The History of China - #269 - Mongol 8 - Subotai & Jebe's "Wyld Stallyns" Duology

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

The Excellent Adventure: In the course of their pursuit of the fleeing Khwarazmian Amir, Genghis Khan’s two top commanders have reached the shores of the Caspian Sea, and heard some of the strangest tales about what – and who – lay beyond. When the Great Khan gives his go-ahead to scout it out, they’ll launch a three-year trek that will remake the world in their bloody image. The Bogus Journey: Reaching the far side of the Caucuses Mountains, Subotai and Jebe have a surprise in store. But the true wonders, riches, and opportunities still lie ahead among the forests and winding rivers north of the Black Sea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Mongol 8.1 Subutai and Jeb's Excellent Adventure Lord Genghis sent Subutai Baator northward to attack the lands and peoples of the following eleven tribes. The Kangalins, Kibchauts, Bajigits, Ausuts, Majerats, Asuts, Sasuts, Circusuts, Keshimirs, Bolars, and Raros. He made Subutai the Valiant cross the great waters of the Volga, then the Ural rivers, and go as far as the wooden city of Kiev. Subutai Boator reduced the Kangolin, Kibchaut, and Bajigid peoples to submission and, after crossing the Volga and the Ural rivers to destroy the city of Meghet, wiped out the Orsut people. They plundered the people of Asut, Sesut, Bolar, Man Kermin, Kiev, and other cities, reducing them to a state of submission.

After appointing resident commanders and garrison commanders, they returned. From the Secret History of the Mongols, translated by Ergung Onun. The vast empire of Ala ad-Din Muhammad II, Emir of Khwarizmia, who had been hailed as the second Alexander the Great by his contemporary scholars, and held rule over a territory spanning from the mountains of Afghanistan to the shores of the Caspian Sea, was no more. It lay a crumbling, burning ruin, its people subject to slaughter, cities despoiled and put to the torch, and its once mighty king condemned to die a poor, broken shell of a man on a tiny abandoned island in the middle of the Caspian Sea, hounded to his very last breath by the conquerors who rode around the shores of that body. Muslim legend tells that when the Mongol pursuers reached the Caspian shores and saw the

sails of Muhammad disappearing over the horizon, thus effecting his escape from their wrath, many of the warriors charged into the waters in pursuit until both they and their horses drowned. Though this is almost certainly a legend, the mindset and unending wrath that the Mongol conquerors felt toward their enemy was very real. They would find their quarry, even if it took them to the very edge of the world. At Samarkand, Khwarizmi's shattered capital, the great Khan, Genghis, contemplated his next move. While the Mongol military juggernaut had undoubtedly shattered their enemy's strength, several of those shards were still keen enough to potentially cut if they

were not handled with proper care. His main concern at this point was the question of manpower. The Mongol army had descended on Khwarazmia with a force of between 100,000 to 150,000 troops. Yet in spite of their unbroken succession of victories, even taking into account the Turkish defectors they'd begun accepting into their ranks rather than slaughtering outright, the Mongols were down to something like two-thirds of their initial strength. Moreover, these were no longer concentrated, but instead spread far and wide across the Persian Empire. The Great Khan had his own force at Samarkand, of course, but a further 50,000 had been dispatched with his two sons to conduct further operations in the north, and his great general, Subodai,

had been accompanied by three tumans, some 30,000 soldiers, to capture and mete out justice to the fleeing emir. What was more, his subject forces, the auxiliary tribes of Uyghurs and Atamaliks that reinforced and filled out his own hardcore Mongol backbone had begun petitioning the Great Khan that it was well past time for them to return to their own lands and peoples, and that they should be allowed to go home. Genghis was a ruthless taskmaster, of course, but he tried to be fair in his dealings with those who served him well. He was therefore inclined to grant his subjects' requests, if for no other reason than fatigued and reluctant soldiers were likely to be more of a hindrance than help to his further objectives. Militarily, the greatest

concern was the crown prince, Jalal al-Din, who was ensconced northeast of the capital, gathering all the forces he could to his cause. This, Genghis was confident his Mongols and their remaining auxiliaries could handle with relative ease, if, that was, they were not pinioned between a possible second Khwarezmian or Arabic army, potentially even now making ready to approach from the west. From Gabriel, quote, If the western provinces raised new armies from their enormous manpower base, the Mongols might find themselves trapped between two powerful armies moving against them in coordinated operations. Under these circumstances, Mongol discipline, speed, and maneuver might not suffice, placing the army at grave risk of defeat. End quote. The Khanate's spies and informants had Jalal al-Din and his mustering force under close observation,

and thanks to the arrow messenger force that could travel hundreds of miles per day without stopping, the Great Khan was well appraised of almost every aspect of his foe's day-to-day operations and changes to his force strength. The West, on the other hand, was an absolute mystery, totally dark on the Khan's radar, and thus plaguing his mind day in and day out with who knew what vast shadowy army that might even now be marching against him. Genghis's one link to further intel about the west was his general, Subutai, who sat even now with his army on the shores of the Caspian, awaiting either the emergence of the Khwarazmian Amir from his hiding spot, for they did not and could not know that their quarry had already died on an island,

or for further instructions from their lord Khan. Those instructions would come in the form of an arrow messenger, bearing a missive from Genghis to Subutai, that he should make it once back for Samarkand, to answer the great Khan's questions about this vast unknown western expanse and what dangers it might hold. Quote, Riding from horse station to horse station, sometimes tied to his saddle to ward off exhaustion, stopping only for short periods to eat, Subutai the Valiant, Genghis Khan's greatest general, covered 1,200 miles from the Caspian shore to Samarkand in little more than a week.

Let me take a moment to explain that title, Baator, a little more fully. Subutai is known throughout the Secret History typically as Subutai Baator, the suffix most often translated as meaning the valiant or also as the hero. Giovanni di Plano Carpini would describe it as the equivalent of a European knight, but perhaps in our modern parlance, something more like a paladin captures that sort of semi-mythic heroic nature of the title. Notable bearers of the title Baator includeathor, include Modu Chanyu, founder of the Xiongnu Empire, Ba'athor Khayran of the Khazars in the mid-8th century, Ba'athor Bagina Sevar, commander of the First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th century, and Genghis's own father, Yesugei Borjigin, albeit that was posthumous and given by his son.

Looking forward in time from this point, the title would spread across Eurasia, and have such bearers as Mughal and Timurid Khans, Hungarian and Romanian Voivode, and even one of the founding members of Mongolia's National People's Party, and father of Mongolia's revolution in 1921, Damdín Sukhbathar. Even the modern name for Mongolia's capital city, Ulaanbaatar, incorporates the honorific, meaning Red Hero. Once arrived from this 13th century warp-speed rush across Asia, Subutai likely wasted little time in conferring with his master. It's from the Arabic chroniclings that we know what was spoken between the two.

Subutai made a full accounting of exploits in the west, the wealth and the power of Khorasan, modern northeastern Iran, and its great cities and fortresses. He told of the cities of Herat and Merv, and of further west still, Nishapur, and its great luxuries and wealth. However he went on, the land was harsh, mostly impassable, and only by skirting from oasis to oasis along the northern edges of the vast wastelands could it be traversed.

Listening intently all the while, the Great Khan finally asked, How long would it take for a Muslim army to march from Iraq to Khorasan? Iraq was of course the great beating heart of the Islamic Caliphate, with the circular shining jewel of Baghdad at its core. Should the Caliph commit to the aid of his Khwarizmian brethren, how much time would the Mongol occupiers have to prepare? Subutai replied confidently, In summer, O Khan, no such army could reach Khorasan at all, for the sun burns with such great intensity that the grass is charred and the rivers dry up completely. In winter, too, he continued, no Muslim army could move across such an expanse because of the scarcity of forage, and Subedai knew from personal experience

that his Mongol ponies were not only far hardier than the sleek Persian and Arab mounts, but far smarter as well. Unlike the Western mounts, the Mongol horses knew how to kick and stamp snow and ice aside to reach hidden grasses underneath. Muslim horses, unused to such harsh conditions, would simply drop dead trying to make such a journey. Thus, it would only be in the spring or autumn that any such journey would be possible at all for the Western armies, and even then, only with an absolutely massive baggage train in tow. It would be slow, it would be ponderous, and it would be exceedingly obvious.

That is, if it came at all. And from what Subutai had seen, having ridden now twice from one side of Khorasan to the other, he'd seen not a single trace of evidence of anyone making a move to even raise, much less mobilize, an army. Oh, there were soldiers, to be sure, and a lot of them, but they, like the Khwarazmians before them, remained locked up tight in their fortresses,

without any clear leadership to rally them. Subutai was confident, therefore, that there would be no attack on the Khan's western flank, an assessment that was more than sufficient for the great Khan. His fears thus allayed. Genghis began the next phase of his planned conquest of Khwarazm, a two-pronged assault on both east and west, Afghanistan and Khorasan, two theaters that were more than 600 miles apart,

yet for the Mongols easily reachable by aero-messenger in days should the need arise. In the spring of 1221, the Mongol force commanded by Genghis's son Tuli swept down on the city of Balkh, an urban center that had already surrendered to Subutai, but was now massacred and burned regardless. Merv faced the same fate, and then Nishapur, which would receive special attention. Quote, It was outside Nishapur that Toghachar, the son-in-law of the Khan, had been killed fighting as a common soldier after having been relieved of command. In revenge, Nishapur that Toghachar, the son-in-law of the Khan, had been killed fighting as a common soldier after having been relieved of command. In revenge, Nishapur was taken by storm and destroyed.

Toghachar's widow presided at the massacre of the inhabitants. To guard against deception, the corpses were beheaded and the heads of men, women, and children were stacked in separate piles. Even the dogs and cats were killed. End quote. Crossing the Hindu Kush range into Afghanistan, the Mongols swept down upon the city of Bamiyan, famously home to the monumental cliff carvings of the Buddha until their destruction in 2004 by the Taliban. Here, Cenkis' favorite grandson, Mutigin, was struck down in battle. In response, no loot or plunder was permitted of the city. It was all to be destroyed. No prisoners were taken, and every living creature was massacred.

The Mongols at last caught up with the fleeing Crown Prince Jalal al-Din at the banks of the Indus River, where his army was cut to pieces. The prince himself, however, managed to escape, and would thereafter live to fight another day, seeking refuge with the Sultan of Delhi, putting him effectively out of the Great Khan's reach. But his family line was at an end. His sons had all been killed, and his kingdom destroyed. For all intents and purposes, Khwarazm was no more. In all of this cruel slaughter and conquest, General Subutai took no part. Instead, having made his full account to the Great Khan,

he included further information which had piqued his interest. He'd received reports from the Kipchaks of a land beyond the Caspian, a place full of men of the strangest kind, narrow-faced with light hair and blue eyes. Curiosity aroused at what sort of men these might be. Subutai proposed that he, along with Commander Jeb, and a small force of two or three tumens, a mere 20 or 25, maybe 30,000 troops, be given leave to make a long reconnaissance ride around the far side of the Cassian Sea to see what they could see, after which they returned through the Kipchak territories of the western steppes to Mongolia to give their report proper.

Genghis, too, was intrigued with the reports of such a people as he'd never heard of before, and agreed to Subutai's request, giving him his reconnaissance force in full, and leave to return no later than three years thence. The force under Subutai's command would set out in late autumn of 1220, leaving Khwarezmia to its brutal fate in what would be perhaps the most remarkable and amazing cavalry ride in history. Given his status as one of the right hands of the Great Khan, and the fact that this expedition had been his whole idea, it was only natural that Subutai would be given overall command of the exploratory mission. It would be Jeb, however, always the arrow, fast and furious on the offensive, who would command his own tuin and be the second in command of all field operations.

The mission objectives were straightforward enough. Explore, document, and study this unknown land and its strange peoples. Gather any and all information that they could about these western tribes beyond the shores of the Caspian. Assess their strengths and weaknesses. Do battle if you have to, but make no attempt to try to conquer anything or risk the greater mission. And then report it all back to the Mongol intelligence service in order to build up a compendium of information to be used in a future, and far larger, eventual campaign of conquest. An eventuality Subutai, it would later be confirmed, took as a given and was planning for from the very outset. His force initially probed westward along the southern shore of the Caspian,

seeking a suitable winter encampment, first over the high steppes of northwest northwest Persia and then into Azerbaijan, making directly for the city of Tabriz. Tabriz, both the governmental seat of its Turkish governor and the wealthiest city in the region, made a tempting target. Arriving outside its closed gates, Subutai sent a missive to the governor within, saying that he would burn the city to its very foundations and kill everyone inside unless they were sated with clothes, treasure, silver, and horses. Deciding, understandably, that discretion was the better part of valor, the governor acceded to the demand and handed over the greater part of the city's wealth, hoping that through such a payment they would see the back of this terrible force forever. As the chill of winter began to descend in late 1220, Subutai opted to make his seasonal camp, where the dual mouths of the Kura and Araxes rivers spill forth into the Caspian. Gabriel writes, quote,

Here, on the Mohan's steppes, the winter months are quite mild, and the Mongols past January building up their horses and preparing for the coming campaign. The Mongol army had been increased by the recruitment of several thousand wild Kurds, as Sulatai referred to them. In February 1221, the Mongol force broke camp and continued its march around the southern shore of the Caspian, toward the kingdom of Georgia and its capital, Tiflis, modern Tbilisi. Given Georgia's status as a major Eurasian crossroads, and Tiflis in particular guarding the approaches to the major pass westward toward the Black Sea, conflict was probably inevitable, even if Subutai initially might have intended none. He and his warriors' fearsome reputations had preceded them, however, especially his threats

against Tabriz the prior autumn. Georgia itself was in the middle of a golden age of unprecedented prosperity, power, and reputation since the mid-10th century. Commerce, culture, and wealth flowed through the kingdom to and from Europe, Byzantium, and the Holy Lands Crusader kingdoms. Thus it was that the young, handsome, and dashing king of Georgia, Lasha Georgi IV, or George the Brilliant, was in a uniquely strong position when reports of this steppe force moving through Azerbaijan and into his lands reached him. Since the year prior, as a good and devout member of the Orthodox Church, he'd been making large-scale preparations to send an army down to Jerusalem to assist and

relieve the armies of the Fifth Crusade even now battling there. Now, a word about numbers here, and I know I've said it before throughout our dealings with the massive Chinese military forces, but it bears repeating here again, and I probably will later on as well. Pre-modern counts of how many people there were in a particular army or fighting force are liable to be inaccurate, highly so, and this for a variety of different reasons. An attacking force like Subutai and the Mongols might beef up the enemy numbers to make it look as though their victory was all the more heroic, while the Georgian army might have likewise overstated its fourth strength to the other crusader states in order to look like they were sending a stronger force than they could actually muster. Regardless, the reports of George IV having an army of 70,000 mounted knights along with 30,000 Cuman light cavalry is probably overblown. You'd have a hard time scraping that number of actual

quote-unquote knights from Europe as a whole. A century before, for instance, circa 1100 CE, I've read estimates that put the whole of England as having no more than 1100 knights altogether. By knights, of course, I'm referring specifically to the warrior noble class, not the men-at-arms that they took into battle with them. Whatever the number, it was almost certainly a much smaller core contingent of true knights, commanding a significantly larger number of men at arms. Another estimate, made by modern Armenian scholar Setadadoian, places the number of combined Armenian-Georgian mounted soldiers at a mere 10,000,

with the addition of the Cuman outriders and an unknown number of infantry. Regardless, thinking to use his mighty force to smash the Mongol invaders before they reached the gates of his capital, King George rode out with his crusader host to meet Subutai, Jeb, and their tumens as they made their way up the winding course of the Kura River through the Cuman Plain. This was, of course, the first time a medieval European fighting force had directly encountered or engaged a Mongol army, and the differences in fighting style and the consequences for those differing expectations would quickly become apparent. Drawing closer to one another, the two armies began to array for a set-piece battle,

as it's often called, along the Kura's shores, the river itself running slightly to the Georgian rear. The Mongols, given their numeric inferiority, had sent ahead thousands of their Kurdish and Turkmen volunteers that had been conscripted into the Mongol army, while keeping their own elite shock corps well in reserve. From McLean, quote, Subedai's plan was to wear the Georgians out through attrition before delivering the coup de grace. First, he had the vanguards split up into raiding parties that spread fear and havoc. Then, he united them for a pitched battle with George, who won the encounter, giving him a false sense

of security. George took heavy casualties while slicing through the Kurds and Turkomans, and was not prepared for another battle immediately after, end quote. But another battle there would be, because it was time for Subutai to deploy his star team. While the larger Georgian force re-arrayed itself in a wide, shallow formation, seeking no doubt to close on the enemy's flanks and thus destroy them, the Mongol cavalry concentrated into a denser, deeper mass. The Georgian heavy cavalry was given the order to commit a full-scale charge against the Mongol center. In response, Subutai commanded his light cavalry archers to sweep in wave after wave across the advancing armored enemy, unleashing volley after withering volley from their meter-long

recurve composite bows. A note on these weapons and their wielders. Though certainly less visually impressive than the later English longbow, or mechanically ingenious as the Chinese Zhugunyu crossbow, the Mongol bow was second to none in terms of power, accuracy, or range. In terms of their ammunition, birch was the primary material used in the construction of the arrow shafts, but these, made specifically as weapons of war against heavily armored enemies, were tipped with narrow iron points specifically designed to punch through heavy armor and chainmail. Inscriptions from the time period, such as the 1226 steel in Siberia recounting a celebration by the Great Khan, routinely depict Mongol warriors and hunters as being deadly

accurate in their fire from or even beyond a range of 500 meters, able to hit a target from such a distance three times in a row in rapid succession. Bows made for the cavalry corps rather than foot soldiers were somewhat smaller for ease of travel and use while on horseback, and thus somewhat less powerful, but the cavalry archers sent against the Georgian army was nonetheless lethal in their effect. Despite the heavy losses inflicted by this Mongol strike, the Georgian force pressed the attack, thinking that if they could just close the distance and engage them in a melee, the tide would yet turn in their favor. The Mongols, however, had no plans to allow this. Slowly giving ground and retreating in a fashion that no European army would have thought to do,

but was typical for a step force, for whom a battle site could be moved in any direction, and retreat never meant breaking off the attack. Constantly harassed and picked apart by the Mongols who fired at them even as they pulled further and further back across the plain, the Christian force soon found itself spread widely over the plain atop mounts that were now utterly spent. The Mongol horses were likewise exhausted, but this had all been taken into account by Subutai, who before the battle had ordered his soldiers to position their herds of backup mounts, for every good Mongol warrior carried with him on campaign his own personal herd, and had them hidden in the woods behind the Mongol battle line.

Quickly swapping their mounts out, and re-equipping a new fully-stocked quiver to replace their depleted first, the Mongol force now broke into two formations, the right led by Subutai, the left by Jeb, and circled around the flanks of the scattered Georgian knights in a devastating counterattack. Before they could reform in the center, it would be Jeb, the arrow, who would take the core of his own force and punch a wedge directly through the heart of the Georgian army, cutting one half off from the other, and, their morale now totally shattered, caused the remaining European warriors to break and flee, as the Mongols, in a ringing formation patterned after their ancient hunting techniques to entrap game, inexorably closed in around them.

King George, in shock at this devastating slaughter in progress, still had enough of his senses left to realize that he'd be unable to hold his ground against the approaching Mongol force, and wisely turned to flee, along with any whose mounts still had the energy to keep pace with his royal retinue. Some of the knights, to guard their king's retreat, and likely because their horses were too drained to keep up, decided to make a stand along the road back to Tiflis, but were quickly surrounded and slaughtered by Jeb's cavalry force. George IV and the shell-shocked, bedraggled survivors of what had earlier that very day been the mightiest military force Georgia had ever put together stumbled back into Tiflis and locked the gate behind them, unable to quite believe the wholesale destruction that they had just witnessed and themselves barely escaped. For more than two weeks thereafter, the Georgian king huddled within his capital,

awaiting the inevitable arrival of the terrible force that would be appearing over the horizon to besiege his city at any moment. But it never came. When scouts were sent out to assess the movements of this Mongol force arrayed against them, the reports came back with news that was frankly unbelievable. They had vanished, it seemed, into thin air. Subutai and Jeb's army had not, of course, vanished into the ether, though the speed at which his force was capable of traveling would time and again confound their western enemies into thinking as much. Instead, they'd withdrawn

back southeast into Azerbaijan. Yes, the Mongol losses had been minimal, and they'd been able to achieve victory against the Georgian with little fuss, but the fact that they'd engaged in such a battle at all had been an error. They were a reconnaissance force, remember, not an army of conquest. No or very few reinforcements were going to be sent, save what they could scrounge from mercenaries and tribes that would pledge them service. And if they bled away their strength in battle after pointless battle, however lopsided those victories might prove to be, they'd soon be no longer capable of completing their actual objective. Not the destruction of enemies, but the gathering of information. Subutai had not anticipated such a force to be arrayed against him as he made his

way up the Kura River. Instead, he'd hoped to increase his food and supply stores by picking off small, soft targets on his way through the region, thus preparing his army for their most difficult challenge yet, crossing the Caucasus range to what lay beyond. Instead, he had been forced to use up valuable men and material fighting the Georgians, and all for no concrete gain. Now, still unsure of the total Georgian strength, and unwilling to waste time or much effort finding out, he opted to retreat back into Persia and replenish his army's stores by raiding and demanding tribute there. Their targets would include Maraha, utilizing the familiar

tactic of hurting the local civilian population in front of their attack to soak up the defenders' assault and disguise their own movements, and then slaughtering the population before making off with all the wealth and material that they could carry. Quote, having sacked the city on 31 March 1221, they pretended to have departed, waiting until the survivors crawled out from the rubble, then returning suddenly to massacre them also. End quote. Following this was one of Persia's finest cities, Hamadan. A year prior, they had exacted a steep tribute payment from the leaders of the city in order to leave it and its populace intact. Now, however, with little enough left for themselves, the city refused the Mongol army's renewed demands for payment and then resisted the attack that followed in what is reported as having been a terrible street battle.

Once subduing the city, again the total slaughter of the population followed, along with the sacking and burning of Hamadan. With their supplies and horses replenished, and having received a messenger from Genghis that he had Khursmia well in hand and no longer required them to remain around the southern Caspian, just in case, Subutai and his Mongols turned north towards Georgia and the Caucasus once again. Not up the course of the Kura toward Tteyfris this time, but instead along the Caspian itself toward the powerful coastal port city of Derbent. A look at the etymology of this coastal city's name gives us a good hint as to the sort of fortifications the Mongol army had to look forward to. Durban derived from the Persian word Darband, meaning barred gate, and was called in Arabic Bab al-Abbab, meaning the gate of gates. It was even, supposedly,

the site of the legendary Gates of Alexander the Great. And it was a fitting moniker. Durban sits astride the narrow, only three kilometer wide, strip of land between the Caspian waters and the jutting heights of the Caucasus. This made it one of the only two passable routes through the mountain range. The other, the Dariel Gorge, now effectively beyond Subutai's reach on the far side of Kifris. It was now the early winter of 1221-22, and it's likely that Subutai had chosen this route, and this time of year to move in a direct effort to avoid any further entanglements. Before leaving Georgia, however,

he was determined to break its military potential, even if conquest was beyond his mandate. Thus, Subutai opted to bait the Georgian army into a fight on his own terms. The bait in question would be the massacre of the city Shemaka. Quote, here the Mongols employed a novel method, again underlining their inexhaustible versatility. They heaped up the bodies of the dead and slaughtered animals to make a pyramidal mound overlooking the city's walls, whence they rained down an incessant deluge of missiles. Shemaka capitulated after a three-day siege. A fearsome massacre did oblige the Georgian ruler to appear in the field." King George, having somehow convinced himself that

since they'd vanished after the Battle of Kura Plains, the Mongol army had been defeated after all, never mind his own panicked flight back to the capital, the Georgian monarch had assembled a new, large army, perhaps as many as another 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers, and had made it for Durban to block the Mongol forces' likely route of advance. The second clash between Georgian and Mongol was set on markedly different ground than the first battle of Kura, specifically as I mentioned that it was situated on a much narrower plain. This was decidedly, at least on its face, to the Georgian forces' advantage, since it tightly restricted the Mongol cavalry's ability to maneuver. The Georgian army had likewise learned its lesson well from the first terrible battle,

and were under strict orders from their officers that this time, no matter what, they were to maintain their formations. No riding off all willy-nilly to go chasing after the horsemen, because that's exactly what they wanted us to do. Instead, the Georgian army advanced uniformly and slowly, braving the devastating hail of arrow fire that once again took a toll on their ranks, though their formation this time did allow them to avoid the worst of it, and they somehow managed to stay mostly beyond the range of the light Mongol archers. Still, they held together in their ranks, and slowly pushed Subodai's army back further and further across the valley floor,

and toward the literal rocks at their backs of the Dagestan range. If they could pin the Mongol force against these mountains, they could be smashed by the Georgian heavy cavalry once and for all, when they had nowhere to run. Everything was going according to the plan, the Georgian commanders thought. Just a bit further, and we have them trapped like a rat in a cage. And it was all going to the plan. It just wasn't the Georgians' plan. It was Subodai's. Having taken the constraints of the Derbent Plain well into consideration, Subodai had not failed to take note of a much narrower pass extending into the mountains directly from the valley floor.

Into this defile, Subodai had directed Jeb to take a force of some 5,000 and wait for the right time. What would the right time be? Jeb would know it when he saw it, Subutai had no doubt. The main Mongol force, therefore, had steadily drawn the tightly packed Georgian force further and further back through the valley, with the mountains to the Mongols' right and the Georgians' left, appearing terrified of the advancing Georgian force and having been ordered to deliberately be off their mark with their shots, time and again shooting short to draw the enemy yet closer. Until, having moved to the far side of the narrow gap that Jeb sat within

waiting, they lured the European force at last over the threshold, and the trap sprang shut. Screaming out of the side passes, only Mongols truly could, Jeb's force struck the Georgian flank with a ferocious assault. Amazingly, in spite of the arrow's force struck the Georgian flank with a ferocious assault. Amazingly, in spite of the arrow's fury, the Georgian force managed to retain its cohesion — they'd not shatter this time — and ponderously turned to face this new and unexpected threat, fully engaging Jeb's 5,000. It was a maneuver that probably very few medieval armies could have pulled off, even in the best circumstances. To turn an entire army on what amounts to a dime, and engage a flanking force as it ambushes your own, is an incredibly impressive display of command and control, and the Georgian

army of George IV deserves full credit for being able to pull it off. Unfortunately, in so doing, they also sealed their doom. Now fully engaged, fending off Jeb's assault, the Georgian army had, in so turning, exposed its right flank to Subutai and the main Mongol army. Just as he'd planned from the outset, the Mongol commander halted his retreat, wheeled his warriors around, and plunged them headlong against the vulnerable sides of the Christian force, rolling it up and then shattering through it in a single overwhelming assault. One flanking maneuver had been difficult, but not impossible for the Georgians to overcome. But the second flanking strike once again found the Europeans' shatterpoint,

when they broke and ran. The Mongol force hunted the soldiers down like game, annihilating them almost to the last man. Once again, George and his personal bodyguard were able to slip away, but the king was grievously wounded by a Mongol arrow during the battle, an injury from which he would never recover. George IV, the Brilliant, would die the following year at the age of 31, leaving only an infant son as his heir. His crown would ultimately be passed to a very unlikely recipient, his sister, Rusudan, who became known commonly as the Maiden King. It would be Rusudan who would, upon her brother's death, write to the Pope

and tell him that due to unforeseen technical difficulties, regretfully, they were not going to be able to participate in the Crusades at this time. She wrote, A savage people of Tartars, hellish in aspect, as voracious as wolves in their hunger for spoils, as brave as lions, have invaded my country. The brave knighthood of Georgia has hunted them down, out of the country, killing 25,000 of the invaders. But, alas, we're no longer in a position to take up the cross as we promised your holiness to do. End quote. And wow, that's certainly one way of telling it. Never mind that there was absolutely no way that the Georgians had killed anything remotely close to 25,000 Mongols, which was, again, pretty much the entire size of Subutai and Jeb's reconnaissance force altogether. And sure, yeah, driven out,

that's one way to tell it. They didn't just, you know, leave after wiping the floor with your brother. Sure. Gabriel writes, quote, the Georgians had lost more than a hundred thousand men at arms in their two battles against Subutai's army. Three years afterwards, with no army to protect them, Georgia was ravaged continually by brigands and bandits, end quote. And again, the specific numbers of that are questionable, but the larger point remains true. With the destruction of the Georgian military, so ended its golden age, and in the decade and a half to follow, the kingdom would be devastated time and again, eventually being conquered by none other than our old friend

Jalal al-Din of Khwarazmia in the mid-1230s. For now, however, the Georgians had succeeded in once again depleting the Mongol forces of their much-needed supplies. Thus, following up this second battle, they turned to Durban itself and its wali, an Arabic title meaning custodian, protector, or governor, the Prince Rashid ibn Faruqzad. Subutai had little interest in a protracted siege operation against the city. Again, that's not why they were here. They were just passing through, dammit. As such, he and Prince Rashid, who likewise had very little interest in seeing his city go the way of Hamadan, were quickly able to work out an arrangement that both agreed was in everyone's best interest. Durban and everyone inside would be left untouched and unmolested, and the Mongols

would just go, disappear, and never bother them again. In return, the city would provide the Mongol army with such provisions as it might require, like fodder for the horses, food for the soldiers, oh, and one other thing, ten of her best guides, who can show us the best and quickest route over the Caucasus and over to the far side. To all this, Rashid readily agreed, and the supplies and guides were quickly given over to the Mongol general. Rashid then smiled and waved as the receding army vanished into the distance, wishing them well and good fortune and all of that.

Meanwhile, the wali of Durban had been true to his title's meaning, and while protecting his own city in the moment by smiling to the murderous demon's face and giving him precisely what he demanded, he'd likewise acted as the custodian and protector of the entire Western world by giving those guides that he dispatched to the Mongol army strict, secret instructions that, yes, yes, you should take the Mongols on the shortest, easiest path through the mountains, by which he made perfectly clear he meant the longest, highest, deadliest, and most dangerous pass through. Via the actual short, easy paths, he dispatched numerous messengers carrying word of the doom that was even now winding its way through the mountains, to sound the alarm among the Muslim and Christian worlds alike

that a force unlike anything they'd ever seen or could possibly fathom was bearing down on them, one and all. And it was only if they acted now, fast and together, that there might yet be one single chance to stave off this eastern juggernaut of death and destruction from consuming them all. 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. By contrasting both the experiences of contemporaries and the conclusions of historians, Grey History dives into the detail and unpacks one of the most important and disputed events in human history. From a revolution based on hope and liberty, to its descent into the infamous reign of terror,

there's plenty to discuss, and plenty of grey to explore. One can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So if you're looking for your next long-form, binge-worthy history podcast, one recommended by universities and loved by enthusiasts, then check out Grey History, The French Revolution today. Or simply search for The French Revolution. Mongol 8.2 Subodai and Jeb's Bogus Journey

Behold! They are Temujin's four dogs of war, raised on human flesh. They have been chained and tied down, but now they're released and pursue us. They have foreheads of brass, their jaws are scissors, their tongues like piercing awls.

Their hearts are iron, their whipping tails are swords. Eating the dew, they ride the wind, hunting us without ceasing. On days of killing, they go forth to devour the flesh and blood of scores of men. They take the men's flesh as their provisions. Now they are released and on their way to us, slavering with joy from their maws. You ask me who these hounds of hell are? They are Jeb and Hubilai. They are Jelm and Subutai.

And they come for us. Jamaka to Dayan Khan in The Secret History of the Mongols Translated by Urbung Onun The governor of the Azerbaijani city of Durban that sat at the footholds of the Caucasus mountain, a man named Rashid, had been commanded by Subutai and his Mongol army to give them guides. Guides to take them over the mountains and to the lands beyond.

Governor Rashid had chosen his guides deliberately and given them strict instructions to take them via the longest, most circuitous routes. And as it would turn out, the guides that he'd chosen played their part to perfection. Even after Subutai, perhaps suspecting some sort of deception, immediately chose one of their number and had them beheaded as a warning to the others, none cracked, and the Mongols were forced over the most torturous paths and mountain routes that they knew of, inflicting a great toll on the reconnoitering force. But this was neither Subutai nor Jeb's first time dealing with a trek across the frozen crown of the world.

Years before, they'd both made a similarly dangerous and exhausting journey across the crests of the Tien Shan Range, before finally down into the Fergana Valley in order to outflank the Khwarazmian armies in the opening salvo of that war. Still, as the march went on and on, much of their heavy equipment and baggage, their catapults and mangonels, much of their food and supplies, was forced to be left behind in the snow and ice, and hundreds of the Mongol soldiers would meet their icy graves in the Caucasus over the duration of the journey. When at last, after several months of tricking through the frozen crevasses, Subutai's force emerged over the final pass and stared down the valley of the Tarak River,

leading down into the flats of the Rus principalities on the northern shores of the Black Sea. What he saw there was both hauntingly familiar and confirmed his worst suspicions. He now knew with certitude that his guides had indeed betrayed him. Arrayed down in the valley below was a fully supplied and waiting army of perhaps 50,000 soldiers, more than double what the Mongols still possessed, and it blocked all paths out of the mountains. This had been the fruit of Prince Rashid's deception, and it blocked all paths out of the mountains. This had been the fruit of Prince Rashid's deception, and it had paid dividends. A coalition force of the various Caucasus and

Rus peoples that had received the message of the Muslim protector of Durban put aside their religious and cultural prejudices and paid it heed. The Mongols now looked down at an army comprised of Leshkins, Cherkises, Iran-oskithian Christians known as Alans, Kievans, and all led by a powerful contingent of Cumans, also known as Kipchaks, related both to the now-destroyed Georgian Royal Honor Guard and the Kangli tribe that the Mongols had so recently exterminated all across Khwarezmia. Though not Christian but pagan, and indeed the traditional nomadic steppe raiders of the Kievan Rus territories themselves, the Cumans regarded the appearance of the Mongols on this side of the Caucasus as a direct threat to their monopoly on loot in the region,

and aimed to make sure that their stay was a short one. They had, in turn and through the negotiations of their Khan, Kotian, and his brother, Yuri, convinced large contingents of Bilgars and Khazars, likewise formerly nomadic steppe peoples now settled, Such a situation was, to put it mildly, not ideal for Subutai. From Gabriel, quote, For one of the few times in his long military career, Subutai found himself trapped in circumstances that he did not anticipate. He could not retreat, returning over the mountains, for to do so would mean abandoning his mission and probably having to face a Muslim army raised by Rashid Shah waiting at the other end.

With no means of retreat and the terrain depriving him of the ability to maneuver, Subutai ordered his exhausted army into a frontal attack. Although the Mongols pressed the attack fiercely, there was no hope of breaking such a great mass of armed men. End quote. So that wasn't going to work. He was at last forced to call his men back up the slopes and hide out behind the stones and boulders with his archers, hoping that the enemy force would be foolish enough to pursue and then be picked off by Mongol marksmanship. They weren't. The coalition army refused to allow their men to be drawn into an ambush, instead ordering them back to their prepared positions and to wait out what was, in effect, the siege of an entire mountain range. Either the Mongols would have to come down and fight and die, or they'd have to turn around and likely fight and die, or they'd have to turn around and likely fight and

die, or they'd have to stay up in the mountains until their dwindling supplies ran out and they starved and died. It was a foolproof plan and the near-perfect trap that the Cumans had lain for the Mongol force. Near-perfect, because before resigning himself to defeat and death, Subutai had one last little trick up his sleeve. Good old fashioned diplomacy. The 20,000 and some odd Mongols could never hope to defeat an army of 50,000 in such circumstances, but what if they didn't have to face all 50,000? This was no united front after all, but a coalition force of peoples and nations who all hated each other just slightly less than they hated Subutai's army. Perhaps, with the proper leverage, those scales might be shifted. It would be to the Cuman camp, the very leaders of this anti-Mongol army of all people, that Subutai would dispatch his delegation, quote, complaining more in sorrow than anger that he was saddened to see the Cumans

fighting their stepbrothers, the Mongols. Were they not both Turkic peoples? Unlike those Alans and Caucasians, end quote. Come now, my fellow brothers of the steppes and the great blue eternal heaven above, let's all join hands in brotherhood and sing kumbaya. It was ludicrous, of course. As mentioned, the Mongols had absolutely no compunction about ruthlessly slaughtering

their so-called brethren when it suited their aims, as had been horrifyingly demonstrated against the Qumans' close cousins, the Kangli people. Ah, but there was more. As a demonstration of this newfound but heartfelt ethnic solidarity, Subotai's ambassador solemnly promised that they would split their accumulated war booty 50-50, half of what they had on hand right now, and then they'd pay off the rest of what they were able to accumulate from the bodies of the humans' erstwhile allies surrounding them.

Once they were defeated, of course. Just take the bribe and ride away. You know you want to. But then we'll go our separate ways, fat, rich, and happy, one and all. What do you say? The Cuman Khan took the bait. As the Cuman tribesmen silently packed up

and rode off into the darkness that night, the Mongols swept down among the remaining armies and slaughtered them to a man. But of course, that battle now over, it was time for the Mongols to deliver the rest of what he owed the traitorous Cumans. Now laden with the treasures bestowed on them, the Cuman warriors were easy for the Mongol scouts to track and follow. And when, as a result of ongoing internal friction between the two, the main force split into two and departed one another's company, Subodai's troops launched an attack on the group heading southward, led by the Cuman Khan's brother and son, annihilating them and reclaiming not only the treasures that they'd given away previously,

but all the Cuman's own horses and supplies as well. After taking in sacking the city of Astrakhan, Subodai finally allowed his men and horses a measure of rest to recuperate their strength. No one had earned it more than them. Subodai's force was now at a strength of less than 20,000 men, but that was of little matter, for the way to the plains of Russia and Europe lay open before them. First, however, they would need to see what information they might be able to collect from the region and its inhabitants. Thus, Subodai split his force in half, leaving Jeb to make his way north and west to the Don River,

and there await the return of his commander. Subodai, in turn, would take the other Tumen and make southwest for the Black Sea, specifically its northernmost offshoot, the shallow Sea of Azov. There, something most unexpected occurred. Subutai Ba'athor had his first direct encounter with Western Europeans. He and his warriors were there approached by a mission from a group of people calling themselves Venetians, who apparently were traitors who'd been trying to establish themselves and ply their wares along the Crimean coasts of the Black Sea. They had a slight problem, however. At every turn, they'd been stymied and opposed by their arch-nemeses, the Jienese. Looking over these strange Mongol horsemen, they actually recognized quite a bit of what they saw on and with them. The silks they wore, filthy and threadbare though they were,

and the technology that they carried, marked them out quite apart from the barbarian hordes of the Russian steppes, like the Cumans or the Scythians, but something far more valuable to the astute trader. They were Chinese, or at least close enough. Moreover, as ever, Subedai's army traveled with any number of ethnic Chinese siege engineers, scholars, and mapmakers who spent this voyage taking down and studying in minute detail every single detail that they could. Thus, the Venetians were very eager

indeed to do business with this fearsome, but perhaps very valuable, new player on the world's stage. The Venetians provided the Chinese mapmakers and scholars with all the information that they had, and the Mongol intelligence officers asked of them. Geographic population details of all the areas beyond the Black Sea, their names, like places like Hungary, Poland, Silesia, Bohemia, just to name a few. Surveys of what kind of crops grew there, their animal climates, the works. Gabriel writes that the Medetians were quite impressed by the sheer range of skills and trades that this army carried with it, since it was very strange to the Europeans' minds for an army to have such things with it. Quote, Suvidai's army traveled with

doctors, diplomats, and a corps of interpreters that included an Armenian bishop. Indeed, the Muslim merchants in the Mongol baggage train were so efficient that they were already selling cheap copies of the Bible to the local Russians, a fact that surely impressed the Venetian merchants. End quote. By the parley's end, the Mongols and Venetians had signed a secret treaty for which, in exchange for a sworn promise that the Venetians would, upon return to Italy, deliver up maps, reports of economic strength, military movements, and any other information that they thought impressive about all of the European regions and beyond that they encountered, as well

as a solemn promise that they would proceed in their dealings no further east than the Black Sea, and thus not infringe upon the Great Khan's trade monopoly of the Eastern Silk Road. In return, the Mongols would raze and destroy every other non-Venetian trading station that they came across, beginning with, as sort of a down payment if you will, the Gienese trading post at Sodea, right there on the Crimea, and thereafter protect the sole right of the Venetians to conduct trade across the region. It was likewise from the Venetians that the Mongols of Subutai would learn of the less-than-ideal political situation afflicting the princes of Rus. Sadly, it seemed that they just could not get along,

and in spite of their relatively high level of civil progress and urbanization, McFlynn states, for instance, that as much as 13-15% of the Russian principality's populations were urban across more than 300 cities by the early 13th century, which far outstripped the rest of Europe at the time, politically, it was a region constantly in chaos, forever plagued by, quote, internecine wars of faint-hearted princes who, oblivious to the glory of good for the fatherland, slaughtered each other and ravaged the people, end quote.

Well, it sounded like they could use a single, all-powerful strongman ruler to guide them, one and all, and Subutai had just the idea for who could fit that kind of bill. Their business successfully, and very profitably, concluded. Subutai at last departed the shores of the Sea of Azov, having of course first seized, looted, raped, slaughtered, and burnt to the ground Solodaya as promised, and bid farewell to his new and very useful Venetian friends. The Venetians waved back until the last of the Mongols were out of sight, and then, like as not, let out a collective breath that they'd all been holding,

and sat down to write of the interaction. Quote, They came, they sapped, they burnt, they slew, they plundered, and they departed. End quote. So take that, Caesar. Your Veni Vidi Vici has got nothing on Subadai's epitaph. It was now late autumn of 1222. In the final year of Subadai and Jeb's campaign, the commanders determined that the time was right to complete their destruction of Cuman power across the steppe. Though they'd already slaughtered one of the armies that had

been convinced to depart from battle around the Caucasus, yet another remained to tell the tale. The army commanded by the Khan himself, Kotien, who'd fled north to seek the protection of the Rus cities like Kiev and Chernigov. The Cumans, known collectively by the Russian population as Polovtsians, meaning the blonde or yellow people, a name that was echoed by the names given to them in German and Turkic as well, were to the western steppes of Eurasia very similar to what the Mongols and their collective predecessors had been to East Asia in the centuries before their unification under Genghis. Earsome, monstrous, barbaric, and cruel raiders and traitors, as liable to sell you goods as they were to rape and murder your family or take you all as slaves.

The settled societies surrounding the western steppes had, across the centuries, managed the Cuman hordes in markedly similar fashion to their eastern counterparts in China, Korea, etc., in turns ignoring, trading with, and using them as mercenaries in their own conflicts and civil wars, and, when they grew too powerful from time to time, setting aside their own settled society differences to drive them back out into the wild and lay them low once again. This had, especially over the 20th century, gradually evolved, however, into a far closer relationship between the Cuman tribes and the Russian Boyar nobility, as they'd begun to increasingly intermarry and even live alongside one another,

and some of the Cuman tribes had even shed their traditional paganism and adopted Christianity as their faith. At this time, Kotian Khan was in fact the father-in-law of the prince of Galatia, Mazislav the Bold. So it was to this familiar link that Kotian and his band now turned seeking aid. Having reached Galatia in 1222, he darkly, and it would turn out prophetically, intoned that a failure of the Russian nobility to assist their steppe neighbors against this new threat would have dire ramifications for themselves, stating, Today the Tartars have taken our lands. It'll be your turn tomorrow. dire ramifications for themselves, stating, The prince and his boyar council, however, was rather split about what they ought to do. Many of them were actually rather pleased about this ironic turn of events for the Cumans,

observing that they were just reaping what they sowed, and that the Mongol army was doing to them no worse than what the barbarous Palavtsians had been inflicting on their own people for centuries. Others were angry at the Khan for bringing them this trouble that was not of their own making or choice, and urged the prince to cast the Cumans out at once before these Mongols learned of their presence in the city. Still others urged the need for further study and understanding of this new people and their true intentions before any firm decision was reached. The Chronicle of Novgorod sums up the situation quite well when it states, quote, The same year, for our sins, tribes came, whom no one knows exactly who they were or whence they

came, nor what their language is, nor of what race they are, nor of what their faith is, but they call them Tartars. End quote. For almost a year, Kotian attempted to convince the Russian princes and boyars of a need for unity in action against this looming threat, and yet time and again his pleas fell on deaf ears. In the end, however, it was neither the Cuman chieftain's relationship with the Galatian prince nor the force of his arguments, but instead actual reports of a large unknown force matching the Cuman's descriptions moving up the Don and Dnieper rivers and conducting raiding forays across Crimea and across the countryside at large. At that, they'd also been joined by more than 5,000 warriors of the

Brodnik tribes. That finally pushed the boyars over the edge. At last, Masyatslav agreed to lend aid to his father-in-law and form an anti-Tartar coalition to unite against the invaders and drive them out before they could do the Russian lands any further harm. At the Great Council of War held in Kiev, Mastislav of Galicia convinced 18 other princes to join him against the Mongols, led by, of course, himself, and, confusingly enough, two other Prince Mastislavs, one of Kiev and the other of Chernigov. Collectively, they'd be known as the Three Mastislavs. They would be joined in turn by the forces of Kursk, Sudsdal, Rostov, Volhynia, Lutsk, and numerous others. The army of Three Mustislavs was, when assembled, a truly impressive array.

At least 30,000 strong, with some reports as high as 80,000, though that is ever is questionable, and if it is believed, probably includes the baggiest train and non-combatants that would have made up as much as half of that number. Thus assembled, the Pan-Russian force began to move east to head off this mysterious Tartar menace. Unlike a Mongol force, however, an army such as the one fielded by the Rus' princes was ponderously slow in its movements and exceedingly easy to detect and track. Thus, as the various forces made their way to the predetermined meeting point on an island in the middle of the Dnieper River, they were spotted almost at once by Mongol scouts, and their activities reported to Subutai. Subutai and his army sat now on the eastern bank of the Dnieper, southwest of Kursk, pondering what to do now that he'd been informed that a planned reinforcement army

to be led by Genghis's eldest son, Juche, was not coming, as he had taken ill. The Russian armies converged on the Mongol positions via a fleet of as many as a thousand boats, threatening to cut Subutai's line of withdrawal off completely, if something were not done. It was time once again, therefore, to play the Mongol diplomacy card. The great general dispatched ten emissaries to treat with the Rus nobles, and bring a message from their lord commander. Why were the Russians moving against him? As he'd done nothing to engender their anger, he was solely in pursuit of those Cuman slaves of the Great Khan, who had rebelled and then cowardly fled, and were now seeking to bring trouble to the Rus and Mongol

alike by turning them against one another. Suveta had been made aware of the depredations that these Cumans had inflicted on the innocent Russian populace, and in most barbarous fashion at that. And surely the noble princes ought to welcome his aid in dealing with their deceitful and cowardly traitors within their ranks. So just turn over the Cumans to Subutai, along with their cowardly Kothian Khan, and we can all just walk away like nothing ever happened. There's been too much violence, too much pain, none here is without sin. But I have an honorable It was almost entirely bullshit, of course. The Cumans were only slaves of Genghis because Subodai had decided that they were, because they were also step-riders and thus peoples of the Gur that Genghis's great Kurultai had claimed hegemony over, and because of their tangential relation

to the Kanglis that had been allied with the Kharsmians upon the Mongol invasion. So too was Subutai's claim that he'd committed no aggression against the Rus or their boyars. For months prior to this, his army had been marching up and down Crimea and along the Black Sea coast and his tributaries, raiding, murdering, raping, and pillaging whenever and wherever they saw fit. And so, for either of these reasons, or perhaps them and others, the three Mstislavs ever so graciously declined the Mongol general's kind offer by ordering the immediate execution of all ten emissaries.

Maclean writes that many societies in the 13th century believed in shooting the messenger, and surely that was true, and true here for the Rus princes. But as we're all well aware of by now, the great Mongol nation was definitely not one of those societies. A startlingly high number of the great Khan's laws, decisions, and even wartime tactics were based firmly around the central principle of sparing any and every drop of Mongol blood he could from being spilt, even at the cost of hundreds or thousands of non-Mongol lives. And so, to so callously murder ten Mongol ambassadors bearing a message in terms of peace was unconscionable. It was unacceptable. It meant assured death. Recalling Jeb and reuniting their tumens, Subutai's force advanced across the Dnieper

and began to devastate settlements up and down the nearby Dniester, taking all the time and thorough care that their wrath could afford them in each settlement in turn. Then he sent another embassy to the still-assembling Russian princes, this time just two men bearing the message, quote, You have hearkened to the Polovtsians and have attacked our envoys and are marching against us. March on then, but we have not attacked you. May God be the judge of all men. It was a formal declaration of war, a requirement of Mongol etiquette, that so astonished the Prince of Galatia that this time he let the two messengers live and let them go. But, you know, it's like too little too late at this point.

Subutai had primed the ambassadors to let it slip in the course of their visit that their commander was quite downcast by the failure of the reinforcements he'd been expecting to make an appearance. Which was mostly true. Juche's illness had forced Subutai to shift tactics, at least. But when the Russian armies finally caught sight of the Mongol force on the far side of the Dnieper, they took such information to mean that the enemy general must be afraid of them. An assumption given further weight, when, rather than staying or engaging the Russian force, the Mongols slipped out of sight eastward, apparently running away, and in such a hurry that they forgot and left a force of a thousand soldiers along the riverbank.

In fact, it was a token force meant to delay the Russian army as long as possible, a suicide squad intended to lure them across the river, while the main body commenced a slow, ostentatious retreat. The Russian armies were undoubtedly a far more massive force than the Mongols, but that sheer size belied the fact that already, and before even the first hint of real battle, internal fissures had begun to fracture the European force. The main issue was its commanders,

the princes who had managed to set aside their mutual enmity with one another to ride against this common foe, still couldn't quite bear the mutual antagonism and put aside their personal pride enough to actually be ordered around by any of the other princes. Quote, The result, therefore, was not a single army of 40 to 80,000, but a dozen or more armies of a few thousand apiece, each operating pretty much totally independently of all others. In other words, total chaos. The thousand-strong Mongol force, quote-unquote, accidentally left on the far bank of the Dnieper was commanded by Captain Hamebek, and they did their duty in

luring the massive Russian army of 10,000 or more across the river to take them. And once they met them in battle, more than proved their valor. Quote, the Russians took terrible casualties as Hamebek and his men fought like lions in a kind of replay of Thermopylae. Eventually, inevitably, they were overwhelmed and Hamebek was let out to execution. End quote. Emboldened by this victory, even at such a cost, Prince Mstislav the Bold of Galicia set out in hot pursuit of the main Mongol force that had left so many of his own men to die, while the rest had run away like cowards. With the other two Mstislavs still on the far side of the river, the Prince of Galatia saw a chance to single-handedly catch and destroy the Tartar force, thus getting all the glory for

himself and establishing himself in the glorious pantheon of great Russian heroes. Thus abandoning his own carefully laid plan to encircle and cut off the Mongol army from all sides via forces traveling along the waterways, Mustislav the Bold cancelled the encirclement order and instead ordered his human vanguard to join him at once to seek out and immediately destroy these cowardly Mongols who fled before him. Subutai thus led Mustislav by the nose, north across the shores of the Sea of Azov, always remaining tantalizingly close but just out of reach, never engaging but always retreating and running away. For nine days, the Galatian prince and his army chased after the retreating Mongols

across the Russian plains, the distances between the cohorts growing ever wider, the baggage trains falling further behind the main forces, and winding up in a long string scattered all over the vast expanse. Finally, having reached the Khalkha River near Mariupol on May 31st, 1222, Subodai and his army turned to face their pursuers. Weeks before, he'd surveyed this very spot and decided that it was here where the rebel Khan and the foolish prince who defied him would be made to pay for their folly. It had all already been prepared. the rest of even his own army, much less those of his frenemy fellow Rus princes, who he didn't even bother sending messages back to tell him what his plan was going to be, before committing to the

attack when he saw the Mongol forces awaiting him in full formation on the western bank of the Kalka, the river at their backs, and looking very much indeed like they had been finally caught and pinned down, with nowhere left to go. Rimming with confidence, he ordered his Galatians and Cuman forces into an immediate frontal charge. As the two cavalries galloped toward the waiting Mongols, the steppe riders' infamous light arches raked back and forth in front of them, showering them with armor-piercing arrows with the typical devastating effect. Still, the Russo-Cuman force continued to close the gap, at which point the Mongol archers broke off. Now, Subutai ordered that strategically laid fire and smoke pots were lit and uncapped, releasing a choking, blinding black smoke across the battlefield, disorienting the attacking army and throwing it all into chaos.

In the confusion, the Galatian army was separated from the Cumans, which continued to plunge headlong toward the main Mongol battle lines. They were, however, quickly put into a panicked route when their charge was easily broken by the Mongol heavy cavalry that now plunged through the inky darkness and through the gap between the Russians and Cumans. Meanwhile, at the rear of the battlefield, the miles-long train of baggage and soldiers and other men, the following armies of the other Russian princes,

were now beginning to arrive. The Cumans had broken and were in full flight, whereupon the newly arrived forces of Mertz and Volhynia were only just able to part ranks and let the panicked men and horses through. Hard after them, however, was the Mongol heavy cavalry itself, which likewise plunged through the gap between the two armies, dividing them and then setting upon them with ferocity. The Cuban riders fled even further back, now encountering the army of Chernigov, still in march formation and apparently not even yet aware that a battle was already in process.

This time, however, the approaching army was too slow to react, and the panicked riders smashed straight into their ranks, devastating them both and rendering them one at all nearly defenseless for the Mongol riders hot on their heels. In the marshy conditions of the plain chosen specifically by Subutai, the shattered, bleeding, and panicked Russian forces found it impossible to effectively maneuver or regroup. The Mongol forces, meanwhile, rode ever around them in a wide ring, alternating showers of deadly archery with heavy cavalry charges again and again and again. It was with no small degree of irony that the prince who instigated this catastrophe, Mustislav the Bold of Galicia, was one of the few who managed to cut their way free

of this death trap and make for safety. Of the perhaps more than 20,000 soldiers who faced the Mongols that day along the Khalkha River, perhaps no more than 20,000 soldiers who faced the Mongols that day along the Khalkha River, perhaps no more than 2,000 of them were left alive by the end of the day. And the horror was not yet over. The final army to reach the slaughter in progress was the 10,000-man force of the Prince of Kiev. Having arrived on the far side of the Khalkha, he found that he could do little but watch as the slaughter unfurled into its final bloody stages. Realizing the extreme danger that he himself was now in, the Prince of Kiev quickly turned his force around, and leaving the fleeing

soldiers behind to their own grisly fates, he attempted to retreat. The Mongols, however, weren't having it. For more than 150 miles, the Mongols pursued the retreating Russians, slaughtering them as they ran, one and all, and ever catching up to the army of the Prince of Kiev. The prince and his force managed to reach all the way to the shores of the Dnieper River before they were caught by the Mongol vanguard. In a final, desperate maneuver, he commanded his army to make for the crest of a nearby hill and then ring wagons around it in a defensive stockade as his soldiers huddled within. The Mongol army therefore simply

ringed the makeshift encampment and cut off all approaches and aggressors, and then patiently waited. For three days, the Mongol army allowed the ever-mounting combination of hunger, thirst, and terror to do their inexorable jobs, before finally, having run out of water, the army of Kiev sent forth a messenger asking for terms of their surrender. Of course, the Mongol commanders replied, simply drop your weapons where they are and march out, and we'll let you get back to Kiev. Easy peasy. Once these terms had been returned to the Russian soldiers, they dutifully disarmed and took down their defensive fortifications,

at which point the Mongols went, just kidding, and stormed the encampment, slaughtering them to a man. Well, not quite to a man. Not yet, anyway. A much more novel end would be forthcoming for the captives of noble and royal blood, such as the captured Prince of Kiev. Mongols, as we all know, long detested the spilling of royal blood, whether Mongol or otherwise, and thus had developed numerous methods of honorably, as they saw it,

dispatching a noble foe without allowing the liquid vessel of his soul to be scattered to the earth. Drowning and strangulation were the most common methods, though reports and stories of some particularly inventive methods spring up from time to time, such as the supposed end of the treacherous governor of the Khwarezmian city of Ochar, with molten gold in the eyes and ears. It would be just such a noble end that these boyars, voivodes, and princes of Rus' would now meet. Some tellings have it that the Prince of Kiev was simply stuffed and locked into a box to then suffocate, while other, more colorful tellings have the bound captives stacked one atop the next like cordwood, on the top of all of which wooden planks were laying with tables, and finally a grand feast.

As the captives underneath were crushed and suffocated, gasping out their final agonizing cries, the Mongol army sat atop them and feasted their great victory. Such was the price, it had been explained before the feast commenced, for taking the lives of the Mongols' ambassadors. The survivors of this unmitigated disaster fled back to their cities in terror, many of them taking what they could and then fleeing by whatever means they could, often loading down their ships and river barges to the point of capsizing before destroying their city docks and sailing out, hoping that by so doing the Mongols would be unable to pursue them. At least one of these attempts to go into the Black Sea

did result in the ship flipping and foundering, with all aboard drowning. The Cuman riders now too turned upon their erstwhile Russian allies, killing an unknown number of refugees as they fled. The Novgorod Chronicle puts the Russian perspective of this calamity in the starkly religious terms that these medieval Christians understood such a catastrophe. Quote, End quote. In the course of only a few months, at least 60,000 Russians had perished at the hands of Subutai and his army, about 1% of the total population at the time, including fully half of the realm's 18 princes. They couldn't possibly have known it, of course, but the panicked flight by the Russians following their destruction at the Kalka was entirely unnecessary. Subutai's timetable was all but up. Three years had almost passed,

and he had all the information that he needed about these strange lands of the far west and the strange, fractious people it contained. It was time to return to Mongolia and make his full report to the awaiting Khan. Before turning eastward, the Mongol army decided to top off its supplies by sacking a number of smaller towns and cities along the Dnieper, having come to find that a great way of bypassing their defenses entirely was to just prominently display a Christian cross ahead of their armies, which often prompted the city leaders to mistake them for a friendly force and just open the gates of their own volition.

How strange. How convenient. At last, a messenger from the Great Khan arrived, with orders to locate and link up with Juche's army that had, finally, moved westward to attempt to assist Subutai and Jeb, and then proceed together back to Genghis's main encampment on the Sir Darya River in modern Uzbekistan. But on their way there, there would be time for one final, brief campaign against the last of the steppe people associated with the Kanglis and Cumans, and thus on the Mongols' naughty list, the Bulgar tribes of the Volga. Subutai and Jeb crossed, the Bulgar tribes of the Volga.

Subutai and Jeb crossed to the eastern banks of the Volga, near modern Volgograd, better remembered historically as Stalingrad. Exhausted but victorious, they made their way mile after mile, day after day. As they went, the forested hills and valleys gradually gave way to the vast, treeless stretches of steppe grasslands. Quote, There were few towns or settlements of any kind except for a few straggling villages on the banks of rivers. Here, cultivated land was scarce and oasis-like.

Only skylarks, turtle doves, swarms of insects, and a huge variety of wildflowers disturbed the barren monotony. End quote. At a great bend in the Volga, at a place called Samara, the Mongol army was surprised by a Bulgar ambush conducted by Ilgam Khan, and they managed to prove that, though long on the wane of their former power, they could still pack a punch. The Mongol vanguard was badly mauled and took significant casualties in the attack, for which, even though they'd be repaid in kind and more further upstream

at the Kama River, they managed to score a long-standing propaganda victory by endlessly talking up that initial victory over the quote-unquote invincible Mongols and suppressing their later defeat at Kama. MacLynn writes, though, quote, Even expert modern historians have been seduced by the legend of a major Mongol defeat which, if it really happened, would have made Ilgim one of the great unsung military geniuses of the ages. The truth was that Samara Bend was not even a setback as serious as the annihilation of Hamabek at the Dnieper. End quote. Deeper still into the eastern wilds of the great Ural Mountains, the Mongol force made time to chastise the Eastern Cumans, or Kipchaks,

and the Kanglis, extracting from them one and all tribute and pledges of fealty to the Great Mongol Khan. Finally, they passed north of the Caspian and Aral Seas, completing their three-year circuit of Eurasia, much to Genghis's great delight. Before arriving back at the Great Khan's Gur, however, Jeb was struck by an unidentified fever and died on the border of modern Kazakhstan and Mongolia, at a place called Tar-Bagatai, just west of the Altai Mountains. Thus, it was only Subutai who made it back to the great Mongol nation, leaving behind him innumerable spies, messengers,

and plans for a permanent Mongol guard force that would stretch as far west as the Volga, composed of the most loyal elements of the subjugated people who'd paid the nation tribute, an idea to which Genghis readily assented. The Mongol intelligence service would take this mountain of new information that he brought and its sources and begin working up exhaustive dossiers on all the various European peoples and kingdoms, their various religions, languages, political divisions, and rivalries, and how best these might all be exploited in future conquests.

In the course of this 5,500-mile, three-year trek, Subotai and Jeb had made for a team the likes of which may have never been a match before or since. The strategic brilliance of Subotai has been the primary focus here, but the battlefield prowess and tactical command of Jeb the Arrow mark him out surely, as Liddell Hart puts it, as Together, the two captains had won seven major battles, every one of which was against a force of vastly superior numbers. They'd sacked innumerable cities and towns, increased the Khanate's treasury manifold, and even more importantly, scouted and mapped almost the whole of the

continent for the Great Khan, showing that a pathway straight across Asia and into the heart of Europe lay open and all but defenseless against the prowess of Mongol military might. It had, of course, been a costly endeavor. Some 10,000 Mongol soldiers had been left dead in the course of the Great Reconnaissance Raid, along the steep valleys of Georgia and Azerbaijan, frozen atop the peaks and glaciers of the Caucasus, and strewn across the rivers of Eastern Europe and Russia. The scope and scale of the destruction left behind them against their foes, and anyone who'd gotten their way,

was a bloody swath across two continents that could scarcely be believed even by the contemporaries who witnessed it firsthand. Arab historian Ibn al-Atir would write at the time that he already knew that future generations of Muslim historians would read his sober accounts of the carnage wrought across the known world in a mere three years' time, and dismiss it as the overblown ravings of a liar, a fool, or a madman. The surviving princes of Rus would, in stunned disbelief, almost seem to ignore everything that had just happened, choosing and perhaps needing to believe that it had been a one-off lightning strike, a diluvian flood of blood and pain handed out by none other than God

himself for their collective sins against his majesty, that could never be repeated and therefore did not need to be prepared for. Instead, turning a blind eye to the east, that almost beggar's comprehension, given what they already now knew, lurked over there, they simply resumed their petty bickering and feuds amongst themselves, perhaps finding what comfort they could in such familiar minor struggles. As Tamajin's once-upon-a-time Anda, his blood brother Jamaka, had once tried to explain to the Naimon Khan, Dayan, of what he was facing in the poor, skinny Mongol force that he then faced, Jeb and Subutai had been two of Tamajin's dogs of war,

ready, willing, and able to devour any and all in their path. Western Asia and Europe had received their first bite from these Mongol hellhounds, and though they thought the very gates of Tartarus had opened forth to spill invincible demons outward upon them, in fact these dogs had only taken a nibble. A mere look around. Though it would be under a different great Khan than the now aged Genghis, these hounds of war would return westward. And next time, they'd be intent on the whole meal.

Thanks for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.