not a lot, because he would just sack and destroy these cities and destroy anything. Not glowing reviews, for sure. So this text, and this is where things are going to get a little bit tricky, is this original source material, he had adopted something called Uyghur text. And basically Uyghurs were like an Arab group that is still in China. But he had brought some of them on his scribes and knew that they had to start writing down because they didn't have a written language at this point.

So they use this Uyghur script. This goes from Uyghur script that's then translated to Chinese. Then the Chinese translation is brought through Russian. And then the Russian translation is split up into German, Russian, and French. And then to get to English, we have to go through all of those different translations to get to it. So there's going to be some things that are lost in these translations. We couldn't just translate it from Chinese to English? I don't know how, because it was lost for a very long time.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So like the only sources that you would find would be in another language, three removed from Chinese or something like that. Okay. So, but at the same time, they write a very compelling story for Changas, for Timujin, as far as how he lives his life. And the Mongol upbring really involves two things. Horses and archery. And it's because the step that they're in this Asian step, this Eurasian step, is such an unforgiving harsh climate

to where you're going to have deserts, you're going to have grasslands, you're going to have mountains, you're going to have swampy areas. It's kind of an all-encompassing. It's a place that you have to move around season to season to stay alive. This is when I want to segment for like,

like, what is the step? It's like, very glad you're asked Adam. I'm Dr. Geology. No. So, like, the step is basically this massive belt. of grassland that stretches for over 5,000 miles. So it goes from, I believe, like the Pacific area, maybe tucked in a little bit,

like where China and Japan and everything like that is, and spans kind of the entire heartland of the Eurasian continent, stretching all the way, I think, to like the Caucasus, right? Or what's the name of the river that it stretches to? I guess the river is where the empire actually stretches to, right? Yeah. The Danube or something?

Yes, the Danube. That was the one. So it basically fills in, the bulk of this central part of the Asian continent. You would then have Russia further up if you went north and then south you would have like India, places like that. India, the stands. Mm-hmm.

Southern China. So this is kind of like a semi-arid but with like extreme temperature changes. Hot as balls in summer, cold as balls in the winter. Kind of like the Pacific Northwest, actually. The western step, which is like, Ukraine, southern Russia, Hungary. You had the central step, which is called also the Kazakh step, basically large and dry.

And then the eastern step, which is like the Mongolian plateau, Manchuria. This is a higher, colder, drier area, more what you would think of, probably kind of like, not Siberia, but more of what you think of when you picture like... Just south of Siberia. Eastern Russia, basically. a lot of the people that lived in this area were nomadic horse cultures predominantly, and that was just because of, like you said, there wasn't an opportunity because of winds coming across this, not a lot of trees or breaks in the weather,

so crops can just kind of get destroyed just by the wind blowing in. And so these nomadic horse people, they kind of actually looked at people who had been more like, what you would consider it agrarian, right? Yeah, sedentary lifestyle. set in cities, farming areas. They almost looked at them as like inferior. Which is insane because that's like the next

cultural or the next step of a civilization is to settle down and put in roots. But they had nowhere to do that. They basically, it's like a grass ocean. Except you're not going to drown. But like you're so far from all this other stuff and it's a very unforgiving land that raises just some tough fucking people.

You need horses. You have to be able to move. move quickly on this. And prior to these kids even getting out and taking their first steps, they're putting them on horses. There is, I was talking about archery is such a big thing. They don't have black powder at this point in time. There's no rifles.

So they have to be good because their archery, or they're basically, the way they can eat is dependent on their archery skills. The way they can survive is dependent on their archery skills. Did you see images of like the horses they had, how they almost looked like not a chef. Because that would be ridiculous. But it was a specific type of... This is not a horse in the sense that you think of roaming across the prairie of the United States or anything like that. Like Appaloosa's or whatever you want to say.

These are like a little bit longer haired, a little bit stockier. Not quite a mule, but almost like not comically small either. But when you're used to seeing a normal horse and you see these guys riding it, the horse is definitely taking a few more steps. Yeah. You got to think, too. we're talking about the 12th and 13th century in Asia. Not a lot of tall folks around for big horses. That's also true.

We're talking about a smaller conflict. Yeah. Just total. So they're using the recurve bows. And I can't remember what episode we talked about. Were they recurve or were they compound? I want to say they were recurved. Because a compound bow, to my knowledge, is the one that has the gears and stuff.

That's a compound bow. A recurve is a smaller version that, Remember what they said when we were talking about development of like the recurved bow that it had the same power as a long bow, but it was condensed because although the actual length of the wood was the same, the shape of it made it shorter and compact, which is why it could still fire like a long bow or still had that same compact power. A recurve composite bow. Recurve composite. Okay. from the get-go. And they would be so good at this that they would actually be able to shoot, timed with the

horse's steps. So they had interrupters. This was World War II interruptors on the planes to fire through the blades. Yes. They were able to fire in between horse steps. So they're literally have this thing drawn. And all they're waiting is for that one moment when the horse picks up all four of its feet.

And it's technically in the air. There's no jostling or anything. And then that's when they would be trained to fire. Not to mention, I think they said on a lot. of these Mongolian bows, the draw was like 160 pounds. It's insane. That's, these people weren't more than 160 pounds, so they were drawing their own body weight back just to, to hold that to wait until you stop jostling to fire it.

All I'm thinking is just like they don't do leg day because they're riding horses everywhere, right? They're gripped to their horses with their legs. Okay, so they got nice adductors or whatever they called us on the end. Yes, on the other side. But then just they're back. and their arms are just forearms are just yoked from these bows. That's why they were good at wrestling. Yeah, and why they dominate in sumo now.

They were just so impressive. But again, this is their way of life. This is how they eat. This is how they defend themselves. So they have to be good at all this stuff. And the way that they had this relationship with their horses, it was a situation where the horses were trained so well that you wouldn't have to worry,

too much about them wandering off. They would basically almost like follow their owners around. When you see in an old Western how there's somebody who can whistle for his horse and his horse shows up. Why come here, little doggy? Which is kind of funny because some of these horses look like they're not much bigger than a large dog. Greyhounds.

Yeah. Big greyhound-looking horses. So they were so well trained that you didn't have to worry as you were traveling somewhere and migrating. You might have, I think they said it was like six or seven of. other fresh mounts that were carrying other things? I think they said normally when they would go on campaign, at least, that they would have, depending on the group, so like, let's say it's a smaller group like that scouting one we're

going to talk about a little bit later. I think they said maybe they had three, each or three extras. They said normally it was around five. Five. So when they were rolling a hundred thousand soldiers deep, it was 500,000 horses that were with them. That's fucking insane, right? 500,000 horses. That's a very loud stampede that's coming.

Yes, you're going to hear that coming from a long way away. Tiny little hoofs. A big part of the reason why they had so many extra mounts on these campaigns, not only because your horse would get tired and you'd have to jump on something else to kind of get moving, but they solved the problem that we've talked about with so many armies, so many modern-day armies. the weakest point of a modern day army is what? It's the logistic train.

The supply train. They were their own Red Ball Express. They didn't have to worry about a supply chain or a supply train because they carried very little. They packed their extra mounts with everything else that they needed. And then they just stole everything that they needed from the people that they were raiding. And if it got desperate, hey, I got five horses. I can, like, they ate horse a lot. Well, yeah.

Also, all of them were mares. Yes. Because you can milk a mare. You can't milk a male. Well, you can, but you're not going to get as much out of it. You can't stick your head up a butcher's ass. But yeah, because something like that. That's crazy, though, because that's also what their most famous alcoholic drink was made out of was mayor's milk.

Well, if that's what you got, you got to figure out a way to get a little, do it rocks off somehow. Well, also, like, from another, like, this was probably something that was very just common on the step. but at the same time, if you are being invaded in China or you're being invaded like in the Middle East, and you see these dudes just camping out, just milking their horses, you're like fucking psychopaths, right? Who are we? We're fighting those guys? Yeah. That guy, they said routinely, I don't know how routine or how long you could do this,

especially to try to keep a little, to keep the confidence of your horses. But they said that they would actually make slits right below. their neck and they would bleed their horses so they could drink the blood to get the iron and all of the other deficiencies they would mix it in with the milk. Disgusting. Yes. Blood and milk sounds awful together. Somebody who's tried blood pudding

and was like, okay, this is blood, but it's actually pretty good. Just warm mares milk and blood together sounds like the worst thing ever. What type of blood do you use in blood pudding? Whatever the animal is. Pork blood. If it's sausage, usually typically. It's cooked.

I mean, it's coaginated and cooked. Drinking blood just, I'm not enough of a vampire to think that that would ever be a good idea. But that was how self-sufficient they could be to where they didn't need a supply train. They basically had like a little walking grocery store that they rode around.

And then when they needed some other supplies, they were just like, I bet that town over there has everything we need. And that was just their way of life. That's how they lived. That's how they were so good. When you're talking about, what, during World War II, we were talking about these fronts. They could move 15 to 20 miles a day.

It was a pretty long slog for them. I think it was less than that. And like, even the motorized ones were like, eh, we'll get like 11 to 12 would be on a good day. These people could cover 60 to 65 miles a day. They could push it and almost get triple diggies. Some days, if they were riding hard. You're just jumping off onto another horse and jump off onto another horse and jump off onto another horse and jump off onto another horse.

They were moving at the speed of light for an army campaign back then. And it screws everyone up because they do not understand. You have a situation that we're going to talk about that happened against the Arabs where they're sending columns in against these cities from every single direction

because they're able to maneuver out so far that it makes their force that could have been 20,000 look like 200,000 because they're hitting from all these different spots. My outlook on it is kind of like the people on the step, the reason that they could successfully fight each other is because they used kind of the same tactics. They fought from horses. They fought with bows and arrows, things like that. Nobody else fought like that.

So when they were done fighting each other and were directed with a common purpose at somebody else, that wasn't a tactic anyone else was used to. If you're an empire that primarily has walled cities, stationary, you know, static or settlements and everything, you're prepared for a siege. Your army is prepared to go up against another army that's going to meet them in a pitched battle where they're going to line their soldiers up across from you. You guys are going to charge at each other and you're going to fight it out like you always have. What you're not prepared for is an insanely mobile, quick reaction. force that if your soldiers are all on foot like these guys are used to fighting, you know they're coming from a long way away because, yeah, you have horses too, but there's not a large enough force on horseback to try to get to your city and lock you down.

They would see an army coming from one scene and be like, ride to the next city and ring the alarm bells. These guys, like you just said, 65 miles an hour and a day. Yeah, 65 miles a day. they could just already have passed a city and that city sends out a rider and that rider's going to get killed. The next city, like they would just hit these places without warning

because they couldn't, they could move in so fast. This was a world full of boxers and the Mongolians walked down off the step as jiu-jitsu artists. Yes. It doesn't matter how you win the fight. Yeah, the boxers might knock you out once or twice, but the jih-jitsu guy's going to get you on the ground and he's going to break your neck.

especially a boxer that thinks he's going in to fight another boxer. And he's like, okay, we're going to hit each other and we can only use hands, right? Yep. And then all of a sudden, the guy ducks down and grabs him by the leg, and he's on the ground with his leg bent up behind his head. Yep. Double leg take down. He's got your neck before you know it.

And before we can even get to that, the way that these clans would go at each other was not necessarily. There was definitely some friendliness, but at the same time, if there were little disputes, things would go pretty quickly the wrong direction. There was a lot of fighting amongst everyone in the step. And by the age of eight, Timujin's father, who wasn't a huge fan of him, honestly, had decided that it was time that this was the age to where he was going to go find a wife. You're a man now.

You're eight, yeah. You're four years away from pubs, but you are a man now. So he ends up taking him out. they go to Hoyloon's Oniri onigri um... On get at. On get at. People that Hoyloon came from, and they found a chieftain who had a daughter,

his name was Bordeaux. The bride's price wasn't going to be met by Yusugi, because I don't know if he was a little horse poor at the time or what, but he throws up one horse as basically a bridal payment. the other chief and says, well, this isn't going to be enough. He says, okay, Timujin's going to stay here. He's going to work to pay off the debt for your daughter. Yusugi ends up peeling out on his return trip.

He ends up meeting a passing Tartar clan. And this is a situation where they may not have been at war with the Tartars, and it was kind of customary on the step at the time that if you ran into another traveler, you would sit down and share a meal. Well, the Tartars must not like to Yusugi very much. because they poisoned his ass. And by the time he makes it back to camp, I want to say, too, that they had known maybe who he was.

This is a weird thing that comes around is there's like vendettas where years will go by and all of a sudden someone will show back up and be like, remember the woman you stole? Just to kind of give people an idea of kind of where we're talking here. So the area is divided up, like Adam was saying, into these tribal lands. if you're looking at it from like you know the clock references if you're looking at it from where the mongols are stationed so you have kind of at the 11 o'clock the market at the one o'clock you have the teutude at the almost three o'clock you have the tartars four o'clock you have the on grid and then five o'clock you would have the or sorry six o'clock the on good and then at like seven or eight the keriat And the Kariat and the Nyman are pretty much kind of the biggest players as far as like tribal size in town. And so the Mongols are surrounded by five or six other tribes.

So they can kind of get hit, you know, from anywhere. And at this point in time, there are friends out there. There's groups that there are loyalties with. But it doesn't take too much to shed those loyalties and go to war pretty quick. the death of Yusugi is he had returned back to his clan saw Timu Jin come home so he wasn't there for very long to work this off and their new existence becomes rough pretty quickly because the family doesn't have the father anymore so they're looked at as a family that can't be relied on as much because there's not a strong leader in the home there's no one old enough to take over that like head of the household type type role um he did end up making it

back to the tribe though, right? Yeah. It took them like three days or something like that to eventually kill over and die. Because they, that, after he got back, he said send for Timujin basically so he can come back and help bury me. So they're abandoned by this tribe. Timogen, Timu has four full siblings and then the two half brothers from the first wife, I believe, right?

Yep. They were dicks. The other wife fucking bails. So she's out of it. She goes and gets with another guy or something like that. Another chieftain. Another chieftain something. And so now you have this one woman who's looking out for six kids.

I want to say at this point, like you said, he's eight years old when his father dies. The older brother is the one that he does not get along with. This is his half brother. He's, I think, 10 years old. Better. Yeah, better. He is, which is even, you're just like, he's better. He, um, this guy in, yeah, this guy and Timu do not get along.

they're basically just out kind of in the, not the wilds, but they're kind of just like scraping to survive. Scranging for roots, you're trying to fish, you're collecting berries. And when you're fishing and when food is scarce like this, you better watch what you're doing as far as like stealing somebody else's food. So the other thing about better is there's this Mongolian, I guess, rule or loophole that if your father died,

the oldest male in the family can make a run at any of the wives that are not your biological mother. So you can basically, if your father dies, you can nail whatever stepmom you want. You can try to go after your stepmom. So being that he was two years older and technically the oldest male,

better could make a run at Timo's mom. So there's a little bit of incentive here, and it's not going to take much to set this thing off because Timo is, ends up catching this fish this one time. Better comes up, steals the fish from him. Tim was like, fucker, like, I've had enough.

That's my fish. You're trying to bring my mom. God damn. You steal my fish. You're trying to fuck my mom. All right. And so he goes and talks to the other half brother who is technically Better's full brother.

And he's like, are you sick of this guy? And he's like, yeah, I guess so he's like, should we just fill him full of arrows? And he's like, yeah, let's do that. So they end up catching him out in the middle of a field or something like that when he's by himself, sneak up on him, pop out of the grass where he can see them. And he's just kind of like, they have their bows and arrows drawn. And he's just kind of like, all right, I guess we're doing this.

And ends up just getting shot. There's so many different tellings of this. And I heard so many different ones. They're all just so funny. There was that one that you just talked about. There was one where Timujin had just pulled the phone. out of the water and as soon as Betar comes he snags it from him and as

he's walking away it's said that Timu pulls out an arrow and just puts one in his back just solely angry about the fish. There's another telling of this where he goes out and gets his younger brother Kasar to go and they just fill him full of arrows but no matter how this story always goes

his mom Hoyloon just reacts out of like shame she's just like he shouldn't have done that that was your brother he was trying to fuck you yeah like but that was it. She wasn't really that angry about it. I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed that you killed your brother. God damn it.

I get it's not another mouth we have to feed now, but at the same time, it's one of the people that could kill shit. That was the next oldest guy in line. That was our ticket maybe back into the old thing. Yeah. But now at this point, now it's Timu who's man of the house, so he becomes the leader

in his family. He still had the other stepbrother, didn't he? That guy was actually younger than him. Oh, was it? Mm-hmm. Okay, so two wives, banging back and forth. Yep, yep, alternating. Yeah, alternating. Okay.

Yeah, around this time, Timujin makes a very important friend, and this friend's name is Jamuka. Jamuka and him are blood brothers. Maybe bread brothers, because they are among God. They were knucklebone brothers. They shared everything. They smelled each other's hands, and Timujin wasn't attracted to his mom. You were my best friend.

Then he started begging my mom. Things got a little weird. So this relationship with Jamuka and Timogen is going to get a little bit weird. But at the same time, Jamuka has a bit of a following. He's kind of a rising star in his clan. There's a raid on the family camp, possibly due to the killing of Betar because these other clans were like these, this, their family's a problem. They're going to end up doing some pretty bad shit. Timujin ends up taking off into the woods.

He's in the woods for nine days, surviving in the woods until he finally walks out because hunger is just completely ravaged him. It's, and you, like, I don't know about this story. Like, I do believe that a lot of this stuff happened, but the way some of this is told, and the person that is probably chronicling this and gets to tell the story, you know, Jenghis Khan himself, you got to imagine some of this. stuff is bumped up, is pumped up a little bit, to make his rise seem even more, like, dramatic. Yeah. That he came out of nothing.

All great leaders did this. All great leaders had biographers that always punch stuff up. So yeah, nine days, probably maybe a little bit of a stretch. He ends up getting kidnapped, like, a few times by different tribes, right? One of the times he gets kidnapped, he gets thrown in like a... This is it. Oh, is it? Yeah.

He gets thrown into a yoke. He gets thrown into basically, like, like a walking stochade. Yeah, it's like square shape too. Yeah. He's not going to be able to do much. Try to escape in this kid. So during one of these dinners that these people, the Taitia,

Tai Chiids that had captured him this first time, he's sitting in a tent while they're having dinner. He ends up overpowering the guy that they put in charge of watching him while he was wearing this yoke around his neck and starts to bail. And then he realizes that he's got a yoke on his neck and he's not going to be able to bail on foot. So he goes back to the tent, who I'm sure this guy's thinking, holy shit, I just got beat up by a kid that's wearing a yoke around his neck.

Oh, God, he's back. Oh, what do you want? Timogen tells him, you got two options. Either I escape and I walk out and I tell them that you let me escape, or you can tell them that I overpowered you. You give me a horse and a head start before you go tell them, and everything will be okay. This guy's like, horses are that way. Yeah.

So he unlocks him from the yoke Timujin ends up escaping Which is the most ass backward argument Because the guy And I think honestly It was probably somebody that was having to be It's like if you're having a village party He's the guy that doesn't get invited

Yes That's exactly my point He's going to be the guy that's the easiest trick There's like another retelling of that Where the guy actually Like he's trying to escape and he gets down to a river And the guy chases him down And sees him at the river

and then when he eventually comes back, he's like, remember, you saw me at the river and you didn't tell anybody about it. You're going to get in so much trouble. He's like, you better let me out. But anyway, he ends up getting out. He's 15, I think, around this point. He goes back for Borte to this other chieftain.

And apparently the other chieftain's like, oh, my God, you survived. You're still alive. Fantastic. At that point, I just would have thought if he was gone for like a few years, they would have been like, Well, that guy's dead. Let's arrange marriage you to someone else.

Yeah, got to find a new husband for Borte at this point in time. But doesn't. So they end up getting married. And he gets this gift from the chieftain, his, I guess, new father-in-law, you would say. Sable coat. A sable coat. And instead of, you know, Timogen himself rocking this sable coat, he says, I got an idea. And he goes to another chieftain, this guy who's the chieftain of that bigger tribe. Carriot.

Yeah, the carry it. tribe in their area kind of down at their like seven o'clock and he approaches him apparently these guys love gifts tog rule and he too yeah tog uh togruel accepts this sable coat and is basically like okay you're under my protection now that and togruel had fought with usugi quite a bit and it said in the legend or that the secret legend whatever they want to call it that timidun is basically like you vowed to fight with my father till death. I thought they did like a blood oath or something like that too. Yeah, a lot

of blood stuff. Did they share a blanket too? So Tegrool ends up saying, okay, you have you have basically my Carriette tribe. This Carriette clan that I have, all these people are going to be your disposal and you have your back. This was basically a security play

which for Timogen's family having more people to back them was exactly what they needed at the time. They're just Just the way that their lifestyle was going, it was always going to be better around other people. And this is something that Timu carries into his time of becoming Chengx Khan is he realizes that the family structure is great. But what's better than the family structure is having a community around you that can not only protect you, can provide food, provide shelter, basically pick up anywhere that you need. And sometimes those aren't your family.

Sometimes those aren't even the same race as you No, he was like, well, if we're being honest, the last time I tried to trust any family member, he tried to have sex with my mom and he stole my fish. So I'm going to start basing this thing on more of a meritocracy instead of nepotism. Nepotism gets your mom fucked and your fish stolen. So, Timujin, and Tegrool formed this alliance for protection,

and they start eyeing revenge for, the abduction of Hulun Oh, the the group The guy that got Hoyloon St stolen from him Yeah, there's a series of events here

So he's not like On equal terms with Togruil This guy's a con So he's the con of like one of again One of the larger tribes Basically He's kind of like a vassal Timajun would be like a vassal for him

He works for him But he's under the care in like stewardship of this guy to where if someone messes with Timogen, he has this guy kind of backing him. Now, he ends up having a child, I think with Borte, their first child is a girl. But at some point, like you were just saying, these 300 markets show up who Timogen's dad, Yasuge, had stolen his mom from. They show up basically with a B, remembering this.

And Borte is actually taken while Timogen runs for the mountains. So this is like the exact reversal of the situation that his dad had put this other dude in and that's what has to happen. And the way the story is told Borte is like, you must go. And he's like, I will come back for you. And she's like, run. And he has to basically haul ass to this like, I forgot the name of it, but it's like one of their sacred mountains. Yeah, it was up in a mountain range that him and his brothers went in here. And I'm sure Hoyloon probably went too.

She's like, I maybe it's better for me to stay with you guys. I like where Togruil has come back into this. I don't know if they're going to be mad that I let let... She might not even been hanging on with them. Yeah. Yeah, Yusugi took me. I don't really want to go back. But this is also like a surprise raid.

Like they're sleeping and Borte hears like a bunch of like pounding like a bunch of tiny hooves on the ground and it's basically like a scramble to try to get out. So Borte now back with the Mariquette who had taken her basically. because Hoyloon was taken from them. And Timu calls in a couple favors from both Tagruel and his boy, Jammu. They end up raising 20,000 soldiers each to raid the Mariquette people. I'm sure they did not see this coming just for stealing one woman. No, so you get to Grul who has the Carriot and then Jammu, who is the chief

at this point of the Jadaran. And they were also kind of like, I think this is also like you have additional benefits to doing this. He's like, hey, the market kidnapped my wife. And they're like, we've been actually itching to fuck up the markets for a while. They have a bunch of stuff that we could probably use. So yeah, let's go. And you know what?

Let's go get your wife back. And then as a byproduct, we'll just fuck these guys out. And Jumoko is probably like, I don't really like your wife. She's kind of stepping into what we got here. But if he's still in the covers, that me and you were trying to share. And that is something that actually happens is these guys are, again, they're blood brothers,

they exchange arrows, knuckle bones. They share, and it's noted that they do share a tent, and they also share a blanket, because it gets cold on those Mongolian nights. Yeah, I'd like to think that, I'd like to take that in the most literal term, but I think we both know. What happens in the felt tent,

stays in the felt tent, baby. What happens to the felt tent? You do you, Timo? It's felt in your rear end the next day. Yeah. The tents fell, your asses felt. So this big launch on the Mariquette is very successful. They get back a now pregnant, Borte, which kind of becomes an issue because when she left, they may, she may or may not have been pregnant. But now we know she's for sure pregnant.

She was actually sold off to one of the other chieftains in the area or a chieftain's son who took her as a bride. So I don't know. Of course they know what the gestation nine month cycle is going to be. This is something that's going to plague this kid his entire life. Is this question about the legitimacy of him being Timogen's actual biological child?

He never broaches it. He never has an issue with it or anything like that. I think he just assumes that the kid is his. But I'm wondering, I want to know what that time frame was. He knows. He knows. He knows it's not him. But what does that do if it's not?

Does that require him to do something to her? It's not her fault. That's the thing that Uncle Dan talks about pretty heavily on hardcore history. Fantastic series, Rath of the Cons, absolutely awesome. Any time where we talk about one of these people being married to Chengis or married to somebody else or has been brought into these new clans, all these women aren't doing this of their own volition. They don't have the autonomy to say no in these situations.

There are spoils of war. There's spoils of conquest. So, Borte definitely probably wasn't on board to being pregnant by this merriquet man. At some point, I got to think that Timo just he didn't care. It was his wife's child, so it was his child. And Jochi, who that's who they get out of this, does become a pretty good general. He's trained and raised by Timu in such a way that he's very good at what he does. Timu and Borte would have three more sons, Chagatai, Ogadai, and Toluie.

He would also have four daughters, which again, these four daughters are just, basically going to be chess pieces. He's going to try to marry them off. As we talked about, Timu and Janu grow very, very close as Chris was talking about. They camp together. They should attend together. They had ceremonies in front of the groups of people

of giving each other gifts. It was a very open... You got to imagine that the wife was just like, the fuck are you guys doing? Like, we had one wedding. ceremony. We got one. Every six months, you and fucking Jamu, Jamuku,

were renewing your vows to each other. I was cold last night. The blanket's only so big, and you and Jamuka took up a lot of blankets. It was cool that's night. I don't want to tell you. They ended up rolling together for about 18 months. Again, nomadic lifestyle, they're staying in certain places for

certain periods of time. So you do travel with certain groups. Sometimes you separate. Sometimes you move in with other groups. And end up kind of parting the ways just due to kind of a little bit of an internal beef. And I think basically a little bit of a maybe an unspoken power struggle or a recognition that Jamu being already a chief of these Jadarin people and Timu not really being a chief or con or anything like that, but kind of having some of the people in the group look at him like that. I think there is a little bit of, I guess, what am I trying

to say, envy? A little bit of envy, but a little bit of drama within like the power dynamic. Well, it didn't help. DeBorte and Hoyloon were not very happy

with Jamuka and Timu being together. So they were always feeding him information saying, you're stronger than him, you're better than him, he's a leader, why aren't you the leader of more people than he? Why are you always the power bottom?

Yeah, yeah, very much so. You should get to be the top every now and then. And it's told in the history that this is some kind of a weird split where Jamuka says, hey, let's go camp over in this direction down in this valley. And Timu basically acts like he doesn't hear him and continues riding forward. There wasn't a whole lot of talking at this point. But what happens is as Jamoka peels off and heads down and turns around and looks, he realizes that he only has like half of the amount of people that are his people.

This is like peak. I bet this is like peak Mongolian drummer. like how like Spanish soap operas are so dramatic. It's basically two guys sitting there that are within their group and they're just riding next to each other. And all of a sudden you see Timu and Jammu stop. And all of a sudden one of them keeps going and they know exactly what this means. And they're just like, oh fuck.

Dude, he's still riding. We got to get through Timu Jyn. We got to get over there right now. Jammu's been fine. Timu's, he's the future. He's the way to go. Girl, this has been coming for a long time. As they split up, the future is obviously the writing's on the wall.

They're going to have a clash eventually. This large following that Timogen had taken from his friend included a future general that we're going to be talking about a lot, his name Subatai. Subatai is a badass. This guy goes on an adventure later on that we're going to talk about that's pretty insane. There was just a scouting mission, just supposed to be a scouting mission. The craziest scouting mission of all time. I believe this is the time when they start kind of referring to themselves, like, as the Mongols.

So at this point, because you now have Timu's group who still recognizes him as the leader, you have this new group who's now recognizing Timogen as the leader. He's made Khan of the Mongols. He's not Mongol Khan. Like, that's not his name at this point. I believe it's still Timogen. He doesn't take on essentially the different name until he becomes. kind of like all the horse people.

Yeah. And Jamuka is resenting this, this rise to power that Timu Jin has felt. Around 1187, the two end up clashing and just kind of what they thought was going to be a little dust up that ends up turning into this battle called the Battle of Dilan Baljut.

And Timu's side suffers a pretty clear defeat. Jamuka's side was pretty tuned up for this battle, and it did not. go well for Timmy Jin, which is weird because this is one of the very few times that Tima Jin gets his asking. Tima would leave to possibly be in the service of the Jin

or the Jin Dynasty. There's like this 10 years where there's really no accounting for him, which is weird because you would think a biography that was written about him, they would be following him through everything, not just have a 10 year gap of him being like, hey, just went and did some shit.

So there are sources from China that basically lead to the Jin dynasty that was in northern China, the Jin were probably using him to fight against the Tartars. And something that kind of backs this up is something that Uncle Dan talks about quite a bit. These Chinese dynasties that had these borderlands that were near the steps would basically see one of these Mongol groups getting stronger and tougher and starting to make incursions on some of their little small outposts. And once they got to, big for them to handle. They basically go find another group of Mongols to be like, hey, we see you guys

as the next big thing. You need to knock them off. Just basically using them as pawns in their game to keep protection up. You guys seem like you like golden horses. We have golden horses for you if you go mess with these guys. Yeah. The Jin Dynasty, so kind of on their border, part of their border is like on Tarterland. The Jin Dynasty from where the Mongol land is, is kind of at the, I don't know, like four and five o'clock. And then directly south is basically the border between the Jin dynasty and what is the, is it Zaya? Yeah, Zia, I think. The Western Zia, which is ruled by the Tangut people.

And the Tangut people were just step people that had moved down into that area and taken over and just through Chinese culture had kind of become Chinese. They kind of assimilated into more of that static settlement type society. And the Gia are going to come into this pretty big here shortly. Also, I don't think it probably hurt too bad that Timu got to go fight the Tartars who would kill his father. Yeah, that was probably intent. And they don't know in what capacity. There's a couple different beliefs about was he a slave? Was he actually working as more like of a mercenary in that regard?

He did end up coming back with like some prestige and perhaps some like a little bit of that sweet funding. because he was able to, weirdly enough, even after getting beat by Jammu, he came back and there were still people that were like he was able to rebuild a following, which seems weird that you would just be gone for 10 years, and then when you came back, other people would just kind of flock to you.

Off of a loss, no less. Exactly. And so this is where he starts to also build this reputation of being this very charismatic person and how he was going to actually lead his people. and the reason he would draw people to him is because he was known as being someone who was generous with the people that were under him. He wasn't known as an overly cruel person

to his own people at least. And so this, you know, especially looking at someone like Jamuka, who was known as more of a, well, he was more brutal because after that fight with Timogen's group, after the Mongols, he ends up capturing like 70 people

and boils their skin off? Mm-hmm. Which is interesting because that sounds pretty brutal right now. But we're going to talk about some stuff later on

that it's kind of like that might not have been the worst way to go. At the same time, Jumuka doing this is turning a lot of people off saying that he is too brutal. This was just a battle between two people that used to be friends. There was no way that the people

that were fighting weren't in the same group before. So they all knew each other as they were fighting. And it's not like these fights, kind of like how we talk about in certain battles when we're talking about ancient times like this. The number of troops is going to get very large.

Yeah. But this isn't where thousands of guys are being killed. There's injuries, but these groups are leaving relatively intact when they're having these step people on step people battles. It's not going to be the case when it's step people against anybody else. But when they're fighting each other,

there's a point in which they're just like, retreat in good order and try to fight again another day type mentality. So after this 10-year period, he also comes back to meet up with Togruel, who was the leader of the Kariat, but had been overthrown at that point by a relative who was being supported and backed by the Nyman people who were further to the west. Do I have that correct? Yep. Okay. So he ends up coming back in helping Togruel get this tribal, this, this composition back, and, Because of that, it gives him this additional reputation and prestige on the steppe where, regardless if he is still a vassal of Togruel, he's now built up enough of a following where he's almost kind of on equal footing. Not really in the sense of title, but kind of in his standing from the people's perspective.

They go nuts together. Absolutely berserk. They go berserk on the markets. They go berserk on the nymens. the ones that you were talking about, that it backed the power shift there, and then the Tartars. So much so that the tribes of the Onegirate, the Tejillo, and the Tartars are like, hey, we have to form an alliance

because Tegrool and Timo are going nuts. And along with this alliance, they are elect Jumuka as their leader, because Jumukas had the best run against Timajib. Yeah. Did you read about the Jerkin tribe? This isn't a joke. I actually mean this.

I wanted to present it like this because I knew you wouldn't take me seriously. No, there was a J-U-R-K-I-N, Jerkin. They had previously gotten on Timogen's shit list. And this is the instance where during the fight, he's fighting and one of his brothers is fighting with him. The brother ends up getting kind of like cut in the face by this dude. They end up calling the fight or something. And they're having this like dinner, all of them. weirdly enough, I don't know if there was just a cease to hostilities.

The wrestling match. It's the wrestling match where there's this huge dude. And so he allows his brother to wrestle this guy. And in just kind of a move of dominance and a power move, basically knowing that his brother can beat this huge dude, Temujin gives him like, he gives him the thumb across the throat. And this guy jumps up and puts his knee right in this big dude's back and just breaks his back right in the middle of this.

jumps on his back riding in piggyback style goes two knees to the back and just starts leaning back as far as he can and I'm sure I don't know if he did it in the air but as soon as he hit the ground this dude's back was snapped yeah he was a monster they said that he was like the biggest guy in the camp so jerkin got snapped yeah jerkin got snapped off jerkin snapped one off so as they're appointing jemmy to lead these forces against timogen and to gruel I think it was three separate fights, right? Uh, well, because they take on, I don't think they take on ever like a conglomerated force, because the tartars that they take on in 1202, they end up beating the tartars so bad that they line up all of the tartar leaders and just execute them. That's right. I'm thinking of a future event that's going to take three separate battles. So they execute all the tartar leaders. they bring in these remaining warriors

and one of these warriors is a guy named Jebe. Jebe is brought in, maybe should have been killed, but his life was spared because during this fight he either shot out Timogen's horse from underneath him or fired a poison arrow that had hit Timogen in the neck. They said, again, according to the legend, that the only reason that Timigen survived this poison dart is because one of his generals sucked the blood,

out of, or suck the poison out of his neck, like a snake bite. I think it's more the horse one. Yeah, I would say that. So, yeah, Timujin, basically, he's brought in front of Timurgin, and they say Timogen's horse was shot out from underneath him. We believe that it was you. And Jebe was like, yep, it was me. I did that shit.

Totally shot that horse. And as soon as Timigen sees just the bravery of Jebe for saying that, and also a guy that was able to knock Timu off of his mount, Teem was like, okay, well, You want to be one of my generals? So prior to that, when they fight against that kind of that coalition of the Tyu Chid, the Tartars and the Angirat, that's when Timu and Togrual end up just beating the shit out of this joint force. They actually captured Jammu and he begs for pardon from Tog and he actually grants it. So he's still alive at this point even after that fight. And he's still running.

It's not running that coalition because they obviously were putting a stop. to that shit. And then after that, that's when I believe Timu decides to, he's like, okay, you guys all try to join up and fight against me. I'm going to take you guys on one at a time. He hits the Tauteu shit first, then the Tartars, knocking off their leadership, absorbing their warriors. And then, like you said, that's where that Sorkan guy and the Jebe comes in. And you have Jamuka heading off to the Daimai land, basically as far away as possible to the west. you have three kind of power structures at this point in the step. You have the Nymans to the west.

You have the Mongols that are to the east. And then the carry it are kind of the soft middle. Yes, they're the buffer point between the two that are most likely to probably fight. And at this point, Jemuka ends up finally getting to gruel and says, hey, Timujin making a pretty big play here for power. You are kind of his superior. or if he tries to take your position in front of everybody. He, he, uh, he golems him.

Yeah. So basically like Togruel is Frodo. Timu is Sam. Galman. So basically he convinces him because Timo offers to marry his son to Tegroo's daughter. Now, this is the first son. One of his daughters to the son or his son to the daughter? Wants to marry his son.

J. Jocci. Jocci, the one that has the question. like again, this is questionable if he's actually even Timu's. He's like, yeah, we should totally marry him to your daughter. Now, a lot of people in the tribe, including Jammu, were like, you realize that this is him trying to get in and like establish power over the tribe. They were also offended because this wasn't the way that, you know,

the way he started to run stuff, especially with like Jebe and stuff. It wasn't just to be where common people or soldiers were supposed to get put in like higher positions or anything like that. There was a very established step aristocracy and his habit of promoting these commoners to these high positions was kind of fucking with it. So again, like you said, Jammu ends up getting into Togruel's ear

and is like he's making a play, the whole son marriage thing, he's promoting these guys who have no business being in these positions, he's messing with the way we do things on the step. He needs to go. And finally Togruel is like, I guess he is kind of a threat and it is kind of offensive that he tried to offer me like this weird possible like bastard kid to marry my daughter. So under the regular auspices of just being friendly and everything,

Tagruel actually ends up like inviting him for a dinner or like a meeting or something like that. They make a play. Yeah, they set up an ambush. Well, Tummoons will find out, finding out because there's a couple guys that hear about it and warn him. But it's very quick that he's supposed to show up. so he's able to get some forces together, but ends up getting beat and has to, like, skedaddle. Well, this is going to kind of be something that we talk about as a Mongol strategy.

He has no plan, like he's talking about with this attack, ends up retreating after the loss, and then he just gathers every living being ally that he could. He uses something called, it was an oath of loyalty. It was known as the Balijuna covenant. Basically, this is, you got my. back, I got your back. When I rise to power, I will take care of all of you. You were born to be hockey players.

This gets everybody fired up. And Timujin's forces come back in a way. It's just, it's a very decisive victory. Tegrool is actually killed in this battle by his own men by accident because they come across him and don't recognize him. So definitely this wasn't forces that he was close with. So yeah, so Timigen is able to basically set up like a little bit of an ambush on Tegrool and the Carriot forces three days of battle. He ends up being to Grul who flees with his son as well. And he ends up getting killed by the Nymaiian who. Oh, I guess so not his men, but no, but he's in their territory. They don't recognize who he is or they wouldn't have done it. And he ends up just getting killed by some like regular soldier. At that point, Temagin absorbs the Carriot.

And takes what he does. Yep. Takes the princess as a wife. So the one he tried to marry to his son, he ends up taking her as a wife and then marries her sister and niece to his son. Just collecting brides, left and right. Jamuka, who had fled further into the Nymean territory, along with all of these other defeated forces that were probably like he's definitely going to kill us. basically all end up in this 9 million area and this is where

May 1204 you had the Battle of Cherry Mount Cherry Mount that sounds good to me the Niamans just get crushed it's just it's a bad battle for the Nymains and Jemuka still ends up

getting away but his forces are dwindling they're going further and further west into the step and eventually he's with like a handful of companions. These handful of companions know that there's a bounty on Jamuka's head that they're traveling with, which makes them all targets as well. Yeah, they get caught.

It's basically like, hey, you're hot goods. If we get caught with you, we're all dead. Possession's nine-tenths of the law, and they're in possession of Jamoka. So they do the rational thing, and all of them basically wrap him up, lock him up, and they bring him back to Timu. And Timu's response to this isn't one of Agulati. he has all of these companions killed because they weren't loyal to Jamoka. I mean, it takes them some time because between him beating the Nyman and then having Jamu's guys turn him over,

he then turns and takes on the markets to completely just take them out of the equation. He gets to the point where he's pulling kind of the same thing with he pulls with the other ones. He just kills their leadership and then absorbs them in and then kind of puts his guys in charge. Now, as these guys end up turning over Jamu Yeah, Temogen's just like, well, I can't fucking trust you guys to be loyal because you were supposed to be loyal to this guy and you just turned him over. So no, I can't have you and my, has them killed, basically tells Jamu, hey man, we're blood brothers and everything.

I don't want to have to. And there was also the taboo about spilling actual blood like on the soil and spirits and everything like that. He's like, I don't really want to have to kill you, but, you know, I'm top dog. And he's like, you know, there's not room for two sons in the sky. So that was basically Jamu's way of telling him, you're going to have to just end up kill me. But please make sure you do it in an honorable way. Those spill my blood.

Yeah. So I want to say how they did it is they either rolled them up in a blanket and trampled him with horses. Beat the shit out of them. Yeah. So, and I'm sure there was blood there. What was the other way? they said. Because there was the, there's also the thing where it was like

they did it honorably where what did they lock him in a box or something like that or they fixiated him I think. Or they broke his back. Oh, they gave him the old. They gave him the old jerk treatment. The old jerked treat. Yep, they gave him the jerk and special. They gave him a jerk. Or

he could have just gotten dismembered. Yeah, I feel like the dismembered one makes the most sense, but maybe there was a little bit of honor here. So the jerk at method probably would have been the next word. Ah, jerk at method is probably the best. He's getting rolled up in a carpet and getting trampled

by horses. Just jerk me, dude. Yeah. Jerk me to death, for sure. Genghis Khan is, he's the man after this. Timu ends up holding a Kuratai in 1206 where he gains the name. Corotai, where I adopt

Genghis Khan, Jenghis Khan, Changus Khan. Yeah, whatever you want to go with. There's just a myriad of stories behind what Changes Khan means. Some have said that it's like Lord of all who dwell in the felt tense. Lord of the Sea, or it's like Master of the Sea, which I don't know if they consider it like the Great Grass Sea or something like that. There was also thought because water surrounds everything. It would be Khan of the universe or something like that. Regardless, he is now in the position of leadership over all or a very high percentage. percentage of peoples of the step.

Yeah, and along with being Chengis Khan now, this social revolution begins. All these administrative reforms that are designed to basically suppress tribal power and try to bring everybody together. Let's take a bathroom before we get too deep into that. Okay. Well, hello. Listen,

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All right, and with that said, let's get back to the good stuff. Okay, so he's actually G-K now. He's M-G-K. He's Mongolian Genghis Khan. Like you were saying, sets about reforming how the step is controlled because he has seen what happens when enemies have time to regroup,

when other tribes have too much time, or end up not enough resources, they have to invade somebody. So how is he going to solve this issue to make sure that as someone who has united these tribes, he's not going to have somebody rise up against him or challenge him? So many of these, I guess, contenders to the throne have tribal power behind them. And like I was talking about before we went to the bathroom, if you can suppress this tribal power and break people down to families, but also kind of teach them that you're all for one, one for all kind of mentality.

Part of that is changing over from a lineage system to a meritocracy. If you can stop having all of these people who feel like they're entitled to these positions by who their fathers were and who their families were, and start switching over to a merit-based society where you can have these generals that aren't coming from these long lines of Mongol chieftains, but the people that are right for the job, we've talked about it in so many different wars about the guy whose father was a member of the upper echelon

to where they almost like buy the position. They didn't earn the position. Everybody earned their position in Changas's army. And along with that, you have them going to a military conscription ages between 15 and 70. I don't know what a 70-year-old Mongolian is doing. But I bet he's nice with a bow. Are there many of them?

Maybe that's what they teach. is the class on how to get to 70 as a Mongolian. Yeah, you don't have a long retirement after that, I would assume. This military decimal system that they put in, you have groups of tens that go into groups of 100. Then you have groups of hundreds that go into groups of thousands and thousands into 10,000s, and so on. Squads, units, divisions, company.

Like, he basically creates that system, but the change... Well, and it's not new. Correct. He's the one, what he does and what his change about it, is he is not going to, if you were to gather, like when those guys gathered the three different groups together to try to take out Timogen when he was with Togruil, those armies weren't fighting where they were all mixed in together. It was probably three separate forces fighting together, but all within their own groups. He basically takes all of these different

warriors and spreads them out to where they are fighting with, not fighting against, but fighting with people that are also spread out from all of their other tribes. So you don't have one consolidation of just one tribe that might have a beef, allow them to gain some strength and then try to challenge you. He's spreading it out to where everybody is now in a position where they can be like checked before they have the ability to get too powerful. He also has some wild rules of engagement for these guys. Yeah.

So basically, if you have three guys out of your group of 10 that launch and go into battle, if you don't follow them into battle, you're punished. If you have even one guy that begins a retreat and the other nine don't follow that guy on a retreat, those nine are punished. It's basically everybody has to come to a consensus,

but when one of you peels off, everything has to move as a unit. Yeah. And if you're not, you're getting punished quickly. So you know it's almost like you have to have one mind. Everybody's kind of doing their own thing, but you have to be in concert with whatever you're doing. Everything has to have a purpose. And this is to basically just have everyone operating in this same manner and replacing, like you said, that old tribal loyalty to this new loyalty to the great Mongol state.

That's going to be, this is for the good of everybody. another thing he does is he'll put like the highest tears are usually occupied by family members. He still does that in the sense of like my sons are going to be here, things like that. The Khan family is going to be high up everywhere. Exactly, yeah. They're known as the Golden Family. He increases his traditional bodyguard. The traditional bodyguard for a regular con would sometimes be like a thousand warriors.

He increases that to about 10,000 men. and it's not just his bodyguard, but it's basically like his household staff. It also serves as kind of like a military academy. We talked about this a little bit when we talked about Marco Polo and we talked about Kubla, how there was kind of this training area,

was the main area for like training officers and things like that. What it also was was like governmental administration, but also a form of like hostage taking because all of the people that served within these 10,000 men were brothers or sons of military commanders for other regions or other areas within the empire. Hostage taking 101? Basically, yes.

He was just like, hey, isn't your kid like one of my assistants? And this guy's not going to start shit up in the north because he knows he's got his air or whatever. And over the next five years, they just start cleaning the step up. Any sort of fires that they haven't put out, which I can't assume they're a whole lot. left, but they claim the step up to the point to where their rulers of their own domain. There's nothing that's going to break up anybody on the step as long as Changas can keep everybody happy. Yep. And that's going to be the big thing that drives, at least in kind of my viewpoint,

is the step people fought against the other step people because resources were kind of scarce. Anything that you could take from somebody else was something that you didn't have together like yourself. Now, you have all of these people who now you've said, none of you can fight with anyone else. We're just going to have to share the resources and the spoils, but now you have to have something to point them at, somewhere to get those spoils. And the closest place to them is going to be directly south, which is going to bring us into conflict with the Tangut people. Yeah, the Zia dynasty. just at the wrong place at the wrong time. They start to hit these border towns at the Jia

and the Western Kingdom in 1205. Full-scale invasions begin in 1209 that are all personally led by the con at this point. There's an advance on the capital of Xin after this two-month stalemate that it was just not going anywhere until we get this feigned retreat. And this fained retreat is going to be something

that the Mongolians just, they do it to perfection. This is their bread and butter. This is their belly option up the middle. They feigned a retreat. As soon as they start to retreat, these geoforses look at that, they're like, oh shit, they're going away.

We can pull off of our defensive positions and go chase them down and kill them to stop the threat from happening. And as soon as this happens, then they start pulling off of their defensive positions, you see this retreat start to see these forces spread as they're getting closer and closer to them. So they all just turn around and now that they have them in the open field, they can start using those interrupter arrows and just start picking these dudes off left and right.

You're able to move just so much faster. And in order to actually move your forces, you do have to put yourself in a vulnerable mobile position. As soon as they saw that, they were just like, turn it around. We can catch up to them so quickly. The reason that they were also in this two months still made is because, warfare on the step never involved laying siege to any place. It was always mobile warfare.

So there was never any need within the step to develop any type of like adaptions to siege warfare, seaging a place that has walls or anything like that. So after this like two month period, he's just kind of like, I'd need to probably figure this out. If I'm going to be doing any work down here in China or against any of these dynasties,

I'm assuming that they're all. going to have cities like this. I got to have a way of, like, cracking these nuts. Everybody got walls. We talked about this. I forgot which dynasty it was. We aren't in the time right now of a time when the great

wall, as it were, was in place. We're at a time when it's just like we talked about the Silk Roads. I don't know where this gets lost in translation, or it's just easier to point to this. There wasn't just one Silk Road. This was Silk Roads. These were Silk Routes. This wasn't just the Great Wall of China. There were walls.

there were walls spread everywhere. Yes, there is a massive section that's done by one dynasty. That ain't up yet. These are just walls around cities. So like you're saying, Changus is kind of realizing like, I got to get one under my belt. I got to figure out how to do this. Let's start playing around. If I can't breach the walls, is there any way that I can figure out how to punish these people?

And I mean, this, these tinglet that he ends up attacking, to the north of them between the area where now the Mongols, which is kind of more present-day Mongolia, there was like the Gobi Desert to their north. And they were like, no one's going to be attacking. It was also this summer, I believe. They're like, no one is attacking. Now, they're also bordered by other places down further to their south. So most of their troops are actually stationed along the borders, their southern and eastern

border against other dynasties. simply because they were like summertime, no one can attempt to cross over the gobi. It's too far, too far from water sources, you know, between water sources that an army can't do that, unless it's an army that can move 65 miles an hour in a day

and covers and has a lot of other horses that they can possibly ride. And so at one point, Jenghis Khan just ends up shown up and they're like, oh shit. I think he ends up making it to their capital of Zhang Zing and that's where he ends up getting bogged down for what two months. Yeah, this is a two months stalemate before they hit the feigned retreat on them.

And then after they hit the feign retreat, they still couldn't get into the city. And that's where all the valuable shit is. They're not going to just be able to wipe out the army and then be like, these guys don't have anything on them. Like we need what's in the city. This is robbing a bank and robbing the teller drawers, but not getting into the safe. You've got to get into the safe. make this worth it. This also then allows them to actually kind of sit and try to think about this without

an army actually actively attacking them. So their plan that they come up with is they're like, hey, let's divert this river to actually flood the city. Let's damn up the yellow river. Yep. Fuck it. Let's do it. All right.

So they start building earthworks and everything like that. And eventually, because again, they have no experience doing this. No. The earthworks that they dug giveaway. and although it does do a little bit of flooding in the city, it also floods the entire Mongol camp. And the entire Mongol camp, do you remember how many guys he brought with him on this one? It wasn't a major force. This might have been like 20 to 50,000.

Okay, but still at the same time, 20 to 50,000, let's be conservative in just say 20, 5 horses, each 100,000 horses. That's a big camp. Yeah. And you just flooded the entire thing. Yeah. Thankfully, the people inside the city are like, these guys are fucking crazy. They'll flood a river and flood their entire camp just to try to get to us.

We need to come to some type of treaty. So they're able to actually reach kind of like a peace agreement that basically includes a shitload of loot. And then also the guy that's running the city or the emperor of this, the Tangut is like, here, you can also have my daughter. There's a lot of daughters. get thrown in as almost like a player to be named later. A lot of princesses that get brought into negotiations.

You always have another daughter, man. Well, in the way that this works, too, with Changes being at the head of the table, when you go to take concubines or when you go to take the spoils of war, Changis gets a first shot at whatever woman that he wants, and then his sons get the next shot, whoever they want, and then the generals, and then it works their way down. So you want to be higher up on the ladder, so you have a better shot at the pecking order to pick up some of these,

new brides or concubines at this time. It's a situation where I'm sure the Tangut people inside were sitting there looking at what they were doing. Like, well, shit, they just try to flood a river to get in here. Do we really want to stick around and see what else they're going to try to do to get in here? Like, the walls scared them off, but it didn't scare them away. And that's why you get this 1210 peace treaty and these tributes that start coming into Changes. You see the Mongol withdrawal, and they are basically like a vassal state of the Mongol Empire. They went from being kind of a dynasty among themselves in China, who also have to deal with the Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty, to now they're like, well, shit, now we got to pay tribute to the Mongols all the time.

Part of that loot is also them grabbing a whole bunch of people that are good at building like siege equipment. and then know about siege warfare because he's going to start adapting this and I really think the only reason that they were allowed to even be this vassal state is he's like, all right, we're going to leave now we're definitely not taking a bunch of these siege engineers with us and build a bunch of stuff

and learn how to come back here and take over your city definitely not doing that. Well, I definitely think too that a good part of this is him looking at it because the Tangut people had actually reached out to the Jin Dynasty like, hey, all for one China and one China for all the Jin Dynasty. Like, no.

No, man. If you guys fall, that's just going to be. You're going to get beat by the Mongols. Cool. We'll just smoke them later on. This isn't that big of a deal with us. He's like, you realize that we're kind of between you and the Mongols, right? And that us being, you know, wiped out means that they're that much closer to you.

It doesn't make the long, the Jin long to find this out. No. Because they're second on the list. So the Jin Dynasty is to the east of kind of this Mongolia or like this step area. Apparently, Jenghis Khan's reputation precedes him because this first defense is like, it's an actual wall. And the guy that's supposed to be in like charge of it just opens it and just stands aside. He's like, welcome to the Jin dynasty. And part of the reason the Jin, they are the next great victims.

but there is a little personal beef here because there's this man named Juan Yonji that ends up taking the Jin throne in 1209. Yonji used to be the Jin ambassador to the Mongols. And Changas was not a big fan of this guy. He said that he was very arrogant. He talked to them like they were just basically Neanderthals, had zero respect for them. So now Chenghis knows that that's the guy that's in control. The guy that pissed him off for all those years is the Jin ambassador. He's seeing him at the top of the list.

He's like, you're my next victim. He also knows because of this essential coup that just happened, there's a ton of internal strife within the Jin Dynasty. So there are still some people that probably, you know, the other, the previous regime or the previous management and are pissed off that this happened. I think that's what happened with this guy that was actually guarding these outer defenses. He wasn't a fan of this new guy And he was like, all right, come in a

Clean House, not knowing well enough To be like, oh, they fucking kill Everybody Yep There was an incident in 1210 Where Yonji goes and asks The Con for a tribute

And I love that things just transcend time. Disrespect transcends time Changa spit on all of the ambassadors that came to ask for this tribute Like that was even back in 1210 to spit in somebody's face I got something for your leader

Right in their faces Yeah it's the problem though Is even though they're being let through Jin soldiers outnumber the Mongols about 8 to 1 at this point in time They said there was about 600,000 soldiers Correct but not like Calvary on horse trips Which is why I think also Jengis was like fuck it they got 600,000 that's fine we got horses well like you say he has this weird mongolian

CIA to where he has spies in all of these different areas and he's getting all of this information back so if they have 600,000 soldiers he's probably thinking well it might only be about 400,000 because there's going to be some defectors if we can collect them along the way all while killing a fair portion of them we can start to build up these forces and by the time we show up we're going to be so big that the Jins aren't going to understand that they have that numerical advantage. Push come to shove the first couple groups we meet. I just burn the fucking towns

down and kill everybody. I let Word get down to the next few towns. They don't even put up a fight. No. This invasion is launched after having another Kirtai in March of 1211. By May, they are

within the walls of the Jin dynasty. As you're saying, they're being allowed passage throughout this issue, or throughout, without any issue, he breaks him up into this three column attack and this three columns just tear through all of the lands. They're losing towns, they're suffering defections, and they're just basically like three worms that are digging through the Jin Dynasty countryside, all while everybody is sitting inside of the town um, Jijing, which is Beijing now.

Oh, no, Zhang Dhu. Zongdu. Zong Du. But from a standpoint of stationary armies and everything, even armies that are garrisoned in other towns that are around this place, if you have these three very mobile groups that are going anywhere and everywhere, and you hear, oh, okay, we have this town's under attack. And all of a sudden you get a report two days later,

and you're like, this town over here is under attack. And then a day later this, you're like, how many of them are there? Yeah. And how do we respond? to this because if they're moving that quickly, we can't go help this town. We have to guess which town they're going to go to next to try to send people there. It just throws everything in complete chaos. When they're setting up for camp at night, one of their kind of strategies is he tells all of his soldiers to go around and set many fires to make it look like their footprint is

bigger. And I imagine with all these horses, it wasn't hard to make their footprint look gigantic. Yeah, he also told them, remember, to tie brush or branches to all of your horse's tails. So they kick up the dust. So it makes a gigantic dust cloud when they're moving. So it looks like an insanely huge army. Yeah, they're doing everything they can to try to intimidate the gin. I did like it in all of the documentaries when they're like, he was a master of psychological warfare. He killed everybody making the next town scared that he would kill them to.

I'm like, that's not fucking psychological warfare. That's just like ancient how they did it. It's a pretty direct threat. And not to mention the people who they're coming to sack the next town, if they killed everybody in the town before, nobody's going to know. You're talking four towns away that finally hears about it. They're like,

ah, shit, they're coming our way. There's just, there's no way with the kind of zero left, with no man left behind, pretty much, that they weren't being told about all this stuff. In some of these areas, we were talking about when they ran through the Tartars. One of the things that they did after they defeated the Tartar Army

was they told everybody in town that they were going to walk by a wagon. And if their height was beyond, like the tongue of the wagon, they were going to die. So anybody that was taller than the tongue of the wagon, basically an adult or even a preteen, maybe somebody over the age of eight, I don't fucking know what it was. They were basically trying to say, if you're old enough to know your way

and to be old enough to hold a grudge, you're going to die. Yeah. And that's what they're doing in so many of these cities is they're coming through and sacking everything. These recruits are coming in huge. And along the way in the Jin Dynasty, if they didn't get enough from the Tangut people,

they end up recruiting like 500 siege engineers away from the Jin Dynasty. They're collecting these guys like Pokemon cards. The conflict continues into 1213, This is after 1212 when the con is wounded by an arrow at Ging Jing Zhang Du. Oh no, no, at Gijing where he's wounded, it pauses the invasion. Yes.

Then they eventually make it to Zhangdu. Yeah, and 1213. So many Zhajanj and Jing. There is. And this is modern day Beijing. There's this Keaton rebellion that fractures the Jin leadership. The Khan spies hear about it. They're reporting all these problems.

But they just realized at this point that the Mongol army was stretched too thin. This wasn't a supply train issue. This was just they were all in such further reaches of this Jin dynasty. It was starting to get hot. They were starting to run low on food because not only had they

wiped everything out, they were slashing and burning everything that they didn't need. Just basically salting the earth behind them. They're taking a lot of horses with them. On the planes, on the step, there's nothing but grass. When you get into these areas where you're coming

through mountainous areas and things like that, you are made to be like a lightning strike, a Blitz Creek type thing. When you have to set up for a siege and again, you've kid to have a bunch of these guys, but you don't have the stuff that can be built. You have to still construct everything. You're going to get into a position

where if you have to hang around too long, disease is going to start to be an issue. You can't even feed the horses. And if you can't feed the horses, you've killed the horses and you've eaten the horses, but then if you start starving, you've already killed your horses and don't have anything to eat. I think they said this was one of the times that it's noted that cannibalism actually came into play, right?

Yeah, do you think that they were... I don't want to call these people savages, because that's not the right term. No, man. But is cannibalism, that's not a bridge too far, right? Depends on your culture, man. I mean, I know we're looking at things through the lens of, you know, 2026. This is already a...

Man... Oh, we're good. Yep, we're good. Um... Oh my God, we almost had a studio incident here. See, this is how the sausage used made. Um, oh my God, where was that? I scared the shit out of me.

Ah, yes, that's where I was. The murder! No, if you are a society where it is very casual to just go in and wholesale slaughter entire cities because there is a point I don't know if it's with the tangut the second time around but there is a

genocide that is set to take place and I think that's who it's against I can't remember exactly what we'll do it. I think they call it an ethnocide yes you're okay with eating your own yeah if it means and here's the other thing too

when you get that hungry man what's the desperation like yeah Don are party of eight people I mean, it's, it's... That Chilean soccer team or whatever it was in the Andes. They ate each other. And they weren't at war. Yeah, ate her.

Alive. Just trying to survive. So the cannibalism sets in. Peace negotiations come up. The siege is lifted in May of 1214. Tribute's pretty nice. This tribute comes with 3,000 horses, 500 slaves, a gin princess, of course, because you've got to throw that in.

Tons of golden silk. You get these people draped in silk. Oh, mighty cotton. Is there anything that you need among, you know, more than anything else? We've eaten a lot of our horses and so my guys don't have enough horses to get back to Mongolia. So they hit their ride home. We're going to need horses. Yeah, you know what?

We're going to need some slaves too because this isn't enough horses. So throw some of them in there. Throw your best princess in. Also, I stink like, shrew. shit. I don't shower. I wear clothes. They said that they wore clothes until they basically disintegrated and fell off their bodies. Yeah, a lot of the time, too, because they're wearing like animal skins and furs, like they would rot. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. The hilarious part of this is when they get into the Arabs and they start working around that region. I said that it was some of the

most confusing things in the world because these Mongols were dirty and nasty, but they showed up in these fine silks. And like really nice armor and everything. That's because they'd just taken them from the town before. This stuff looks, does this stuff kind of look like our stuff? How did they get that? Yeah. Oh, shit. Oh.

So the gin leaders get a little jittery at this point. Obviously, yeah, I can see why. And the whole area around Beijing has just been torn apart, Zhangdu. You guys think we're a little close to Mongolian birder? Yeah, yeah? Maybe we move south. They end up moving south to a city called Kai Feng. And when I say they ended up moving south, they didn't move the whole city south.

They basically moved the capital and then moved all of the, not parliament. Like the government. Yeah. So basically what this is is you're playing capture the flag. You're just picking up the flag and moving it to a new location. And that's where you're going to rule from. You're not moving the people. There are still people in the city.

And when you pick up that flag and you start to move it and Jane, And he sees you do that. He just looks back and he's like, oh, you guys are violating the treaty. You're coming. I've got to come back and kill you all. You're preparing to fight again by moving back. You guys are going back there to try to like, yeah, to build your strength back up. And winter 1214, 1215, General Muglai ends up capturing most of the towns in an area called the Adong.

Zhang Du is There they've been left the wolves at this point All those people in there They end up surrendering May 31st 1215 Even though they surrender This town is still sacked Bodies are stacked It's it's incredible how bad this is

Was it Uncle Dan that was telling the story About the Arab traders that had come through Zang Du after this had happened And they said as they were walking along the road It started to get spongy because the human fat that had basically disintegrated into the ground. It was something about that or it was something about the, like the grease, like you said the fat, but it was like the fat or the grease had like, like saturated like the city streets. Said that the smell was so bad that it was sometimes killing people because it was so toxic from all these rotting bodies. He said there were just mountains and mountains of.

skeletons that were piled on top of each other in Zhang Du. And this is after they surrender. So this isn't like, hey, surrender, we'll bring you in as a vassal state or anything like that. This is the Jin Empire is still around and we have to show them that we mean business. This is the insane thought process, though. And this is why this guy is definitely like the way that like listening to other podcasts and documentaries, I don't feel like anyone really takes a stance.

It's just kind of talking about him because it's so long ago, you're so removed from it. But this is like some fucked up evil shit. And we can look at that from our standpoint. Even by those standards of back in that time, it was still pretty fucked up and evil if you're just chilling out in

China in your city. And guess what? The government decides to move its headquarters. You don't have any fucking say in that. You actually just defended the city to defend the government and they just end up heading down to a city that I think is like 370 miles south. It's already got people living there.

So where are you going to move to? Exactly. And so now you're left to face the wrath of a decision you had no part in making. And they completely just slaughter everybody in the city to send a message. Yeah. I don't quite know how to try to sum this up because these numbers just don't, they don't feel real to me. but I don't, even the low estimates are insane. They said that the overall conquest of the Jin Dynasty

estimated between 2 and 15 million deaths. Now, we talked about Zhang Du during the Marco Polo episode. I believe this was one of the cities that he said the population of Zhang Du alone was over a million people. Yeah. And we're talking about a time in the 12th and 13th century were human populations in the world weren't massive. But China was this empire,

that nobody had really understood the amount of population that was in that area and that they did have these giant massive cities. So I would believe that Zhongdu alone, not to mention the outlying areas and the suburbs and everything like that, just within the city,

I can believe that there was a million people that were killed just within the city. A million people. So comparing this, and here's the thing about numbers on this, we've talked about World War II enough to have some pretty, insane numbers like Stalingrad, things like that.

This is not bombs. This is not guns. This is nothing. No planes, no nothing, no tanks. This is just fucking swords and axes and that shit. So when they're coming in and they're killing these people, they are at it for a long time and they are right in it. That's what's so fucking savage about this. Is everything about this?

is being right up in your face. You are being killed up close. This isn't a war where all of a sudden a bomb hits your house and all of a sudden you're blown apart and obliterated and it's over really quick. You hear the gates of the city being broken down. You hear the sound of people screaming. Like that fucking nightmare, that situation,

is Jean-Due, the one where they say that 60,000 virgins threw themselves off the wall to avoid what was going to happen them if they were captured by the Mongols? that shit is insanely believable because that's what ended up happening to these places as any of the women that were taken were passed around

and just forcibly just raped on a degree that we cannot fathom in public in front of their families, friends, God and everybody. Yeah. But to think that even if you're saying that low end, go with $5 million within the Jin,

you know, the Jin Dynasty, that's insane. insane. That's hand-murtered 5 million people. Oh, and they had a system. The system was basically, I don't remember the exact number. I want to say it was 200 people to a soldier. It depended on how many

people there were. Because when they get over to the fucking Middle East, apparently it gets to like 400 per man. And this is a situation where it's like, all right, $199, please step up. I'm going to chop your head off. And the other 198 people are just

sitting there waiting to go up and meet their maker. That's the kind of torture at the end of a life that you just don't. I want to say that there's some sort of humanity and just at least chopping their heads off. But I can't because I know just how terrible it is for everybody that has to sit there. What if you're not good at it? Yeah. What if you're not a good soldier about that? And you're not strong enough. I mean, all these guys are fucking jacked from these fucking bows arrows. But at the same time, there's a learning, as morbid as it is, there is a learning curve when you're first assigned 400. What are you doing?

Like, how long do you have to do this? Yeah. What happens if you get 150 in and you're just like, I'm so tired. I have nothing to swing left with. You want to be the first 50, probably, right? There's got to be, God, this is such a fucked up conversation. There is a sweet spot in there where they have gotten use and you're in a rhythm. He's warmed up.

Just that chop, chop. It's like, you know, when you're talking about, chopping vegetables the first couple chops you're just and then all of a sudden you're like do do do do do do to do there's like one maybe it's got to be like 30 30 to 50 I think is the sweet spot still strong enough to just get it over with real quick but has it dialed in and being like I know the spot I'm going for not tired yet the arms aren't fatigued it's it's morbid and it's awful but it's just the way that these guys did things so high estimate 15 million I have a very very very hard time believing the Jin Dynasty even held 15 million people.

If you say two to five, I have no problem with two to five. The thing I found with some of these statistics, and again, the numbers are huge and they're disputed. So we're just going with kind of the general consensus on this stuff. Also, some of the more modern consensus trying to kind of meet those things halfway. So there were multiple times when they came into China into the same areas. There were times where populations were able to maybe recover a little bit, not to a huge, degree. So some of the numbers from the Jin Dynasty could be between like 15 and 25 to 30,

and that's over the course of between 1211 and then 1234 when the final engagements within the Jin Dynasty ended. With the Tanguts in the G area, you have like 2.5 million deaths between 1205 and 1227. So it kind of encompasses all of those areas, because although we will come back and talk about that a little bit more, it's still just going to be more killing. Yeah, and I want to believe the high end on the, the Tangits, just because that was the one that they called an ethnicide.

Yeah. So that's going to be everybody. And that's round two at the tankards, right? Yeah. Yeah. 1216, you have Sun Jocci and Dordet, these two generals that are going around are defeating these rebels of these Hoyin tribes.

There is a Naimane prince. His name is Chuck Lug. who basically... Kuchlug. Kuchlug. Kuchlug. Oh, Kuchelug's even better. Kuchelg.

Yeah. You don't remember Uncle Dan saying Kuchelug. Kuchelug takes the Central Asian kind of province area, the Kara Kytai dynasty thrown in 1212, and the Kahn dispatches

Jebe and 20,000 soldiers to Kachar to go get Kuchlug. Kuchelug ends up fleeing away. way, but ends up being captured. Jebe beheads him. And as he does this, the con comes into town, this area, basically, and he says,

you're all free from this religious persecution that he's put you through. And that's the funny thing about the way that Changas has looked at now, is it's almost like they say that he had this belief that people should be able to worship who they wanted in this religious freedom. as we talked about with Alexander who did the exact same thing, it ain't because he likes their religion. It's because if you don't push back against the masses of religious people, they're not going to push back against you.

I don't know if he was just kind of like ahead of his time enough in that way of looking at it and saying, honestly, this is the thing that causes so much fighting. Yeah. Like if I can just let you guys keep doing this one, thing that seems very important to you, but not all important. I don't have to worship this thing, but you guys can keep doing it. That should keep you guys pacified enough. And just, because if I tell you you can't do that, that's going to piss you off just from the get-go.

You're going to want to rebel. And you're going to, and you're already going to be paying me money. But if I can keep you happy in this regard, you'll be a little bit less likely to try to rise up against me. I mean, it's not going to work. I'm going to come in and slaughter everyone, but then you can't pay. And that's it. You can't kill the gold. and goose. Yeah. So if you can keep them happy by letting them worship whatever they wanted, and this wasn't all religions.

This was just the religions in the area that had a large following. The other ones that couldn't create a very large rebellion and maybe were the least popular ones in the areas, they were wiped out. Those guys were the ones that were on the chopping block in these areas. What are the top three gods in your city? Hey, good news. You guys can all keep worshiping them, and we're not going to kill you. That's the cutoff point.

anything past popularity foreign blow after this happens you start to get a little bit of a push from oh man the Kawasmian Kuazmian empire

Quarismian Kwarismian man that's a lot of vowels the Khorismian empire that borders the Mongol Empire in the west as they're mopping up and cleaning up the Jin Dynasty this whole area that is this Chorizmian Empire kind of gets lost to history.

And it's incredible because of how much area they had. They held much of Central Asia, Persia, Afghanistan. When I say Central Asia, I'm talking about the stands, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, everywhere in that area. And he was almost known, I believe they said, the second coming of an Arab Alexander. Yeah, the Corzimian Shah. The second.

Muhammad the second? Yes. Yeah. but he's lost to history because as they're reaching their zenith is his core as me an empire, they end up running a foul of Changas. So he ends up kind of doing this thing with that those other step people and everything like that. At a certain point, the people are going to start not getting bored in a sense, but all of a sudden those spoils and those things that you brought back are going to run out.

Yeah. And people are going to start getting antsy again. So I believe he sends like a baggage train or something like that like a trade envoy things like that like a hundred camels loaded with all kinds of shit, right? 450 merchants go in this train. Okay. They're headed west to the Quirzmian Empire. As they get to this border town of the empire called Otrar, there's this asshole governor named Enlchuk who massacres all of the. merchants and seizes all of the goods.

And when Chenghis finds out about this, he wants some answers. So he sends this Mongol ambassador with these two companions. I believe the Mongol ambassador was Arab too. So maybe a little like, hey, speak to your own people

and maybe you can get this figured out. Maybe this won't get you instantly killed. They'll wait for a second for you to say something. Yeah. And, uh, Inulchuk, Anulchuk said that he believed that these merchants were all spies and that they were all going to basically flip, not knowing that he already had a ton of spies in this Quirersmean Empire, comes up as this ambassador goes to

speak to Muhammad, that Muhammad basically admits that he knew what Anel Chuck had done and that he didn't stop him from doing it. And then he proceeds to kill the Mongol ambassador and he shaves the faces of the two companions, which is a big no-no. He burns their beards, I think. Okay, so he didn't shave him. He burns their beard. I don't know if he cuts him and then burns it, but I know it's a huge insult.

I think he says something along the lines of your empire is but like the sand ours is but the ocean or something like that. Such a bad idea. He doesn't know who he's fucking with. No. No, he doesn't. He sends back these companions.

They're very far away. Yeah. They're away. But when you're Changa's gone, you have an army that can move very quickly. Yes. What I'm saying is that's maybe where the mistake on his part, you know, the Coorsman guy is there's a lot of land

between them and like Mongolia where they're like more centrally located. He's probably heard some stuff. But he's thinking no one's gonna come. Like I, no one's, this is the first time I've really ever seen you guys. Like you guys don't, aren't close by. This guy who's known as the era of Alexander.

he's probably not run across too many people that he couldn't take over. So his confidence is an all-time high. Chingis has had enough. He begins all this invasion prep. These Mongol spies are starting to point towards the fractured Quarismian society. He knows that the soldiers don't want to meet the Mongols in the open ground. I think he's happy. He's got to be thrilled that this happened.

He's like, okay, I'm going to send you down as an ambassador. see what happened. There might have been a mix-up. I can't say for certain, but someone's got to report back to me. He comes back. He's like, he killed your ambassador. He burned our beards,

and you just see Jankus, and he's like, yes. Fucking curl tie time. Let's make a plan. People have been barking at me because they're getting bored and they need some plunder. We're heading to the west.

And we're on a campaign of annihilation. And that's, there's not a better definition than what you just said. Because what happens in the Chorisman Empire almost makes what happened in the Chinese dynasties sort of look like Childsblade. We didn't talk about it like it was Childs Play. We got into a pretty dark conversation. These soldiers not wanting to meet the Mongols on the battlefield immediately start garrisoning themselves in the city. And when they're garrisoning themselves in the city and these Mongol troops,

start showing up. First thing they do is, you were talking about it when we were doing research, they basically just open the cages and bring these siege engineers out. And they're like, that's a wall. Get us over the wall. They give some of these towns the benefit of a doubt and say, if you surrender now and come out, we promise that we will probably not kill you. Well, the first one they hit is the one where all the merchants were killed. Yeah, the town Otrar Otrar, yeah. And that's a five-month siege. They end up executing the garrison, the governor, of course, who'd initially seized all this stuff.

They got their ship back, but I'm sure some of it was probably sent back to Muhammad. You know how they cleaned up Enochuk? They finished off that governor. Molten silver down his throat, right? Yep. They made himself a silver cast. I'm sure they cut them open and pulled the silver out, right? used as a cup just to see what the casting was down his throat like how far did it get down his gore it

like when they pour aluminum in an ant hill yeah yeah yep they treat them like an ant hill um so that place is destroyed now weirdly enough and i'm gonna kind of name some numbers of these cities these are kind of like very low estimates for for how many people were killed apparently this first place because it's a further out city it's not very heavily populated i think they said there were like 5,000 killed there. The next place, and this Chorismian campaign goes between 1219 and

1221. So it's two years of just straight up slaughter. Bukhara in 1212 or sorry 1220 Genghis actually personally leads this siege. After the city surrendered, he described himself as

the flail of God god, flail of God sent to punish them. I want to read the actual speech says. I'm going to be reading this as John Wayne playing Jenghis Khan. This is deep character work. Here we go. I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sin, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you. That's pretty scary. And it makes you really think a lot of the things that are said kind of this Arab campaign are told by some of these Arab writers.

There was one, I believe his last name was Al-Sin, Al-Sidine, maybe. And he's basically describing this as a punishment for what Muhammad did, but for the wickedness of the Arab people. Now, are you writing that because you believe it, or are you writing that because you're being so thoroughly routed that you maybe want to be like, God wasn't on our side. I think that's all you can blame it on. If you felt that you were that powerful and something happened like this,

you got to chalk it up. Yeah. As you're talking about Bukhara, the way that they split out for this campaign, Kahn splits the forces up. He leaves Chagatai and Ogaday to raise the city of Otrara that we were just talking about. Jochi and company ends up traveling north.

I believe they brought about 100,000 soldiers in. They travel north. there's another force that heads south Khan and Changas and Toulis travel across this Kizakum Desert to reach Bukara

so we have another instance where they're like they're not coming from the desert they can't nobody can move fast enough along this desert to bring a whole force boom these horses are on Bukara's doorstep before they even know they end up surrounding Bukara and this pincor movement

and they bring everybody into the citadel. And as they are moving on the citadel in Bukhara, all of those people from the other town that they had surrendered end up getting pushed to the front of the line. So they're using the people from Otrar as the forefront to be pushing against this citadel in Bukhara. And they're getting wiped out by their own people.

They're getting killed. Jengis had promised that they were probably. probably not going to kill them. He didn't say anything about their own people killing them. They would have killed them anyway, because this happened several times here. So is they're getting murdered at the front and you see people start bailing backwards, the people in the Citadel are like, oh shit, we're winning this. They're starting to retreat.

We need to follow them out. Not understanding that the lines standing behind the people that were just forced at the front were just ready to go. Yeah. 30,000 in Bacara, I think. Samarkand is actually the capital of the Chorismian Empire. So still same 1212. Had strong fortifications, obviously. At this point, they're getting really good at siege warfare

because the city ends up falling after a brief siege. Orders the execution of the entire garrison, loots the city, and basically conscripts tens of thousands of its city citizens as laborers and soldiers and just leaves the city as a ruin. So 50,000 is the estimate of how many people were killed there.

Then we have Merv 1221, so they took a little bit of a break or some Arcan might have been in the winter. They were cleaning things up. It takes a while to kill that many people. I was going to say when you're killing that many people you need like, you get sore. Like you'd have to have days of rest. You need a vacation

day, something like that in between. Also, Oh, can you imagine just walking into this empire and just between indiscriminate killing? You're looking around like, wow, these people have a crazy society. This is all foreign to us being this far west. Like as you're murdering somebody in their home, the other guy sitting over there and being like, do you feel this fabric that they have on this tablecloth? Like, this is crazy stuff. Look at the pottery around here.

Yeah, right. Where can a guy get a good meal around here? That was the other weird thing that they said was they didn't kill a lot of artisans. they would save people that they thought could be useful or entertaining. And I'll tell you right now, if they're coming into me, I just start going do, do, do, do, do, do, do, and start dancing or something. Yep, you start doing the Charleston or whatever. It's some shit that you can do to try to impress these people. Before you get to that, we got to, we'll finish up Muhammad real quick.

Because Samark, Samarkhan, is that? Samarkand, I think. Yeah. Mohammed ends up fleeing from Samarkin. He is followed by Jebe and Subatai. Muhammad ends up taking a boat out to this island in the middle of the Caspian Sea where he's safe from Jebe and Sumatai. But he parks himself on basically a deserted island. He has nobody there to protect him.

He ends up getting dysentery from drinking the water and dies on this island. That was the winner of 1220, 1221 in there. and they hit the capital city of Jirgan. So Samarkand was the capital city of the Khorasman Empire. That was where Muhammad lived. I believe the capital city was the Jirgin. I might be wrong. But Somercand, I believe, was the home of Muhammad.

Oh, I had that it was the capital. Regardless. This is another city that's going to be absolutely fun. Yes. At a certain point they're all just going to blend together. So I think 50,000 is what was killed. And again, that's after conscripting tens of thousands of citizens as laborers and soldiers. Merv was known as one of the largest cities in the world at the time.

It was actually besieged by Genghis' son. What was it? Toluii. Yeah. The entire population was massacred, basically erasing the city from the map. They said this one was hundreds of thousands of people that were killed. And then after that, they basically drugged. the town under

the dirt. Yeah, there's a couple places that they end up doing that. Oh, we also didn't

talk about the, to see you later's too. There were cities where they would go in and kill

everybody and then they would leave in like three days later they would send a rating party back in just in case

they missed anybody that were hiding or were out of town. Yeah. Imagine coming home and being like, whoa, what happened here?

The horses. Yeah. Just a scary situation that they have going on. During this time, Mohammed's son, Halal al-Din, ends up escaping into India and they begin to make a little incursion into India and they immediately realize that it's too

hot and they're running out of grass for the horses. And it's just the juice is not worth to squeeze to continue going on. Andy had a lot of respect for Al-A-Din because he said that he was a soldier that stood and fought and then when he was put into the position after Muhammad died, he knew that he had to try to survive. So there was almost like a little bit of respect for Changas where he was like, we're not going to try India because I like him and because it's just too hot. Do you think part of him said that to be like, well, this guy, if he was offended by him,

they're like, well, we got to fucking get this guy. It doesn't matter how many people we lose. He's like, no, it's fine. I totally respect the move of him running away into the jungle where I can't find him. He also didn't kill our envoy. That was his dad. That's true. We get Nishapur in 1221.

So following the death of one of Jenghis's son-in-laws in basically just like the normal fighting, Tolu is spent to, or Tolu, I don't know how to pronounce this shit. Huh? Tully. Tully is sent to destroy the city. The population was pretty much just systematically slaughtered. And this one, I think, was the one that was leveled so thoroughly that they said they could so barley on top of it.

Nishapur was the one where the son was killed and Changas went to his wife and he said what do you want me to do with this city and she says kill everyone right? Let's see. Do you remember that story? No no, yes

I do. Let's see. That one was I thought I wrote that down actually. That's a good point. Yeah, because he ends up giving the choice to nope that one was a rot

no someone like family members get killed in a lot of these sieges and then he just systematically like slaughters the entire city for like one person getting killed it might have been Nishapur because oh yeah it was his son-in-law so that's why he was allowing so he went to his daughter yes an asset question the widow was basically just

like what do you want to do she's like kill everyone and these three cities between Nishapur Merv and Harat were the three largest wealthiest cities in the empire. They were just completely annihilated. There's nothing left standing in some of these cities. They've said that even going through, I believe it was in Nisipur and Merv, the archaeologists that have gone and dug there are just like this city never bounced back. This is like that city that we were talking about, or I guess it wasn't a city, it was a town during World War I, the last World War I. The big one that we did, not the Somme.

Ver done? Yeah, Verdon. That city that was sitting in the middle, that was just completely wiped off the map. And all there is is like, there's a governor there that's a governor of nobody and there's a town sign and that's it. Yeah.

That's pretty much what these places were. And that was done by bombs. This was done by just soldiers and horses. And tearing shit down. Yeah. So, yeah. So Herod had 200,000 people killed Jirgonj. That one was particularly brutal.

And they're like, oh, this one is specifically brutal. Basically, once the city fell, the Mongols destroyed local dams, basically flooding the entire ruins to make sure it was completely destroyed. So that was hundreds of thousands as well. There's a place called Balk. That was an ancient center of learning. They completely surrendered without a fight. Fucking nerds. Is this the library?

Yes, that's the one where the Mongols execute the entire population to burn the city, prevent it from becoming a future center of resistance. But it was another ancient library that just went to the ashes. Yeah. That can probably contain all of the information that that entire civilization had gathered. Yeah. Yeah, it's a shame for some of these historic relics. And these numbers that Chris is talking about, again, those I believe are probably pretty accurate. Maybe I would say a little bit more because the initial estimates, and again, these are insane.

There's no way that this could be. the estimated Quirsmian campaign was between 2 and 15 million. They said that Merv was about 700,000 to 1.3 million. Nishapur was 1.7 million and Garandras over a million. If we're talking high estimates on all those and we're talking about 4 million people, that seems like too many. But at the same time, we're also talking about major stops that were on the Silk Road that was going on at the time.

So those could be pretty big trade cities. I don't believe that those numbers are it. I think you're more accurate with the numbers of those cities. But at the same time, it depends on what the populations were because there's a place called Bamian that during the siege, James' favorite grandson was killed by a narrow. When that happened, he just said every living creature in the city dead. It became known as the city of Screams. Yikes.

But that's insane, right? Like, let's go ahead and meet in the middle. Instead of two to 15, just go ahead and say eight. million to be able to kill eight million and this is in what two years eight million in two years by fucking hand across distance yeah yeah a million in two years is an incredible amount of people like what happens if you're like a merchant and it all of a sudden the mongols have gone ahead and gone back to mongolia and everything we're going to talk about um uh, Jebe and

Subatai Subatai here in a second but let's say that three months after they leave the area you're just a merchant caravan coming through and you come upon the first city and you're like, what the fuck? And then you're like

we got to get out of here. There's another city this way and you keep going in every either the city's not there. Yeah. And you're like I swear there was a city here or it's just dead bodies everywhere on every place that you try to go.

Coming from the West and not really having any... I mean, you have an idea because you are trading eventually with some of these people from Asia, but you don't understand that kind of a fighting force. How many of those cities do you get through before you're just like, nope, fuck it, we're going back. Yeah, uh-huh. At least by the second to third city.

Yeah. Next city that we come across, it has people in it. Let's just peddle our wares and get the fuck out of here. I don't want to see what lies further east in this situation. You know what? South is good. We haven't been South recently, right? India takes our shit, yeah? Okay.

Well, let's go see if there's anybody. Junkles ain't bad. Yeah. A lot of people in India, I'm sure they couldn't have killed all of them, right? And they didn't. For the most part, India was pretty much untouched. And it was because it just was hot and it was pretty far away from their home base. Yeah, now we had the great raid.

Okay. Let's do one more bathroom break before that. Okay. All right, it's time for Jebe and Subba Day's excellent adventure. I The amount of distance Traveled by a horse is It's almost incalculable

What the United States is like 3,000 miles across Sure Somewhere around there Sounds about right Three thousand maybe Hold on We've no because we've done distances

For it's like two and a half times across the United States I'll look it up So Jebe and Subitai's excellent adventure Covers 5500 miles that they traveled. And they traveled to 20,000 soldiers.

And this wasn't like we're going to continue this push into Arab territory. 2,500 to 3,000 miles from Atlantic to Pacific Coast. Okay, so these guys basically traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast back to the East Coast, on horse. Yeah. They crossed it twice if it's the 2,500 mark a little bit more than going back and forth. Yeah. And they were given this basically, I think it was during their pursuit. because as they're leaving to go pursue this recon mission,

the whole thing with the Quarismian Empire and actually getting that wrapped up, that's still going on. There's still cities. There's still people's deslata. So after they pursue... Muhammad. Muhammad to, is it the blacks here or the casp?

Casper, right? They're asking, Jenks, they're like, hey, we kind of pursued him this far. We saw that there was this sea this could have been the ocean. It just kept going. Yeah. Like, give us 20,000 guys, and we'll go and find out what's out there.

And then we'll report back to you guys. Because you guys aren't leaving here for one, like another year and a half. We'll eventually wrap around and catch back up with you. He's like, yeah, go for it. Take 20,000 dudes. As they begin moving north, they move into Georgian territory. Again, this is the country of Georgia. I believe it still, yeah, it definitely still stands today.

The Georgian territory was ruled by a man named King George the 4th. Hilarious that King George is the king of Georgia. Like that, that had to just be the name for the king, right? Was it, yeah, is it chicken for the egg type scenario? Is like this the King George that Georgia is actually named for? Maybe the original King George is who founded Georgia. That makes, and they just kept going. Well, no, wasn't it like, it was like the King Leopold?

type thing and then the second one was leopold and then so before they get to georgia though isn't this where they end up like they go into modern day iran um there are a couple cities it's getting up yeah yeah but isn't this where to get into Georgia isn't that where they have to get the spies that are able to lead them through the coxas mountains that is to get up into the russo keve area oh okay there's another instance when they have to get through because it says the coxes reached to the Russian steps, and when they defeated Georgia on the other side of the Caucasus mountains. Yeah, so basically as they're moving up, the first time that they run into these Georgian forces was September of, where are we at? September 1222, I believe, at this battle of Kunan that was led by King George IV.

He takes 10,000 Georgian forces in there and is just so thorough. beaten, down to a man. Even King George is severely wounded at this point, and they were unable to advance any further into the caucuses at the time. They come back down, they help out a little bit,

cleaning up this Quirismian dilemma that they have. I'm sure there were still, they got the call that like, hey, there's still some more Arabs to kill down here, come back down, get your guys' bloodlust on, then head back up. They return and just begin ravaging the countryside again, killing all of these Georgia.

people. Then you get to the Battle of Bard-Devee. Same route happens again pretty much the same way. They obliterate the field army. They plunder the north all the way through up to the caucuses. When they get right before the caucuses, they have a, where is the city? Oh, Durban. They end up rolling up on Durban, which, is right before the caucuses, and before they can even fire a shot, the people of Derbitt are like, surrender, white flags, you guys aren't going to kill us all. We've heard about what you did to King George and the rest of the Georgians. We surrender. The terms of surrender, we're going to be five Durban, um, not leaders, but basically like scouts. Okay, yeah, that are going to

get us through the caucuses in the fastest way possible. And the governor's like, yeah, sure, that's fine. But what he does is he tells all of these 10 scouts not to take them on the fastest routes, but to still get them through the caucuses. So as they start descending through the caucus mountains to get up into this kind of Russo-Keeve area, he sends a bunch of other messengers down the fastest routes to get through the caucuses. So on the other side, once they gets over there, all of these people in this area have already been told, hey, these guys are coming as soon as they get there, they were called the Rusk-Kipchik armies.

Oh, like the Kipchak Turks or whatever it was, right? Okay. So they would meet them at this Battle of Kalka River in 1223 on the southern Russian steps. As the Georgians tell them, hey, this force is coming, they have a problem. Because the Georgians don't even know what the Mongols are. They don't know who they are.

Isn't the Battle of the Kalka River? Isn't that against the Russian princes? Yeah, this is after they get over the step. Okay, yeah. So the Georgians before they get through the Caucasus don't know who the Mongols are. They don't know who they're fighting. They just know that this fighting force has swept up from the South and has beaten the living shit out of them. So which was the situation where they were able to convince once they got through, they led them through the wrong path,

they ended up getting through the caucuses. They were pretty beat up. And on the other side, there had been a coalition of forces. Those were made up of a portion of some of the other like step nomads that were closer to that region. They told those people, hey, why are you fighting for them?

We don't have any beef against you guys. They gave them some stuff. Those are the Cummins. So this is basically the first battle. They climbed down out of the caucuses. They end up meeting this coalition on the battlefield. In this coalition of the battlefield, there were Lizajians,

Alans, the Kyrkises, and the Kumans. This force totaled around 50,000. So you have 50,000 against 20,000 Mongols, and they end up going down, kind of testing the waters, there's some cursory strikes. They realize that they're not going to get this. So they pull back up into the Caucasus. And what you're talking about,

these Kumans are kind of like a Turkic step people. They aren't really as accepted down with these other groups that are in this alliance. So Jebe and Subatai go to the leaders of the Cummins and they're like, hey, aren't those people mean to you? Don't they just kind of come to you when they need something? Yeah, what are you doing? Yeah, what are you guys doing? We have all this loot and treasure that we just picked up from the Georgians. If we pay you this tribute, will you guys walk away from the battlefield?

Coons are like, deal. We don't, we don't got to fight, and you guys are going to give a shit. Perfect. We'll go ahead and take off. And as they take off, these remaining forces just get absolutely routed. The Mongols crush all of these people. They lose like half their force. Half their force is made up to these guys.

And these are the only ones that really know how to fight like step nomads. Yeah, exactly. Other than that, this is what you would consider like, this is all occurring at the same time of what you would consider like the medieval age. It's so wild. Which is crazy. So like castles and all that in France and England and everything, this is at the same time this is going on.

So you do have people that are fighting in the way that like, you would think of like knights actually fighting. And against guys that are extremely fast, just shooting bows and arrows at close range at you and not really getting into like a hand-to-hand combat scenario, you're not prepared for this. You haven't seen anything like that. And so when the people that you hired to fight,

didn't know how to fight like that leave, you're just going to get dogwalked. Yeah, we're talking about an open field battle with these horse archers that are just picking these guys off. So after they kill this coalition, or get them down to defeat, Jemey and Subatai turn and chase down the Coomans and go kill them and then take all the loot back

that they used to bribe them. That's fucked up. That's so fucked up. It is. It is. I mean, there's really no better way around it than saying this is the prostitute in GTA

GTA 3 The first time you get a prostit That doesn't make it not evil as fuck Like you literally just made a deal with the people Very similar to paying the prostitute Watching the car bounce up and down And then as she leaves you run her over And you take your money back

Yes that's not good No not a good look Too many people do that in GTA So Oddly enough The I don't know if I'd call them the most Europeans but the Venetians. We've talked about the Venetians so much. This is the Venetians from

Italy, from the area of Italy, end up running into Subitay and Jebe, and they basically strike a deal. They say, hey, if you see any other European trading posts that you guys run across that aren't Venetian, if you could go ahead and take down those trading posts for us, that would be great. Mong was like, sure. I mean, we're exploring this region. We might as well. and as they enter Crimea, they end up running across a Genoese trading post. And by the time they leave the Genoese trading post,

there is no sign of the Genoese trading post or any of the Genoese people still existing in this area. Marko Pol was, his father was Venetian, right? I believe so. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think this was Papua. Yeah, because he went to a Genoese prison, right? That's where he wrote down the story. Okay.

think so. So in this instance, you have the West all the way up to the Venetians making contact with the Mongols because the Mongols have come so far west. Yeah. That they said something that I kind of found interesting because you said that they end up running up basically to the Danube. And part of the reason why they ran up into the Danube and couldn't go much further is because they didn't have those same fields to continue feeding the war machine of the horses. Yeah. We were kind of talking about this. Had they made it over to Europe around that time,

there's a decent chance that Europe doesn't stand much more of a chance than the Arabs did, right? I mean, at that time, yeah. So kind of the order, because the Kalka River, so that happens after Georgian, everything like that. That's actually when they start heading up a little further. And there's this coalition of these Russian princes, I believe it was Kiev, Gallich, and Chernigov.

And then also some additional Cuban nomads were able to raise an army of 800,000. So it was 800,000 against whatever they had left of the 20,000, which they still had a lot of their guys. But you got to imagine in some of these fights, they're going to be losing guys. Yeah. So let's just even say conservatively, maybe like, what, 18, 18,000? against 80,000. 800,000 also sounds like a Mongolian number.

Like that number is punched up. No, no, it's 80,000. Okay, 80,000. I didn't mean it. Not 50,000, 80,000. 18, so 18,000 versus 80,000 for the Russian princes army. So this, I think, is when, because Jebe doesn't come back. And there's some debate on how Jebe ended up dying,

whether he was captured during these engagements with these Russian princes, or if he actually became ill. They want to lean toward him. And then died on the way back. Yeah. So they want to say, I think they leaned toward more that he got ill, but that's also because there's a certain dishonor in being captured. Yeah, and they're writing the story.

Yeah. So during this Battle of the Colca River, basically because of the smaller forces, the Mongols just make it seem like they're retreating. And because there's such a large force of these 80,000, you know, Russian joint forces, they have to actually march in like almost single file or like short or like narrow columns. And they said that the like actual column and baggage trains stretched for like 60 miles.

So as the Mongols just keep retreating, they end up getting into like kind of this river valley that has a little river that actually kind of separates it from side to side, not straight down the middle. And at the very far end of the valley, the Mongols have actually like stopped and made it look like they're setting up a. camp. And as the front portion or like front quarter of this Russian line gets into it, they start noticing smoke from all over this like valley. And they had hidden like pitch pots and like barrels and like big old collections of like shrubs and everything like that and let it to obscure a bunch of movement. And so as the Russian forces see them across this little river, they actually all start like a small portion. of them because again it stretches way back they start making their advance well the it had hidden

subidai had hidden like i think it was like 5 000 guys through like a valley on the side and as soon as they got past those guys came out from the side and just completely entrapped them and as guys came up and the russians were still forcing guys in there you had guys retreating and they were just slamming into each other and then just being encircled and ridden through by the mongols this is Hannibal at Trasamine. Yes. With the Roman Empire. Yes.

He's just, he's laid a perfect trap. Instead of hiding out in the fog, they're hiding out and smoke. They were so disorganized and strung out from being chased backwards. They ended up just completely annihilating that force. And again, this isn't Chingis. This is Jebe and Subadai that are these just wonderkin generals. Yeah. That are leading these advances and figuring out how to do this.

I think when they came back down to, because they circled the Caspian Sea finally as on like their last leg. I think that's when they basically went around the Caspian C and they were just destroying any Genoese like trading post. Anything that wasn't a Venetian trading post is what they did. They were able to reunite

with Genghis Khan's main army in 1224, mapping all the terrain. That's how long they were in the Arab territory. I know. Just wrecking shit. Looting and just making sure all that stuff. They had to the party army to just make sure that the job was finished.

Didn't mean like necessarily all of the forces, but still a decent chunk. And then they're leaving spies along the way as well. Just think about coming back from this great adventure to where you're fighting Russians, you're fighting Ukrainians, you're fighting Georgians. And then you just meet back up with all these guys that were cleaning out the Arab states. Like, hey, where'd you guys go? We found some shit, man. Yeah.

We found some shit. Not to mention, what's the saying? You never attack Russia in winter unless you're the Mongolians. The reason they did is because they could just ride across like the frozen lakes and the frozen rivers. All the frozen rivers and lakes just turned into highways for their horses. And that's how they were able to take care of this. And they proved that they literally just walked through some of the larger forces in that area and beat them with a maximum of 20,000.

guys having never been in the region. And so like coming back to that and going to Jengis and being like, what happened? You guys only have 15,000 guys left. Yeah, we got into about like four major battles. You should see the other guy. We probably took out a hundred thousand of their troops to the cost of 5,000 of ours. Well, you were sitting back here just hanging out in Mongolian. Well, Jebe didn't

make it, man. No. No, and it is a little bit of a bummer. I can't say a bummer because these people were just ruthless. Like you say, I think kind of the general consensus, and maybe it was an honor thing, is that Jebe dies on the way back in 1224. Jenghis had returned to Central Asia around 1221 to Mongolia, and this is the time where he decides that it's not worth it to try India.

They have kind of some other fishing lined up. 1222, you have continued rebellions that were put down in Corshawn, which is another area that was kind of adjacent to the steps. He creates all of these administrative divisions to rule over this new empire because at this point in time, Cenghis has unintentionally created the, what was it, the largest empire, the largest contiguous empire in the world ever. The world they received. Sorry. When he gets back, it's two years later, three years later, this is like a learning experience of like, what went wrong and what's gone wrong since I've been gone. And this is probably because they don't attempt to go back to Russia and Europe and everything, I think until one of his sons.

Yeah, I think it's the next. It might be the next son. But until after he's gone and everything. I think him getting back there and realizing like, okay, we technically control all of this territory over there. But man, there's like some cleaning to do at home. Like we can't really focus on any of that stuff. In fact, we completely just destroyed everything. So hopefully by the time we get back around to it in 10 to 15 years, maybe they'll have rebuilt some shit there.

It'll be right for the picking. And then, yeah, we'll be able to go ahead and go relute the area and kill everybody. They clear cut the forest and they were hoping for some new growth. by the time they make it back. It's like a fucking Christmas tree farm, yeah. And during this time, you're still dealing with the Jin Dynasty. They're still in the south. There's still hold up.

And kind of still a thorn in the side. The gin or the Tangut? Well, the Tangut were supposed to be this vessel state, right? Correct. They're the ones that are like kind of more due south and then I think the gin are more to the east. And the problem with the Tanguts is they kind of quit fighting for the Mongols around 1223. The commander, the general that was left there, ends up dying right around then. And the Tangut, well, you guys aren't going to keep putting people out there to fight the Jin Dynasty.

We're just going to quit fighting. I wonder how many people were left there. You got to imagine if you're taking a huge, you know, 100,000 of your guys and you're heading east, and you're kind of looking around me like, we haven't really. really had a lot of like Mongolian reinforcements in like the last year right they're like yeah that's weird right maybe it's time we kind of try to make a move or try to take some time to rebuild our society a little bit instead of quit throwing people at this gin dynasty well chenghis begins diplomatic attempts to try to get the tangets back on board all of them fail and chingas spends the

next year in preparation for this campaign against the Ghi dynasty again. These Tang gets acquit, so it's time to punish them a second time. 1226 is when the actual attack begins, and we'll spare you the super bloody details. The sacking of the capital at Jean-Jangin comes December 4th, and at that point, they're just, they're cleaning them out. This is the ethnocide that we were talking about earlier. And again, these estimates just can't be true, but also at the same time, they've got to be somewhere in the ballpark.

The estimates of this ethnocide and this Tangit campaign are somewhere between 10 and 15 million people. Yeah. He's not worried about leaving. Like, artisans don't, you know, we don't need any more. No, they don't make the cut. But to say that like the decisions of a leader, that's so crazy to say like the decisions of one or two people determine the fact that now everybody that's considered to be of that ethnicity is now just meaningless. The punishments of just like we were talking about before with the Jin Dynasty where they just went ahead and moved the capital city down for protection and left all their people there.

I mean, the Tangit people had two choices. They could either continue fighting along the Mongols and maybe beat the Jin Dynasty and maybe continue to go on. But it was just one or two people that refused to do that. Here's the thing, too, when he turned down, because it was them turning also down, Jenghis to help with the Jin. Yes. At some point. It's not like that's going to a vote. It's not, that information is not even being told to anybody in the army to say that like, hey, so the Mongols are asking us to fight the Jin.

What do you guys all think? And everyone's like, no, we're deciding as a society, we're not going to do that. No, it was the one guy getting the information, taking it to the emperor, the king or whatever, and saying, hey, are we going to fight for them? He's like, nah, not going to do it. So when the Mongols end up showing back up and they're like, we're killing everyone because, you're, to decline fighting for us. One guy is like, oh, yeah, that was me. And everyone else is like, what the fuck?

Like, yeah, we didn't want to fight. But if it meant fight or all of us are dead, like, we'll send our fathers or sons. So the women and children are okay. Yeah, we would like there to be a future to this dynasty and to our people. That's what I'm saying is it's just like it. I mean, you had the conversation about like, where does this guy rank and just the horrible, like, shitty people of history and it's hard to look at it because

it's like well he kills indiscriminately but then at the same time yeah he's killing for indiscriminately but for stupid fucking reasons that don't make sense when you really take three seconds to think about it's like this one guy offended me so

everybody in this area is now dead and it's how do you quantify the worst guy because we haven't done the Alexander episode yet, and we will, and it's going to be phenomenal. But Alexander inherited his father's army.

So he already had the chips on the table. The car was already there. He was just handed the keys. And they went and they did all this conquering. And Alexander was definitely addicted to the thrill of conquering areas. but I can't say for certain in saying this, but I don't think they killed everybody in the cities. No, I don't think Alexander was the whole genocide.

I think he won a lot of battles. I don't think he went in and just murdered everybody in every single city that he came across like this. So not a bad guy, but not maybe the worst guy. Then you pull up somebody like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia who killed, I want to say somewhere around 2 million people of his. his own people, which is a larger portion than this. So I guess it's just you're half into balance like,

what is your opportunity versus what are you doing? Yeah. So like Pol Pot, he didn't have had he had more people in a larger area, he probably would have killed more people. So it's almost thinking about what's the rationale and the reasoning for it. I don't know. It's a really depressing conversation to have, but it's just thinking like, and again,

the argument about this on the podcast and on the other, you know, documentaries we listened to was people that had studied this for so longer, this was their focus of study. They're just like, well, this is how it was at the time.

And so this, you know, we can talk about this dispassionally. It's like, well, no, because then you kind of lose what the impact was on it. Yeah. Like if you're thinking about it from a standpoint of what did this

do to impact the world, the positive side that people will always say is that, well, because of the unification of the empire and everything, it allowed commerce to expand because the Silk Road was protected and because all of this information was able to go

and culture and all this kind of stuff. Okay, fantastic. When you kill 15 to 30 million people and wiping out entire civilizations and cultures, what would those cultures have been able to do? You don't know that the Charismian Empire wouldn't have been able to keep expanding to the other direction

and maybe being able to protect the Silk Road on that side. You don't know what the Tanguts could do, what the Jin could do. Like, all it takes is a couple people to make a huge discovery. Like the guys that invented gunpowder. Imagine that he doesn't, because at a certain point when Jenghis is fighting, the Chinese in some of these places have guns and have muskets or like, you know, what if those people that were using that would have been the ones to jump the development of it? Or what if because the Silk Road doesn't get unified and there's not as much trade or commerce?

What if Europe doesn't get gunpowder when it does? You made the point that it would eventually get it. Yeah, I do think it would have eventually have gotten it. But what happens if China has a 30 year, 30 more years to work with it to figure something out before Europe gets it? And ultimately, I think that China would have kept fighting because there is an argument to say that the Yuan dynasty that becomes the Mongol dynasty. that becomes the Mongol dynasty in China kind of brings everybody together. But if these Chinese dynasties continue to just keep fighting

and innovating against one another, had they run into European forces or Arab forces at that point in time with some shit that nobody's ever seen before. There's a chance that they run through everybody. There's a chance that, because what, we're talking about a time during the, what was it, the fifth crusade that's going on

where Europe is sending people down to try to get Jerusalem? Yeah. You ever think of a cannon in the crusade? No. No. This would be a situation where it would be like Europe's like, we finally got this thing called gunpowder.

We've been working for a while. We have cannons. We're going to go ahead and head to the east. They roll up on China and China's like, oh, you guys have cannons. That's cute. And just roll out like revolvers. Automatic, like just shit like that and be like,

we have cannons except we have six rotating barrels that are able to fire these much faster. We've been at this shit for like 50. 60 years longer than you guys. And the Chinese enter the Crusades and they're looking at this like, you guys are fighting over religion like this? Swords? Yeah.

That's cute. Come on. It's a route, I would say, if the Chinese keep developing without a whole lot being exchanged over to the West. Or without having to worry about genocide every so often. And to get back to the bad people talk, Hitler always is going to rank high on that list because of what he did. And it's so close.

It's so close, but also he had a goal. He had the extermination of the Jews and to take over Europe. So he has a reason. What's this guy wanting to do right now? Now he's to the point to wanting to take over the world. And exterminating people. But I don't think that was ever the goal. Hitler had a distinct goal.

Correct, but he just made this his goal. He just did it without being a goal, I think. This was just retribution. Didn't he write this in his will? That he was going to wipe out the entire... Yeah, it was in his will. that it was supposed to carry on the mission to end up like wiping out

these people. Yeah. And you get 6 million plus whatever the casualties were on the allied side during World War II for the other. You move up into Stalin, who again these were his own people that he was killing through starvation and all those acts.

Yeah. Also a very bad guy. You kind of hit the top for numbers area when you get to Mao in China who's killing 25 million of his own people, 50 million of his own people, something around there,

towards like, those numbers are insane. Yeah. So if you're going just on a pure carnage standpoint, there's a lot of people that can reach that worst guy. But when you look at Changas's rapes. Yes. That's something that we haven't even,

I don't know if we've really talked about that, but when they're, before they're killing everybody in these cities, yeah, Yeah, we won't touch on too much, but let's just say every instance where these thousands upon thousands of people are killed, assumed that there are also thousands and thousands of instances of just wholesale assault in every way, shape, and form. We talked at length about the Red Army coming into Germany and the things that they were doing on the way into Germany. That was pretty much what the Mongols were doing to anywhere they showed up to. Yes.

So. But without being like, this is our revenge for what you did. It was just like, this is our business as usual. Yeah. Yeah. So I would say that that has to pretty much put Changas, not necessarily in a league of his own and untouchable, but he's got to be the worst guy. Yeah. You've, you started there and I rode the indiscriminate train for a very long time.

But all in total, when you look at his total body of work, it's tough to say that there was anybody worse. And it was the allowances is what it was. It wasn't necessarily that he was just like, yeah, go do this. I'm sure also he was, there were so many guys out there. He's just like, this is just what we do. This is just what we do. So you have Changas, who, again, we run into a myriad of stories for Changus's ending.

The one that I kind of heard the most was that he had fallen from his horse while he was out hunting. his horse had been spooked by something that had run out of the woods. I think they said it was more horses. Horses scared horses. I think they said it was bald horses. So that happens winter, 12, 26, 1227. Over time, he just becomes more and more ill. His body is starting to fail on him.

I heard other great stories where it was a Tangut princess who had hidden a knife and tried to castrate him. Yeah, she hit it in her hoo-ha. he jammed his Mongolian pecker in there and skewered himself. Uh-huh. That potentially could have been infected. There were other stories of him potentially being poisoned, uh, him getting wounded in battle. I think the big it,

I think probably the most well-recognized one is falling off his horse, internal injuries and then just going south from there. Which is insane, right? This guy, this great destruction force falls off of his horse and that's the dude that did that. That, oh my God. It. Oh, my God, was it?

It wasn't Attila. We haven't done Attila, have we? No. We did, who was the dude from Carth, Hannibal? Hannibal fell off his horse. No, who, oh my God. There was another dude that fell off his horse. Or was it during the Crusades?

We talked about that. There was a king that was pretty old. I want to say from Flanders that fell off of his horse. Maybe the Holy Roman Empire. It was a, we haven't done that episode yet. No, but the Crusades. shades. He was somebody from the Holy Roman bar. Yes, I think it was from someone. It was the dude. Wasn't it someone that had decided to take a detour and go and raid Istanbul? Or Constantinople.

Falling off his horse? Yeah. There's a lot of horse deaths, I guess, for... What are you doing riding a horse in your... I mean, this is horse people. Yeah. But again, if you fall from the height of a horse, when you're 60, yeah, it's not going to end well. Well, and especially modern medicine at that point in time is not. looking at anything that could be punctured inside of you. Do we put leeches on it? Yeah. Yeah.

So by August 1227, he's basically on his deathbed. The dates for his death are either August 18th or August 25th, 1227. This happens in China. This doesn't happen in Mongolia. So his body is prepared for burial in China and then brought back to Mongolia. and apparently there were some pretty big caveats to how this happened. I wouldn't want to be a part of Chenghis's burial ceremony. In any way, shape, or form.

He, so they said, they didn't say he died. They said he ascended. He ascended to heaven. So very culty right there. Yeah, some heaven's gate shit if I've ever heard it. Yeah, exactly. You took enough classes. You hopped on the comet.

So they had the people that were in charge of creating his tomb. Now, his tomb was to never be found or anything like that. It wasn't going to be a monument. They suspect that it's probably somewhere near that sacred mountain or wherever that was. So the people went out there and dug this giant tomb, probably put a whole bunch of virgins and wives and horses and all that kind of stuff, all the shit that you would need for the afterlife. And then all the people that made it and that dug it were then killed.

the soldiers that then killed those people there that then came back were then also killed because they knew where the tomb was because they knew where the tomb was because they had killed the people that had been making the tomb and then after he and this was again this wasn't just like

hey we dug the hole and now we're murdered they waited there the body was put in they buried it apparently they ran like hundreds of horses over it to make sure that it was all like trampled and made sure that it looked like the rest of the ground They planted seed on it and everything, and then they were killed. I'm not 100% sure he made it to the Sacred Mountain because they didn't have any embalming techniques.

And if you're bringing back Chengis's body all the way from China to Mongolia, I don't care how fast you're riding. If it is August over there, it's going to get stinky quick. It made it. You think? I'm not seen anybody. I think they pulled alongside the road and were like, is this good enough? Yeah. Fuck no.

I think they did. You're doing it. I know what you're doing. No, I truly think that they did. I think that this thing was it didn't matter what condition the body was in. Okay. How would you preserve it, though? It's not preserved, dude.

It's a rotting fucking carcass. Yeah, but if it takes you two weeks to get back, what's going to be left? How quickly do you think a body decomposes? When you're riding via horseback across that long? It was probably in a cart. I tell you're Jocelyn. I understand that. What do you think decomposition is in two weeks?

In the heat like that? It's not it, buddy, there's a lot of body. Yeah, it's going to, a lot of stuff's going to be mush, like internal organs. It's a structured body still at that point, even in the heat. Think of like a, think of like a battlefield. Like bodies stay on a battlefield for a long time, like months. In stationary positions. Correct. It's just moving back and forth in a cart.

Yeah, I think that he was probably falling apart and bloated in blowing up. We've talked about people where that internal... Blowing up is different. Having gas and everything in the organs do that. Completely different. It doesn't mean it's falling apart. Like the limbs are not severing or falling off. The skin is not sloughing off the bone. I don't know. Either way, he... wherever his ultimate end was, it was a... in a pleasant sight, I'm sure.

No, I'm not saying it was. I'm saying the body was definitely like distorted and everything like that. I just don't think, listen, this guy was a fucking god. There's no way anyone within that group is going to be like, let's pitch this shit off the side of the road.

Who's going to know? They killed them. They killed everybody. It was involved. They still had to get the body to the spot. Like, it wasn't it wasn't like they were they had to get the body there like the people that just dug the spot

and buried him were still there when his body was set to arrive yeah it just feels like a long distance for a dead body to make okay if a skeleton without a casket it has to decompose to a skeleton

in eight to 12 years yeah I'm not talking about decomposing to a skeleton I'm talking about all of the structures inside of the body disintegrating. Okay. Decomp after two weeks in the heat's nasty. Okay. So it says one month, the body may liquefy.

You said two weeks. Yeah, I don't know how long it was, but you're telling me that in one month it liquefies before that's not coming apart. You really don't think they had any type of like burial procedures where... I'm sure they did, but if you're burying something, If he dies in Mongolia, I don't think it's an issue. I think they were pretty deep into... They were, but he still had a, like, a bodyguard. He still had an insane tent.

He still had, like, his doctors and... They're traveling deep, man. They have, like... This is, like, how the Romans would set up a camp where he's, like, in a tent village. Yeah. Now I've got to look up goddamn Mongolian death preservation methods. Well, you're doing that.

As far as the legend of Changas in Mongolia goes, he's looked at as basically a deity. His ascension basically began the religion of Changus Khan. He's on their money still. He is a use for branding on different products coming from Mongolia. I believe there's even like a Mongolian vodka that's called Changus Khan vodka. Of course. They have turned him into a magical figure.

And at this point in time, when you think about Mongolia, he's the one that put them on the map. He's kind of the one that created Mongolia. And he's somebody whose legend is almost trying to be pulled into Chinese mythology. And there is a bit of a connection there because Kublai, his grandson, will be the one that forms the Yuan dinosaur. that takes over and unites all of China. So in theory, there is something there, but he's a proud Mongolian, and the people are proud of what he did.

And, you know, these were the people that he took care of. These were his soldiers. These were partially the reason why he was out there fighting was to basically make sure that their way of life was content. So I can't really fault them for hoisting him up and putting him on that pedestal, while fully understanding that the rest of the known world at that time was basically just ravaged and torn apart by this guy.

Okay, so what they ended up doing, I'm still obsessed with this. Okay, so his wife wrapped him in a white felt blanket and then also like with a bunch of sandal wood to mask the order of the decomposition. They then put him in a hollowed out tree coffin wrapped with like a gold ring to seal it. So basically they had him in a, a container. So if he did fall apart, he was still in.

So he wasn't even visible. So they had him wrapped in. Imagine like this. Someone died in Albuquerque and you had to get him to somewhere else. You went and you put the body in a casket and then you transported the casket. It's already sealed inside. But they embalm you and everything else first. They prepare the body before they move it.

You're still, imagine they didn't. You're still sealed in a box. Okay. All right. They made a, uh, uh, uh, Chenga, uh, Chengis Burrito. Correct, out of an old tree. Yeah, I can go with that.

After he passes away, there's kind of this two-year, I wouldn't call it a power struggle because something that Changs' wife had told him before he left for the Arab trip, what if something happens to you? You need to try to figure out the line of succession. You have Jochi, his oldest, possibly illegitimate child, who isn't necessarily somebody who he's looking at as a great leader.

You have his first legitimate son. I believe that was not Ogadai, it was the CH one, who also was kind of in this power struggle with Jochi for this position. He had chosen Ogadai while they were over in the Quirismian Empire tearing shit up to be his successor to the throne. So his third child. Chagatai. Chagatai.

So Joketai, Chagatai, Ogadai, Tuli. And Ogadai ends up ascending to the throne in 1229. So you have two years of kind of maybe a little bit of ascension crisis, but not really that big of a deal. Because when Ogatai comes over in 1229 and takes the throne, they kind of go back to business as usual. This is when they begin making the incursions. in West where they clean up the Jin Dynasty

and basically stake their claim and make this large kingdom even bigger. Yeah. I think Ogadai is also the one that had expanded the empire into China, further into China and also then into Europe. And he probably starts in on the Song Dynasty, which is the furthest one in the south of China. Yeah, I think he ruled for 12 years. But that's crazy. Like, imagine it too. Like, of course they left like some spies and everything over like in Europe. Yeah. But you are, this group of like 20,000 Mongols just runs crazy through the Georgians,

through the Russians, and then just fucking disappears. And you don't see a force for like another 15 years. And it just becomes a point where it's just like, do you guys remember what happened to that George Norman? They're like, yeah, what was that? Like, are those guys coming back? We don't know. We don't know who that was. Turns out the first Mongolian plague wasn't your sinia pestis. It was just the Mongols that showed up every 15 years and killed a bunch of people. And then when Ogadai decides to make another run at it, they're just like, oh my God, they're real. The legends are real.

Our parents didn't lie. Now we've got to talk about some of the incredible facts with Chengis. We have to talk about Changes, the environmentalist. So studies have shown The Mongol invasions removed about 700 million tons of carbon From the atmosphere The the sacking of these cities And just the wholesale killing of these populations

Was enough to pull about 700 million tons of carbon From the atmosphere sense What do you think the trade-off on everyone needing five horses Would be though? A lot of farts, a lot of horse farts? You know, yeah, you know like when a company is trying to go carbon neutral and reduce their footprint. Yeah, he ends up reducing the population of the Earth by, what, 11%.

Which is fucking nuts, right? I just said that so casually. I'm like, yeah, Earth's population down on 11%. He killed more than a tenth of the population of the planet Earth. And it was fucking by hand again. Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's a high estimate, 35 to 40 million people. I don't necessarily know if it could have been that high

just because the population density was there. I would probably say between 25 and 30 million, but again, that's the guess of a stone. 7 to 8%. Yeah. You killed 7 to 8% of the population of the planet. That's an accomplishment. Not a good one,

but if you're going to be the best in your field, Changas was the best in his field. 8%, 10%, whatever it was, that's an efficient number. I don't think the horses offset that, though. Probably not. Good chance now. They said like 700 million tons is like the total carbon put into the atmosphere a year by burning fossil fuels. So he offset one full year of fossil fuel burning just with how many people he killed.

So basically where we're sitting out right now without James Con, we'd be a year worse for pollution. Yeah, we're 2025. I'm not faking him for that. No. There was a 2003 study. It blows me away. I don't even know how this could possibly be a number. It suggests that approximately 16 million people in Asia are descendants from Chengx Khan.

They said about 1 in 200 worldwide. I don't think the worldwide's quite correct. Just doing the math on my phone before. One in 200 could be the correct number for all of the Asian population. Yeah, I think it was one in 400 of anybody in Asia or any male in Asia, one in four chance that you are. Yeah, because that makes sense because China has over a billion people. India has well over a billion people. And if you were to say even just 500 million and then 16 million, it's like one out of every 400, I think.

But still, that's not saying, hey, there are 16, you know, million people that are descendant of, of the con family or like of the Mongols or anything like that. That's 16 million people from just one guy's dick. And he had hundreds of concubines. I believe he had nine wives. So he, and that's, those are the ones that he kept. Those weren't the ones that.

How did he stay alive that long? I don't know, man. Those are Will Chamberlain type numbers. That's insane. Yeah. He's. That is someone that, we need to actually meet.

Will Chamberlain? No, a descendant of James Conn. And Will. We need a time machine, but yeah. Oh, God, he's dead, isn't he? Yeah, yeah, he is. I bet we could probably meet one of the Will's kids, one of his descendants. Probably easier than we could find one of Jaggis's. That's the race to fight one of Will's children.

Yeah, who, we're going to put out an ad. Who wants to get back to us first? Get back to us first if you're one of Wilts, or if you want to Jenghis is, we want to hear the story. He's a man that I don't feel like has an equal. I mean, just his total rampage throughout the world is something that I pray that we will never see again. Oh, God, I don't know if it would be possible, like knock on wood, but we're not done with the cons yet either. No.

We've still got, there's a, like, a, what did I say, like a 33-year period in there where, like, four different people are in. in play for control of this. And then also before we even get to Kubla, which we talked about during the Marco Polo episode, and he's the one that actually creates the unification of China with Yuan Dynasty. So there's still that entire time frame. We have to talk about what happens over in Europe when they finally do in force make their way over there. It's going to be some interesting shit. Yeah, this is Chegas.

This is a Changa-centric episode, but I do feel like if we're going to pat this guy on the back, he knew who to put in the right positions. His generals were pretty superior as far as the guys he was sending out to commit these acts. I want to say he had these guys that were the four hounds of war and one of them was Subadai, one of them was Jebe, and then he had two other dudes. It had to be probably, well,

that weren't his family? Correct. Yeah, the four of those weren't his family. Yeah, his family, We're all pretty good generals too. I mean, they, just by numbers alone, they've proven that. They've more that point out for sure.

Oh. A lot of death, man. It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. It's three hours, too. Yeah. We didn't know if this was going to be two or one. I think once I finally tied into this,

and I think you came to the same conclusion, we knew that Chengis had such a massive footprint, but we also didn't realize that it happened this fast. Also, kind of when in our study, we discovered that the length of time that the cons were in power, it is Jengis that's kind of the progenitor of all of that stuff, but then there's a lot of stuff that happens after

that kind of also kind of blurs the lines of like, what did he do versus what did these other guys do? So it turns out we were able to do this in three hours, but there's still a lot more con talk in the future. That's what we're going to get in. to do another episode of Con Talk. Perfect. All right, you got anything else, buddy?

Oh, I think we're good. All right, everyone. Thanks for joining us this week. We'll catch you on the next one. Peace.