The History of China - #171 - Mongol 10.1: The Succession

Episode Date: August 7, 2019

Genghis Khan is old, wracked by pain in his body and heart, and in spite of his best efforts, has come to accept there is one foe he cannot defeat: mortality itself. Thus, even before setting out on his campaign against the Khwarazmian Empire, he will assemble his four sons and together reach a fateful decision - who among them will rule when Genghis is gone? Note: This is part 1 of the 2-part conclusion to the life of Genghis Khan, with the conclusion available to subscribers! Time Period Covered: 1220-1227 CE Major Historical Figures: Genghis Khan [Temüjin] (1162-1227) Börte Khatun (c.1161-c.1130) Jochi (1181-1226) Chagatai Khan (1183-1242) Ögedei Khan (c.1186-1241) Tolui (c.1191-1232) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Mongol 10.1 The Succession As he was about to ride out, Queen Yesui petitioned the great Khan. She said, Kion, you are thinking of crossing high ridges and fording wide rivers, of executing distant campaigns and pacifying your many nations. But no creature is born eternal. When your body, like an old and withered tree, comes crashing down, to whom will you bequeath your people like tangled hemp? When your body, like the stone base of a pillar, comes

tumbling down, to whom will you bequeath your people like a flock of red poles? Which of your four steeds, the sons born to you, will you nominate? From The Secret History of the Mongols, translated by Ergong Unun. Temujin well understood that his time on Earth was growing short. His latest attempt to achieve eternal life by recruiting a supposed Chinese Taoist immortal had proved a bust on that account. Though it was unlikely that a man as shrewd as the Great Khan of Mongolia had ever placed too much stock in the stories about the old man, who had turned out, after all, to be little more than a huckster, it surely still

must have been something of a letdown. Nevertheless, that had been his Hail Mary play, not his only plan to deal with his approaching mortality. Even before he had set out on his half-decade-long Khwarazmian odyssey of destruction and conquest, Genghis had made arrangements for his eventual departure and the succession that would guarantee a future for his empire, his life's work, his dream. This was, in fact, something of an oddity in Mongolian culture, since there were strong taboos against even the mention or acknowledgement of one's death, or preparing for it in any meaningful respect. Mongol men were taught from the earliest that they should ride into every battle believing in their heart of hearts that they were truly invincible and could never be struck down.

Everything from their battle tactics, such as preferring to engage from a distance rather than in a melee, to their methods of execution, wrapping the condemned away in a bag or rug to be drowned or trampled without letting blood spill, to even their funerary customs of burying the dead in unmarked graves, was at least in part a reflection of this ultimate denial of death itself. Yet Genghis had come to understand its inevitability as well as anyone could, and knew that he would need to do everything that he could to ensure that his empire in progress wouldn't follow him into that oblivion.

That would hinge, therefore, on who he chose as his successor, and unfortunately, it would prove no easy decision. Genghis, of course, had children beyond counting, from hundreds of women, 23 of whom are counted as his official wives, along with 16 regular concubines and some 500 quote-unquote irregulars in his harem. For our purposes here, though, he had four sons in possible contention to become his chosen successor. In order of eldest to youngest, they were J Joche, Chagatai, Ogade,

and Tolui, the four sons given to him by his queen, Bertha. These four adult sons would need to help their father select which among them would be the next great Khan. Typically, it would have been a fairly simple decision, as it had been for Tamajin's mother in his youth. To the eldest son of the father would go all authority and inheritance. Yet here, the traditional primogeniture inheritance rules hit a significant speed bump, because Jochi, as his second son Chagatai loved to needle him at every opportunity, was of uncertain parentage. As you recall, shortly after Tamajin and Bertha's wedding in 1181, she had been carried off as a prize of war by the enemy Merkid Confederation. While there captive, she had been remarried to

one of their warriors, and only won back by Tamajin about eight months later, at which point she was heavily pregnant. From the very first, Tamajin had claimed the product of that pregnancy, Jochi, as his own firstborn son, and by all accounts treated him in every way as such. If a man claims a child as his, he said simply, what right has any other man to dispute that? In spite of this, their relationship was a strained one throughout both of their lives, and Jochi held a dislike for his father, criticizing him as overly cold and cruel, with him both personally, as well as with his laws and policies. As MacLynn puts it,

Although Genghis treated him with every consideration, it is abundantly clear that he never liked his father, that Genghis thought him not tough enough as a military commander, and that there were frequent clashes between the two. End quote. As easily the most intelligent of Genghis's sons, he was likely more inclined to question and disagree with his father's decisions and reasons, and the direction that he was taking with his empire. One particular area of contention was his opposition to Genghis's long-held surrender-or-die policy toward enemy populations, and argued that such indiscriminate slaughter was simply a waste of good talent. An incident of particular note was when Zhou Zhe begged his father to spare a particular Merkit archer,

only to be harshly rebuffed by Genghis and his execution carried out. As time went on, Zhou Zhe grew increasingly disillusioned with his father, and Genghis, for his part, remained secretly in awe of his son's intellect, with potentially disastrous consequences. Genghis's second son, Chagatai, does not enter into the secret history until the 1206 Kharaltai, when he was already an adult. A very strange oversight, especially considering that both Joche and Ogade were mentioned as

distinguished players in their father's early wars of steppe conquest. It's posited that maybe something went wrong with his early education, or perhaps that his youthful temperament caused Temujin to keep him out of important affairs of state until he had grown up a bit. The secret history is, as usual, silent on such possible inner motivations. In any case, Chagatai, quote, emerged into adulthood as a stern, stolid, unimaginative, dogmatic, by-the-book pedant, euphemistically termed a soldier's soldier. All the sources agree that he was a blinkered, irascible hothead, end quote. Chagatai, far more than any of his three brothers, was the one true womanizer of Genghis's brood. All Mongol princes had access to hundreds of beautiful women, but only Chagatai seemed

genuinely sex-obsessed. It was known throughout the empire that if Chagatai took a fancy to a woman, she had to submit or face terrible consequences, and this requirement extended to married women, despite Genghis's formal ban on adultery. Seems like a real charmer, right? But wait, there's more. Chagatai was particularly unbending on two key issues. First was his loathing of all things Islam, and his oft-expressed belief that it and everyone who practiced it should be stamped out of existence utterly. His second fixed position was that his elder so-called brother, Zhou Zhi, was no true son of Genghis at all, but rather a murkid bastard. He was therefore, at least in his own estimation, the eldest true son

of the Great Khan, and deserved acknowledgement and pride of place as such. This was a line of argument that he simply would not let go of, in spite of Genghis's several times harshly rebuking him on the matter. Even so, he would frequently disrupt meetings with yet another tirade about his brother's stain of bastardry. It would be this mutual loathing between Jocha and Chagatai, against which Genghis had long preached that, as brothers of the same womb, they were the only people on whom they could ever truly rely, and certainly should never be one another's enemies. Yet when his exhortations fell on Chagatai's deaf ears, the great Khan eventually realized that leaving his empire in the hands of either of them as his successor would virtually guarantee

all-out war between both. That brings us to the third son of the Khan, Ogedei. As of the 1220 succession meeting, he was about 34 years old. Though not quite as intelligent as his eldest brother, Jochi, Ogedei, quote, surpassed him in wisdom and managed to enjoy cordial relations with all of his brothers, end quote. Of all of Genghis's progeny, Ogedei was the most genial, good-natured, and easygoing, traits that would compel one rather less-than-charitable historian to write of him as being a, quote,

clumsy, engaging, jovial sot, end quote. Yet, to the now-aged Genghis, who, in spite of his lifelong chiding towards Joche for being too soft, Ogedei's kinder, gentler demeanor had come to fit with his understanding that a ruler for an empire at peace would need a far different set of skills than those for conquest. An empire won on horseback, he had come to understand, could not be governed on horseback. Thus, the corpulent, hedonistic Ogedei actually seemed the best fit for his father to rule after he was gone. Quote, flexible with good judgment and gifts of diplomacy and statesmanship, placatory and with natural gifts of conciliation, Ogedei was steady, down to earth, commonsensical, and generally affable. End quote. Ogedei's one overriding trait, however,

was his lifelong love affair with alcohol, which could provoke the otherwise genial prince into sudden storms of terrifying, murderous rage, and would eventually lead to his early grave. Ogedei was likewise lauded by his father for his well-known penchant for extreme generosity. This appealed to Genghis, who in spite of everything he'd won for his people, still wore the same simple fur and leather deal robe, ate the same simple and unspiced step food of his youth. Seeing the effects of extreme wealth on his people, he had actually come to rather despise the ostentatious and avaricious qualities

that his own victories and conquests had allowed to take hold of the Mongols. And he liked that Ogedei, at least, seemed to have no great love of money itself, but spent it and gave it away as freely as one might pour out a skin of water. To Genghis, this was not indicative of some gross fiscal irresponsibility, but of his son truly keeping the step-spirit of not caring about money or treasures. It was likely this trait in Ogedei, and is decided opposite in his youngest son, Tolui, that earned him the great Khan's favor as successor to the throne. Genghis's fourth and youngest son, Tolui, held a special place in his father's heart.

Most like Genghis himself in temperament, the Ochigin, or Prince of the Hearth, seemed out of all his sons to be cut from the very same cloth as the world conqueror himself, and he prized that quality in the man, now in 1220 about 28 years old. In fact, even his very name, Tolui, meaning mirror, bore out that reflection, being in almost every respect the very spitting image of his lord father. Tolui was a born warrior and brilliant general, a brave and audacious battlefield commander with a keen sense for both tactic and strategy. Cengiz had frequently expressed his heartfelt belief that Tolui had been blessed by Tengri itself, and had been marked out as the most truly special of his sons. There are stories of him even being psychic, of knowing that his father would return to their camp even though he was

thought by everyone else to be days of riding away. Genghis also appreciated that of his sons, Tolui was the only of Jochi's brothers, never to taunt him about the circumstances of his birth. Nevertheless, those same traits that had made him the spitting image of his father, Genghis had come to realize also made him unfit to be the empire's next ruler, though such a realization pained him deeply. Tolui was brave and fearless, yes, and in a time of war and conquest like that of Genghis's lifetime, he would have been the ideal successor to carry that flame. But those same traits also made him despotic, cruel, and even needlessly sadistic and brutal. Genghis envisioned that, by the time of

his death, his great Mongol nation would be complete and at peace. It would have no need for men like Genghis, or Tolui for that matter, to cut and burn through foes with wrath and steel. It would instead need a convivial, benevolent ruler. A leader, not a conqueror. A ruler of men, not a punishment of God. There was also the troubling prospect of Tolui's prime wife, the beautiful and shrewd Sorhaktani Beki. It wasn't so much that she was a Karyid, or even that she was a practicing Nestorian Christian, but far more troubling that she was known to be a liberal and a reformer, and Genghis worried that if she became Khatun, she might not carry on Mongol tradition.

In spite of the fact that all four were flawed choices, it would be from among these four sons that Genghis would choose his successor. But he needed them all to agree, and agree to fully obey and support whoever it was that was chosen. Thus, in a small version of a curl tie consisting only of Genghis, his sons, and a few others of his most trusted companions and advisors, they convened and discussed. From Weatherford, quote, as the meeting began, the two eldest sons, Joche and Chagatai, seemed tensely poised, like steel traps ready to snap. If Ogaday, the third son, arrived true to character, he would have already had a few drinks and been mildly inebriated, although it seems unlikely that he would have been completely

drunk in his father's presence. Tolui, the youngest, remained quiet and seemed to have disappeared into the folds of the tent while his older brothers dominated center stage. Genghis would open the meeting by explaining their purpose, which was to choose and then unanimously assent to his eventual successor. And as quoted as saying, quote, If all my sons should wish to be Khan and ruler, refusing to serve each other, will it not be as in the fable of the single-headed and the many-headed snake? End quote.

In the old steppe fable, there were two snakes, one with but a single head and many tails, and the other with a single tail and many heads. When winter approached, the single-headed snake immediately went into a hole and hibernated, thus surviving, while the many-headed snake, each pulling toward a different hole, eventually froze to death. Genghis went on, quote, Untroubled by fear of death, I slept, and failed to nominate a successor.

Now I'm awake, and we shall make that decision. Jocha, what have you to say on the matter? Order of seating, speaking, traveling, and even eating and drinking all carried heavy symbolic weight and value. Thus, by turning to address Jocha first, Jengis was making it evident that he ranked him as his eldest son and most likely successor. It was a challenge thrown out from the get-go. Would the younger brothers accept this order of speaking and thereby tacitly acquiesce to Jocha being their natural heir? Of course, Chagatai would not. Before Jojo could so much as utter a reply, Chagatai bellowed out,

Why do you ask Jojo to speak first? Do you declare him your successor? How could we ever agree to be ruled over by this bastard son of a murkid? Any sense of decorum broke down in that instant. With a scream of fury, Jojo was on his feet, lunging across the gir and seizing Chagatai by the collar of his deal, and the two began wailing on each other. I am as much of our father-son as you are, bellowed Jojo between blows. You think yourself my superior, but you exceed me only in terms of stupidity. Name the competition, and we will test our mettle.

Let it be archery. Should you beat me, I'll cut my own thumbs off. Let it be wrestling. Should you throw me, I'll cut my own thumbs off. Let it be wrestling. Should you throw me, I'll never rise from the ground again. Our Lord Khan shall decide his successor, not you. Through all of this, Genghis sat in silence. The warrior, Kothachos, stepped in, though it may have been in fact Genghis himself, changed later in the secret history to preserve the great Khan's dignity, reminding Chagatai of his father's great affection and expectations of both him and his brothers, and of how before that they were born, and of how before they were born, their people had been scattered and abandoned, left for

dead and betrayed, in a world full of terror, murder, betrayal, and kidnapping, where no one was ever safe, and with none but their own family to rely on or trust in. And surely Chagatai knew that, despite anything else, they were both brothers of the same womb, and would inextricably be bound by that link for all time. Their mother and father had endured a lifetime of toil and suffering to give them everything that they now had, and now Genghis had to watch them squabble over it like dogs fighting for a scrap of meat? Regardless of anything else, their mother had never run away from their father, but rather had been stolen, and it wasn't her fault, nor was it Joche's. She wasn't in love

with another man. She was stolen by men who came to kill, and Temujin had waded through an ocean of blood to win her back. Such was his love for her, and such his love remained. Didn't Chagatai know that that is what truly mattered? Their mother loved them both as well, and with all her heart. End quote. If you so insult the mother who gave you both life, from her heart and soul, if you cause her heart to cool and freeze towards you with such spiteful words, no amount of apologizing after the fact could undo that damage.

End quote. Finally, Genghis himself spoke, addressing Chagatai. How can you speak in this way about Jocha? Is not Jocha the eldest of my sons? From now on, never speak of him again in such a way. He would never again allow any of them to voice suspicions about his son's paternity in his presence. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of

Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Listen to Season 1 to hear about England's first attempts at empire building, in Ireland, in North America, and in the Caribbean, the first steps of the East India Company, and the political battles between King and Parliament. Listen to Season 2 to hear about the chaotic years of civil war, revolution,

and regicide which rocked the Three Kingdoms and the Fledgling Empire. In Season 3, we see how Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ruled the powerful Commonwealth and challenged the Dutch and the Spanish for the wealth and power of the Americas and Asia. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax. Chagadai was as obdurate as he was ornery, but he wasn't a complete fool. He knew that he could do little else but smile at this and acquiesce to his father's command. Nevertheless, he did manage to make it clear that even though he would hold his tongue and keep mum on his brother's status from here on out, words could not alter reality. Game killed by mouth, he replied, cannot be loaded onto a horse.

Game slaughtered by words cannot be skinned. The meaning was clear. While Genghis lived, all three younger brothers would outwardly accept their eldest's legitimacy and primacy, but inwardly, they would never do so, and the Khan would not live forever. Even this acceptance, however feigned, of Joja as the legitimate eldest son, did not put the issue of succession to rest. This was a curl's high, after all, and all parties must come to a mutually acceptable solution. Chagatai certainly understood, as of now, if not well already before the meeting,

that he and Jochi's antipathy, and now incurring such anger from his father, meant that he was effectively out of the running. Even so, he could yet prevent his hated brother from attaining it. It's not certain whether he concocted it in the moment, or whether it had been agreed upon beforehand by the three younger brothers, but Chagatai now administered his coup de grace. He said, quote, Doja and I are your eldest sons. Above all, we wish to, in partnership, serve the great Khan our father,

and to punish whichever us shirks this duty. Let us therefore settle on Ogade, And quote. Genghis thought on this for a moment, then turned to Jocha again. And what do you think of this proposal? What could Jocha say but yes. As had been made perfectly clear just now, his brothers would never accept him as Great Khan. And so he replied, Jagadai speaks for me on this as well. Let us decide on Ogedei.

We shall endeavor ever to act in partnership with your word and your law. Genghis nodded his assent. It was decided. To that last bit of rhetorical flourish, however, of the two squabbling brothers working together in concert, Genghis knew, as undoubtedly every parent knows, that such words weren't worth the wind that they floated across. As long as Jocha and Chagatai were in proximity to each other, there would never be peace between them. Thus Genghis made the classic parental decision, when one brother won't stop

poking the other, and drew a line through the empire and said, now each of you get a side and you cannot go on your brother's side. Genghis declared, quote, Why should you go so far as to act in partnership? Mother Earth is wide, and her rivers and waters are many. By extending the camps among you, so that each of you rules over different lands, I shall separate you. Jocha and Chagatai, keep your words.

End quote. That last little bit carried the unspoken addendum, or else Daddy will punish you. Then he turned to Ogedei, who may well have been very surprised indeed about this turn of events. What do you say, Ogedei? The third son replied, quote, When told by the great Khan to speak, what should I say? How can I refuse to speak?

Certainly, I can say I will be as steadfast as I am able to be. Later on, however, there may be born among my descendants some who are unworthy, some who may not prove able to hit the broadside of an elk even, and would be passed over even by a starving dog, were they even wrapped in fat? How can one know? That is my response. What more can I say? End quote. Ogedei was, in essence, giving an extremely self-deprecating answer here, that he would do his best, but that his descendants might need assistance from their cousins and uncles to maintain good governance.

When Genghis said that such words would suffice, at last it was Tolui's turn to weigh in. He said, quote, I shall be at the side of my elder brother, so named by our father. I shall ever be his faithful companion, and remind him of things he might forget, or wake him when he sleeps. I shall never fail to answer his summons, and shall campaign in his name wherever I am commanded, near or far. End quote. Thus satisfied that they had reached an accord, however painfully,

Genghis Khan finally decreed, Let each of your lines govern your realms within the empire, and let there always be one of my descendants governing the issue had been settled. But rather than filling Genghis with a sense of calm about his nation's future, the results unsettled him. From Weatherford, The unpleasant episode cast a pall over the remaining years of Genghis Khan's life, and particularly over the Central Asian campaign. The fighting among his sons made him keenly aware of how much work he needed to do

to preserve the empire after his death. His sons did not match up to the needs of the empire. While pursuing his great quest to unite the steppe tribes and conquer every threat around him, he had never devoted the attention that he should have to his sons, and now they were all reaching middle age and were still unproven men. It was over the course of the great Khwarazmian campaign that Genghis used much of what energy and influence he had left to try to heal the rift between his two eldest, Jocha and Chagatai. He hoped that perhaps they could learn to work together in the heat of battle, and put their mutual ill will behind them as brothers of both blood and combat, but it was not to be.

During the siege of Urgench, for instance, disagreements over how the Mongol army ought to take the city, with Jojo wanting it left intact, as he would eventually rule it as part of his domain, while Tagadai wanted to take the city, sack it, and exterminate its population for their resistance, having truly made an annoyance of themselves for having dared hold out for an unprecedented six months. Ultimately, the tactics of Chagatai would prevail. Arganj would be first burned, then flooded, and its population destroyed, never to rise again, and leaving little indeed for its new ruler, Joche. In spite of Genghis's continued admonitions for them to bury the hatchet and, well,

grow up already, their hatred for one another only continued to simmer. By the summer of 1223, with all major operations across Khwarazmia, barring the ever-festering boil that was Afghanistan, having wrapped up or almost so, Genghis Khan turned eastward, finally, for home. At around 60 or 61 years old, he was tired, he was in pain, and he was above all homesick for his treasured Avarga and his beloved Bertha. He summered in Tashkent, on the steps north of the Kyrgyz Mountains before moving on, meeting two of his grandsons, Tolui's two eldest sons, Kublai and Hulagu, along the Emile River. It was also around this time that he received word that the pacification campaign of Khorasan in Afghanistan continued to proceed slowly and haltingly, and he was forced to send Chagatai

and Ogedei to oversee the operations. They had not been Genghis's first choices, but Tolui had come down with smallpox, and Jocha refused to answer the Khan's summons while he sulked from the insult he felt he received from his family. Instead, he sent a gift of 20,000 horses and a herd of donkeys to his father. Genghis displayed just what he thought of his son's little tantrum by having his soldiers use the donkeys for target practice before setting the rest free, though he did retain the horses, since they were far too valuable to be so carelessly discarded, regardless of how he felt. At long last, after six years away, Genghis returned to Mongolia in February of 1225, after a slow progress back full of feasting rewarding his friends and allies with prizes and honors befitting their service to the empire, Genghis spent the remainder of the year taking stock of the nation from which he'd been so long away.

From McLean, in, quote, End quote. He had introduced writing, money, and both coinage and even paper varieties, all backed by his seemingly bottomless caches of plundered treasures. Mongolia, once a backwater, now sat as one of the technological and trade centers of Eurasia, filled to bursting with the finest artisans and craftsmen from dozens of kingdoms. Yet even now, he could sense a threat in the very foundations of what he'd built. Quote, Genghis took justifiable pride in the wealth his empire had accumulated, but he appreciated that there were associated costs, the most important of which seemed to be

the loss of the old Mongol ethos and culture. End quote. The old ways that had won him his dream were being subsumed by the very wealth and luxury his victories had accumulated. He had set out to make his Mongols the rulers of the world, and make the world like the Mongols. Yet he could already see that, at least for the second goal, the opposite was already occurring. It was the Mongols who were absorbed, thus proving that the cultures of a pastoral life and of urban sedentary peoples were ultimately irreconcilable. Genghis remained concerned about his sons as well, and especially Doja, who had grown strangely withdrawn and unresponsive to his father's missives and instructions following his snubbing in favor of Ogedei. Likely sensing the doubt that clung about Genghis's aged heart, Chagatai, ever spiteful of his brother,

began whispering insinuation, propaganda, and lies into his father's ears about Jocha's alleged disloyalty. Quote, Jocha replied that he could not obey the summons as he was gravely ill, which turned out to be true, but Chagatai saw a golden opportunity, end quote. Informing Jengis, both himself and through hired agents, that Jojo was not actually sick, but instead plotting rebellion against the Khan, Chagatai produced a document, of uncertain authenticity it should be pointed out, in which Jojo condemned his father, his method of rule, and his wanton cruelty in the starkest

possible terms. The letter claimed that it would have been easy for a real statesman to make a lasting peace with the Shah of Khwarezmia, and thus avoid millions of deaths. It also hinted at a desire to rebel against his father. The plain truth, it said, was that Genghis did not want peace. He was a man who believed only in slaughter and, in Jocha's view, was mad, since what was the point of governing an empire if you killed off all of its inhabitants? It was too much for Genghis to bear. Jocha had already been flouting his commands and skulking away at the far end of his empire. And now to betray his father so, and after he had given his word to abide by the decision of

the family Kurultai? Between his own suspicions, Chagatai's whispers, and now this seemingly damning letter, it seemed clear that Jocha would never accept Ogedei on the throne, and would plunge the empire into civil war the moment that his father died. There was, he concluded, only one thing that could be done. It was clear that Joja had to disappear from the scene before the khan did himself. Genghis therefore sent one of his secret assassination squads to his son's Ulus. It is a moral certainty that Joja died of poison, either in late 1226 or the first two months of 1227. In fact, Jocha's death remains surrounded in just as much mystery as his birth. It may have been an assassin's poison, or perhaps his own and revealed to be very real and serious illness that prevented

him from obeying Genghis's summons. In any event, the result was the same. The eldest son of the Great Khan was dead, and if not by his father's hand, then as good as. It is not recorded exactly how Genghis received the news of his firstborn son's death. As is typical of Mongol records, there was a stringent taboo against this very mention or discussion. Even so, we almost certainly know the broad strokes, at least of how a man like Tamajin would have reacted, or rather, how he would not have. Mere years before 1221, while storming the city of Bamiyan,

Genghis's favorite grandson, Chagatai's eldest son, Mutakan, had been slain in battle. When presenting the news to his bereaved son, Genghis had flatly forbade him from mourning. Obey me in this thing, he commanded Chagatai. Thy son is slain. I forbid thee to weep. He certainly now held himself to the same standard of stoicism, a little quieter perhaps, or less apt to praise victories or share in revelry, but still ever present and still in command.

No crack in his armor could be tolerated, nor drop of blood shown, not even if his heart had been pierced through. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous reign of terror, you can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today.