The History of China - #282 - Mongol 10: The Succession & The Last Battle

Episode Date: December 29, 2024

Even the invincible Genghis Khan must face the inevitability of death. It holds no fear for him personally, but before he surrenders at last to oblivion, he needs to see two tasks through to the end: who will succeed him as Emperor of the World, and making sure an old enemy gets what has long been coming to them... Time Period Covered: 1220-1227 CE Major Historical Figures: Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan [Temüjin] (1162-1227) Börte Khatun (c.1161-c.1130) Yesui Khatun (d. ?) Jochi (1181-1226) Chagatai Khan (1183-1242) Ögedei Khan (c.1186-1241) Tolui (c.1191-1232) Xi Xia: Emperor Shenzong [Li Zuxun] (r. 1211-1223) Emperor Xianzong [Li Dewang] (r. 1223-1226) Emperor Mo [Li Xian] (r. 1226-1227) Empress Kurbelzhin (d. 1227) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Mongol 10, The Last Campaign 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 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 a 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 Joche, Chagatai, Ogade, and Tolui, the four sons given to him by his queen, Berta. 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 Joche, as his second son Chagatai loved to needle him at every opportunity, was of uncertain parentage. As you recall, shortly after Tamagin 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 is 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 Joche 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, 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 Zhi 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 Zhi 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 Jocha 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 session 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, Ogaday'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, 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. Genghis 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, Jengis 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, Jouchi 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 Jinguis 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, 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?

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 Jocha 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's son as you are,' "'Belo Jocha 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 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 Joach'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. 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 Ogedei, for he is peaceful in this disagreement, and close to the Khan our father. If the Khan initiates him

in the teachings of rulership, and of donning the mantle of the great hat of the nation, the choice will surely be appropriate." 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, Chagadai 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, 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 empire as a whole. Observe my decree, obey my law, and refrain from changing it, and you cannot go wrong. Even if one of Ogedei's descendants proves unworthy or unable to hit the broadside of an ilk, surely another of my line will be born good. Thus shall he be made to rule instead. End quote.

And so 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, quote, 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 Joja 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. Arganch would be first burned, then flooded, and his population destroyed, never to rise again, and leaving little indeed for its new ruler, Jocha. 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 Jocho 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, celebrations, and jollity. After distributing the spoils of war and 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 McGlynn, quote, Genghis often reflected on the mixed legacy of his empire and his own ambivalence toward it. On the one hand, he had given the Mongols wealth, power, and luxury beyond their wildest dreams, and had turned an

obscure tribe of nomads into the virtual rulers of the world. The people who had dressed in rags and eaten dogs and mice when he was a boy now took the most sumptuous luxury for granted." He had introduced writing, money in 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,

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, His chance came when Genghis, tired of his son's insubordination, expressly summoned him to court. 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 Genghis, 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 Jojo 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. Quote, it was clear that Jocha 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 Jocha 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. In all human history, there are few stories like that of ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile,

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Back in Mongolia, and with the Khwarazmian campaign behind him, one last thing remained on Genghis Khan's docket, as yet incomplete. The settling of accounts with the Tangut kingdom of western Xia. The Tanguts had been the first non-Mongol people to face their collective wrath in 1209, and an ironclad condition of the peace treaty reached had been that, as a vassal state of the Khanate, whenever called upon, the king of Xia would furnish troops to the Mongol war effort. Yet when the Sha Emperor had died in 1211 and been replaced by Shen Zong, relations had quickly deteriorated. This had largely been due to the efforts of the top Tangut general, a virulent anti-Mongolist named Asagambu. Drawing the Emperor steadily under his spell, it had been Asagambu

that had, in 1220, made his kingdom's reply to the Mongol emissary's command that they furnish troops to their lord Genghis's campaign against Khwarezmia. The general had mocked the demand as he refused it, stating that, as Temujin had assumed the title of King of Kings, though in truth Genghis never styled himself as such, he must surely be so powerful that he would need no support from the Tanguts, since heaven was on his side after all, and that if he did need help, well, then he

shouldn't be calling himself Great Khan in the first place. Genghis, with his plans already against Persia well enough in motion that they couldn't be easily deviated from, had to put a pin in that discussion, and had ridden west to deal with the Amir who'd killed his emissaries and plundered his caravans. But he had never forgotten, and he had never forgiven such a grave insult for the treachery that went along with it. He had sworn to himself that he would return and see that the Tangut kingdom paid the price in full for its insolence and betrayal, and to that end instructed one of his secretaries to, every noon and every evening, remind him that the King of

Shah still existed and its people remained unpunished. For seven long years now, twice a day, every day, he'd been so reminded, and now the time to fulfill that vow had come at last. By the time he was on his way back from Persia, as of 1224, the Tangut emperor, who had so foolishly thrown aside the great Khan's friendship, had been killed and replaced. In the intervening years, it had become woefully clear to the population that the Xia kingdom's rebuffment of their Mongol alliance had been... a bad idea. Not only had their government's attempts to renew an alliance with the Jin horrendously backfired, resulting in war

between the two that the Xia army was by no means winning, but even the Mongol defense forces and Jin expeditionary forces had been able to plunge deep into Tangut territories virtually at will. Thus, in 1223, Emperor Shenzong had been ousted and replaced by Xianzong, who, unfortunately for Xisha, was even more a lackey of the anti-Mongol general Asagambu than his predecessor. This was evidenced when, after a Mongol force of 20,000 routed a far superior Tangut army and besieged the city of Shazhou. The Xia king sued for peace and consented to send one of his sons as a hostage for future good behavior, when Genghis, not yet quite ready to commit to a full attack, had agreed. But then, at Asagambu's insistence, the Xia king had turned around and

entreated the Jin to once again enter into an anti-Mongol alliance, thereafter reneging on his promise to send his son into Mongol custody. In the meantime, back in Mongolia, Genghis was putting the finishing touches on his invasion force, a truly massive army of perhaps 70,000 to 80,000 soldiers along the Tula River. The great Khan was old, He was weak and sick, and every day felt a bit weaker still. Yet he had sworn to himself, and for seven years been reminded of that every day, that he would see the Tanguts punished for their effrontery. Thus, even at 62, he would personally command and oversee this campaign against Xixia. Of course, he wouldn't be doing it alone. Leaving Chagatai behind in Mongolia as its governor, he took as his deputy commanders

his two younger sons, Ogade and Tolui, as well as the ever-indispensable General Subutai, the Valiant, who had just returned from his three-year odyssey across Eurasia. One of his wives also accompanied him, as was usual. Not Berta, who had disappeared from the annals after Genghis left for Khwarizmia, and had by this point possibly even died in Mongolia, nor Khulan, who had been his consort in Persia. This time he chose his Tatar queen, Yeshvi, as his companion. Unusually for Genghis, prior to launching this, what would be the last

of his invasions, he had drafted and sent to the royal court of Xia his Casesbelli, that they had broken their 1210 treaties promised to provide troops at will, and had intrigued with Mongol enemies against them, and most recently had failed to uphold their agreement to entrust one of their princes to the Khanate's protection. It concluded by offering the Tangut king one final chance to spare himself and his people from destruction. It was a massive payment of reparations and sending forth the prince as was promised as hostage. It was a demand designed specifically to be rejected, both because his pride had been so offended by the Tanguts, but even more so because they, in having shown their treacherous colors, could never really be trusted again.

From MacLynn, If he was to complete the conquest of the Jin Empire, he needed to have the Ordos, Shanxi, and Gansu firmly in his grip so that the Tangut could not stab him in the back. Yet even though he had been expecting, and even wanting, rejection of his terms, the aged Khan was hardly prepared for the sheer vitriol and contempt which shot through the reply penned by Asagambu and affixed with Xianzong's seal. It was not the Burhan of Shah who mocked you, Asagambu shot back, but I. By now, surely even you Mongols have learned how to fight. So let it be. If you wish to fight, I have my camp at Alshai. But if you're more concerned with treasure and payments than of honorable combat, go and take them from the cities of the Jin. Trouble me not with such things.

When he received this reply, Genghis veritably exploded. Quote, How is it possible to go back now? I may die, but I shall bring him to account. I swear to eternal Tangri. End quote. As to the issue of the hostage, there is significant murkiness about his status or fate. While the Mongols maintained that they had seen neither hide nor hair of the boy supposed to be turned over to their care,

Pangit sources attested that they had sent the prince, a boy of just five or six, as had been promised, only to learn later on that he had been cruelly murdered by the Mongols. Compounding things, they went on, his body had been left on the steps for the buzzards, rather than given a proper burial. As a demonstration of their horror at such an act, and a kind of ritual substitution as is fairly common in such societies,

the Tangut royal household went on to pointedly adopt the son of Genghis's ancient enemy, Guchlug of the Naiman, who had been caught and beheaded back in 1218 while attempting to flee from Karakhetan. The Mongol rebuttal was, of course, no, we didn't kill your prince, you're lying, now hand him over, and now that we know you have the son of Guchlug, we'd like him too. McGlynn writes, "...it's hard to know what to make of all this. To kill an envoy or hostage was acknowledged among the Mongols as a heinous crime. At one level, the entire story sounds like black propaganda by the Tangut. But it may be that Genghis, determined to destroy Shisha and give the Tanguts no loophole for escape,

engineered it so that no pacific resolution was possible." In any event, once the dust had settled, and all the accusations, charges, demands, and counter-accusations had been flung, that objective had been reached, whether it was engineered or not. There could be no peace, and there would be no quarter. Genghis set out with his host on February of 1226. His plan was to pass southwest through the Gobi, arriving on the far side at Karakhotel,

and then turn and quickly conquer the west, effectively cutting the enemy empire in half. Once that was done, he could pivot back around to the Tangut heartland in the Ordos loop of the Yellow River, and disassemble it piece by piece. He was, as ever, aware of the possibility of an intervention by the Yellow River, and disassemble it piece by piece. He was, as ever, aware of the possibility of an intervention by the Jin, who might think to use this opportunity to bloody the Mongols' nose through an 11th hour alliance with Xisha. Therefore, he had additional units

along the northern border placed to cut off any potential Jurchen reinforcement from advancing against him. His strategy would be much as it had been in both northern China, and more recently in Khwarizm, devastate the farmlands and cut the people off from their food supply. Quote, he knew that the Yellow River was Xisha's vital artery, and that within the Ordos Loop, the Tangut had created an irrigated area complete with canals of some two million acres, feeding a population of some 3 to 4 million people. If he severed that lifeline, Qianzong and Asagambu would be finished.

A cold start to a campaign was usually taken as a fortuitous sign for Mongol war parties, but this was a particularly brutal winter. To prevent their horses from freezing outright, the warriors were forced to wrap them in felt blankets as they rode, while the riders doubled up their already thick deals with undercoats of sheep fleece and wolf fur cloaks. The air was sharp and clear, with tiny ice crystals sparkling in the winter sun like diamonds floating on the wind. The bellowing oxen pulling their carts,

the grunting camels in the caravan, and the snorting and panting of so many horses created a fog around them like a protective cloud as the massive army moved forward. Along the Ongi River, the only river that flows into the Gobi, Genghis paused and declared that they would have a hunt for a type of wild ass known as a hulan, to keep his men's bellies full for the coming campaign. It would prove to be the last hunt of his life. Quote, He set out after the hulan, riding a reddish-gray horse. As he raced forward toward his prey, his horse became frightened by the stampeding hulan

and unexpectedly bucked and bolted, throwing him to the ground and leaving him severely wounded and in great pain. In spite of likely severe internal injuries, from which he would never truly recover, Genghis brushed aside his wife Yesui's frantic pleas that the campaign be delayed and him given time to heal and recover his strength. The man had already seen the Great Khan pitched from his horse on the eve of a great campaign, an omen no one could interpret as anything but ill, and to further delay it on that account would only dishearten them further.

Better that they see him, and that he was intact and ready to ride, even if, in truth, he wasn't. They set out once more, Hamajin once again concealing his inner pain with an impenetrable iron hide. Better to die in battle, hounding his enemies as the very emissary of Tartarus itself. Better to ride them down, screaming in terror, and lead his men to bloody, glorious victory

unto the very end, than to turn back now in ignominy, to live out his remaining days a broken, sickled man on his deathbed, defeated at last by the enemy he'd struggled against his entire life, time itself, bitterly wondering what might have been. After several weeks' ride through the monotony of the pale yellows and ochres, the dust storms, and the deep red sunsets and dawns, punctuated intermittently by the odd nomadic caravan or herd of antelope or wild horses. His army arrived at Karakoto in March,

which yielded easily to his might. The next targets were the cities of Suzhou, which is modern Jiuquan, and Ganzhou, both of which Gengx expected his heavy artillery and siegeworks to make quick work of. Frustratingly, however, both held on for surprisingly long against the onslaught, Suzhou for five weeks, and Ganjo for an entire five months. It was likely, as much out of this unexpected delay and frustration of his plans as any real strategy, that once both cities had fallen, virtually their entire populations were then put to the sword. By now, though, it was the height of summer, and Genghis decided to retreat and wait out the deadly heat in the Qingling Mountains. But he was not happy about it.

Genghis, ever the stepparator, even after two decades as Great Khan, had no real head or patience for protracted sieges. He wanted victory, and he wanted it quick. Thus he issued a decree as quintessentially Mongol as it was horrifying in its draconian totality. From here on out, any resistance whatsoever would be answered with total extermination. Quote, The Tangut campaign soon turned into the nastiest, most vicious quasi-genocidal campaign yet waged by the Mongols. End quote. His army ceased control of Ganzhou in the Gansu Corridor, long-time trade stop of the Silk Road,

one of the sites of many battles between the armies of the Han Dynasty and the Mongols' ancient predecessors, the Xiongnu, and it would later become one of the lengthy stops on Marco Polo's own journey across Asia to meet with Genghis's grandson. The Khan dispatched Subutai to the south to make war on those amongst the scattered desert oases and along the Chilean mountains, who would ally themselves with the Tanguts even now, while Genghis himself moved north, some 300 miles to Urakhai, north of the Yellow River. The ever-efficient Subutai would report back in short order that, apart from a couple of strategically unimportant holdouts, all resistance in the south and west had been crushed, rendering the Mongol Empire the masters of the Gansu Corridor, the gateway in and out of China.

The Tanguts seemed to have no answer for the Mongols, and it gradually became clear that they had seriously exhausted their strength in their long wars against the Jin. By September 1226, Genghis had rested and recovered enough that, now that the summer heat had abated, he was ready to personally take charge once again. Now he struck east along the Nanshan Range, dividing Gansu from Qinghai, and marking the beginnings of the Tibetan highlands. His army ventured through the Alashan Desert, passing sand dunes up to 900 feet in height and marveling at the fauna that could survive in such an arid land, especially as temperatures fluctuated wildly, both between seasons and from daytime to nighttime. feet in height and marveling at the fauna that could survive in such an arid land, especially

as temperatures fluctuated wildly, both between seasons and from daytime to nighttime. Ground bear, snow leopards, wolves, wild asses, antelope, and ibex were all reported by scouts." When word arrived that the second greatest city of the Tangut kingdom, Liangzhou, modern Wuwei city, had surrendered without a fight for fear of the Tangut kingdom, Liangzhou, modern Wuwei city, had surrendered without a fight for fear of the Khan's resistance-equalling extermination edict, he was truly in high spirits. They ventured onward. A time-tested tactic of steppe hunters was to methodically surround their herd of quarry,

driving them this way and that, but inexorably encircling them. The Mongols had, like so much else, adapted this hunting tactic to warfare, which is what else but the hunt for men. This had proved brutally effective time and again against the Jin, Karakitan, Khwarizmia, Georgia, Russia, and now so too did it against the Tanguts. The northern Oros was his, and as he approached the Yellow River from the west, the noose began to close around Xisha. By mid-December, he had encamped in the fortress city of Lingzhou, a mere 20 miles from the capital itself, Yinchuan. Yet as he prepared for this final push,

word reached Genghis that the Xia Emperor, Xianzong, had died, and his nephew, Li Xian, had assumed the throne. This new emperor, who later Chinese chroniclers would give the tellingly typical posthumous title of Mo Di, or the Last Emperor, was a far younger and more energetic ruler than his uncle, and managed to assemble a formidable army with which

to stave off the Mongols. Traditional accountings swell his numbers beyond any belief, to as many as half a million defenders, but in any event it was a sizable force that heavily outnumbered the Mongols' own 70,000 or so. Not that being heavily outnumbered had ever really stopped Genghis before. It would be the Great Khan's final battle, and by many accounts, the greatest victory in all of his 62 years. In the depths of winter, Lishan advanced his army down the western banks of the Yellow River, likely attempting to cut off the Mongol lines of communication. Because the floodplain of the Yellow River had frozen over,

with the overspill of the river as ice displaced the flowing liquid underneath, the whole area had turned into what was effectively a vast frozen lake. Ever one to use frozen waterways to their full advantage, Genghis had his army advance across the treacherous frozen ground, reportedly losing significant numbers of his men in the process, apparently from them disappearing through weak points in the ice into the depths below. In spite of this, he was able to catch his foe completely by surprise and crush them resoundingly. Quote, So decisive was the victory that Genghis decided to leave the final stage, the siege of the Tangut capital, to his subordinates.

End quote. This leaving of the battlefield was ostensibly to pursue further operations against the Jin. In truth, however, it's far likelier that Genghis Khan was too weak to carry on much further. Weatherford writes, quote, During most of the campaign, Yasui Khatun ran the Mongol court and kept Genghis Khan's suffering and deteriorating condition hidden. He remained in her gur, protected from public view, end quote. As winter lessened its grip, the Shah capital was again put to siege, during the course of which End quote. and for them to tire, and then mercilessly slaughtered them as they descended back down, killing most of them as they returned in flight back to the capital, although the emperor survived.

It was a devastating, indeed mortal, blow to Tangut hopes. Nevertheless, Mo remained defiant, rejecting all calls to surrender made by the Mongol force arrayed outside his walls. As time crept on, however, the siege's toll on both his men and his mind continued to mount, and the Shah Emperor grew ever more despondent. His breaking point would finally come, poetically enough, when the earth itself seemed to turn against him and his continued reign. A large earthquake convulsed the capital, followed by a plague throughout the populace. And though you may not have known it, the pestilence actually also gripped the Mongol forces outside. By the end of July, as food supplies dwindled, Mordy of Shah had had enough.

At last, he agreed to surrender, on the condition that he be given a month's leave to assemble a suitable array of gifts for his new lord and master, Genghis, an array that would, he hoped, assuage the Khan's rage and convince him to spare his life. In a quote-unquote pathetic message to the Khan, Modi wrote, quote, I was afraid. Please accept me as your son, end quote. He would be given his month to assemble the gifts to array before the Kayan, but not for the reason that he thought. Genghis Khan, you see, was dying. And he knew it. As such, he took this opportunity to call together his family and his advisors,

to lay out his last will and testament, and to put the affairs of his empire, once and for all, in order. Once they'd all arrived, Queen Yesui addressed them first, letting them know that the Great Khan was weak and with fever. When they all understood what they would be looking at, they entered Hargur and beheld their Great Khan in all his frailty. The generals and commanders were the first to speak up, insisting that the campaign against Shah be temporarily suspended as a mark of respect and honor for the Khan and his suffering.

At this, however, Genghis rose from his bed, drawing himself up and vehemently forbidding any such action. To let up now would be to allow the Tanguts to draw yet another breath and still have hope in their hearts, and he would not have it. Once this was well understood, he formally confirmed the former family Kurultai's decision that it would be Ogedei who would succeed him as Great Khan, as well as the agreed-upon Ulus system by which the Mongol nation would be subdivided amongst the families of his four sons. Each of these four lineages would receive some 4,000 families as their personal followers, a number Genghis had

calculated would be too few for any one of them to set themselves up as an independent power. He further decreed that, as per Ogedei's earlier fears that his own offspring might prove unworthy to inherit the Great Hat in the future, then all future Kions must likewise be elected by the four branches of his family via Keraltai. Then, turning sadly to his three remaining sons and his grandsons who were in attendance, he remarked, quote, Life is so fleeting. I hadn't enough time to conquer the world, and so it falls to you now to complete my work. The meeting turned then to religious affairs. He wanted a permanent capital for his empire,

yes, but not at Alarga, not under the holy shadow of Burhan Haldun. His was now not just a Mongol empire, but an empire of the entire world and all of its people. Thus, so too must be its capital. Karakorum, as it would be called, must therefore be constructed at the foot of Mount Otagenish, near the Orkhon Valley, underlining its status as the center of the world, and its Khan the rightful ruler of all. On that subject, he wanted to rescind his earlier total extermination order against the Tangut population, since as devout Buddhists, such a genocide might give the impression that he was somehow anti-Buddhist,

and he wanted everyone to know that all religions were welcome in his very tolerant nation. Instead, the extermination should be limited only to the royal family of Sha itself, the elite class, and to all military personnel. You know, the minimum. Then Genghis laid out exactly how he wanted the Tangut Emperor's execution to go down. For one thing, don't let him know it's coming. Keep him in the dark about it. Another thing, before you kill him, make sure that you give him a new title, because his current one, I don't like it. In fact, I have just the one. A month or so later, when Emperor Moa had formally surrendered himself and his capital to the Mongol army, the population was largely

slaughtered, and Asagambu was singled out for immediate execution. The emperor, however, was brought before the Khan's Gur with his family, as had been promised. Yet instead of being allowed entry to present his wealth of accumulated treasures and religious symbols, texts, and icons, he was forbidden and ordered to remain outside. The royal tent's entrance had been covered with a black, grilled veil, through which he was ordered to speak. In truth, Genghis had already died, but the Tangut ruler did not know this, nor did anyone else outside of his immediate family and close inner circle of advisors. Thus it was that a black farce played out, with the Shah king as its

unwitting dupe. Quote, the Tanguts were supposedly not allowed into the imperial presence, but had to stand outside the tent to speak. End quote. Genghis, or rather the interpreter speaking with the previously arranged voice and authority of the Khan, rejected the religious icons presented by Maudi, declaring that none of them had helped the Tanguts in the slightest, rejected the religious icons presented by Muad'Dib, declaring that none of them had helped the Tanguts in the slightest, nor prevented the Mongol wrath from crushing them under heel. He therefore felt, as it's put in the secret history, revulsion in his heart at the very thought of them. Moreover, Genghis declared, he decreed that the Tangut king's title, Burhan, a name shared by the holy Mongol Mountain, meaning God itself, was utterly unfit

for one such as this, who'd clearly been abandoned by heaven. Instead, let him carry a name into the next life, which would hopefully cause him to remember, since he was a Buddhist and would be reincarnated, his rightful place in the world, and that maybe next time he would do better. Let him have the name Shidergu, meaning surrender to righteousness. Thus, having at least brought the wayward profanity of the king's name back to the morally righteous path, Moti, or rather, Shidergu, would now learn of his fate. He would be bound to a spit and then hacked to pieces, and to ensure that he could not be reincarnated into a member of his own royal family to later seek revenge against the Mongols, so too would his entire royal line. Quote,

exterminate the mothers and fathers, down to the offspring of their offspring. When that was completed, the royal tombs and shrines of the royal house of Li were one and all desecrated, defiled, and torn down, that they might never rise again. And so it was carried out to grisly completion. In life, Genghis Khan had been a figure that seemed, both at the time and even eight centuries later, in every respect extraordinary, more than the time and even eight centuries later, in every respect

extraordinary, more than human, and larger than life. He had come from nothing, and through sheer force of will, achieved mastery over nigh on the entire known world. As such, it's as fitting as can be expected of human nature itself that his death could, in the telling, have been no ordinary death either. Rumors began to circulate and feed on one another almost as soon as word finally slipped out of the royal gur that the Great Khan had, as the Mongols themselves obliquely put it, ascended to heaven. Some tales have him succumbing to the typhus epidemic that gripped both the Tangut and Mongol forces around the Xia capital, though a simple chronology belies that as a possible cause, as the plague had burned itself out well before Genghis's death in August of 1227.

Others posit malaria, while shamans whispered of dark magics and witchcraft directed against the great ruler. Prior Giovanni d'Apian del Carpine would write his account of Genghis's death after visiting Mongolia itself just in time for the third great Khan, Guyuk's, Keraltai, in 1246. Carpine would write that Genghis had been killed by a bolt of lightning, apparently making an unwarranted extrapolation from the Mongols' morbid fear of that phenomenon. The surviving Tanguts would prove themselves eager to both denigrate the great Khan and claim him as one of their victims, in both cases making very entertaining and yet equally unlikely claims on his life. The first such tall tale was that Genghis had died as the result of an infection

after, yeah, get this, taking an arrow to the knee. Yes, Bethesda clearly copied their homework, Dovahkiin. The other, and even more egregious death myth propagated by the Tanguts, and the one that in many tellings even today is told and retold as fact, was that Genghis, as part of his humiliation of the Xia royal family, took the Tangut queen Kerbeljin to bed with him. She, however, had managed to place a shard of glass or a blade in her genitals, resulting in the Khan tearing himself open and bleeding to death when he consummated the rape. McLean tears this down, however, saying, quote,

Unfortunately for the myth-makers, this is a direct copy of the better-based rumor that Attila the Hun was murdered in this way, and that to cover up his shame, the Huns gave out that he had expired after an unstoppable nosebleed. In any case, the sources tell us that the Tangut Queen was executed alongside her husband, and that the two of them arrived in Genghis's camp only after he had died, end quote. A variant that seeks to account for this chronological oopsie switches up the roles of the queen with that of an unnamed but beautiful martyr for the nation. Even taking this into account, however, it remains almost certainly pure fiction. Needless to say, the physiological details for such a complicated internal procedure as to place a weapon inside a woman's genitals were lacking in the 13th century. In the end, it seems by far the most likely that Genghis Khan

died as the result of the internal injuries that he'd sustained in the course of that final hunt along the Ongi. He'd kept the pain in check and hidden from his comrades for as long as he could, but it's noted that even beyond the internal bleeding and organ damage that we would certainly expect from such an incident, severe falls can also have the delayed effects of triggering carcinoma or cancerous growth throughout the linings of the internal organs. That's probably as close as we're ever likely to get to any definitive conclusion. Even his specific date of death remains nearly as clouded in uncertainty as his date of birth. It's agreed that he died sometime in mid-to-late August, 1227, but suggested dates range everywhere from the 16th to the 28th of that month.

Surrounded in even more mystery is his place of burial. It had long been the custom that Mongols wished for the remains to be, if possible, transported back to their home steppe. Already, by the end of Genghis's life, the vast influx of wealth had shattered the previously egalitarian lifestyle of the horse nomads into a huge strata between rich and poor. The common Mongol would upon death not even be afforded the relative luxury of a grave, but instead, and perhaps taking after the Tibetan Buddhist practices that had already begun seeping deeply into Mongol society, they'd be taken out to the remote part of the steppe and simply left out for the scavengers to recycle.

Such practices would in fact remain common in Mongolia up until the 19th century. One first-hand accounting of such a practice was recorded by the English explorer Harry de Wint in his 1889 work From Peking to Calais by Land. He records, quote, It would be impossible to imagine a more horrible spectacle than met our eyes on arriving at Golgotha. Calais by land. He records, quote, to the disfigured, shapeless masses of flesh that had been living beings but a few days or hours ago. The moon shed a pale, unearthly light over the grinning skulls and grey, upturned faces of the dead, some of whom lay stark and stiff, just as they had been left by their friends, others with their blue shrouds ragged and torn, with disfigured faces and twisted limbs lying in horribly grotesque positions in which the dogs or wolves

had dragged them. The Mongol is, at any rate, free from an evil which always more or less threatens us of superior civilization, that of being buried alive." For the wealthy, on the other hand, a far different final resting place awaited them. They would be buried, in the strictest of secrecy, and with everything that they might need for life beyond the veil, on the ship of death that was commonly believed to ferry them into the next world. Sometimes a form of deception was practiced, in which family members would hold an elaborate mock funeral, pretending to openly bury the dead, but secreting the body out to a remote and hidden site instead. Here, the body would be placed in a subterranean gir, surrounded

with dried meat and eye-rog. Likewise would be placed the bodies of a foal, a mare, and a colt with bridle and saddle, along with a fully stocked quiver and bow. The dead would receive gold and silver for their journey as well. After the burial, participants would slaughter and consume a horse, then stuff its skin with hay and erect it in effigy on a wooden scaffold. Other times, an entire horse might be simply impaled over the gravesite. Perhaps most gruesomely, for wealthy men, frequently their favorite slave would be placed in the open grave with the corpse of his master for three days. If he survived, he'd be brought out, immediately declared a free man, and then be forever after treated as an honored guest of his family. Still, that is one heck of a three days. And if they didn't survive, well, then he stayed in the grave. Following these ceremonies and

procedures, the grave was interred, covered over with dirt, and then herds of horses stampeded over the ground time and again until no vestige of the grave's location remained. That was for a typical Mongol noble. For Genghis himself, however, even that would pale in comparison. Certain historians, such as Rashid al-Din, would make the claim that Genghis had specifically instructed his followers to bury him near Mount Liopan, near where he died in modern Ningxia, China, after taking a fancy to a particular vantage point amidst a lone tree on the mountain

slopes in the waning days of his life. Al-Din states that Genghis' followers, however, posthumously ignored this order and wished to take him all the way back to Mongolia proper, to the holy slopes of Burkhan Haldun. But it was August, and the Mongols had little or no knowledge of embalming practices, so you can imagine where that would have quickly gone. As the great Khan's earthly remains deteriorated in the excoriating summer heat, a decision was made by the men who sought to return him home that here would have to do. Where was here? We do not, and never will, truly know.

Though it's likely that it's somewhere in the Ordos region. Nevertheless, in typical fashion for Mongol nobility, there were multiple accountings and almost certainly false burial sites that have been maintained even across the centuries. Probably the most famous site today is the Mongolian Khankenti Strictly Protected Area, known in Mongolian as Ilk Korik, or the Great Taboo, a region of some 240 square kilometers surrounding Berkhan Khaldun. Another possible site is Ejin Horo Banner, which is a district in Oros City in modern Inner Mongolia. Therein sits the mausoleum of Genghis Khan, or the so-called Eight White Gurs,

after those supposedly constructed by Ogedei's decree for his departed father. The supposed resting place of Genghis Khan's soul was in his sulda, his horsehair spirit banner, that flew outside the entrance to his gur wherever he went. In his life, he had two of them made, a white one for times of peace, and, surely embodying the majority of his spirit, a black one for times of war. It's perhaps befitting, then, that the white banner was lost to the ages very early on, while the black banner endured. For more than seven centuries, it was guarded over by Genghis's descendants,

eventually being housed in a purpose-built shrine in the 16th century by one of his descendants, the Mongol-Tibetan Buddhist Lama Zanazabar. There his soul resided until the 1930s, when it, as well as any other religious or subversive cultural artifacts that they could find, were rounded up and destroyed by the Tertullian governments that gripped so much of the world and feared any challenge to their regime, even, it seems, an 800-year-old world conqueror. Wherever it was that he was buried, the stories tell us that the 50 men tasked with the funerary rites were then themselves led off to another location,

and then themselves executed by a group of different assassins, only for yet a third group to murder them in turn, in order to ensure that the Great Khan's true location would never be revealed by any living man. It's tempting to dismiss it as an exaggeration and a dark fantasy, but later practices by Genghis's descendants would bear it out, though whether that would be truly emulating Genghis's own funeral or simply the story of it, we'll never know. Even this, however, would not mark the end to the bloodletting on Genghis's behalf. For upon Ogedei's formal

accession to Khayan, some two years later in 1229, he would mark the occasion by having 40 virgin girls taken as captives, led to Genghis's supposed burial site on Berkan Kalyan, and sacrificed to his father. Thus it would be that Tamajin departed the world much as he'd entered it. A whirlwind, a tempest, of mystery, mysticism, destruction, death. The nickering of horses, the grunts of the oxen amidst, as ever, the silenced screams of the uncountable dead.

The eternal backdrop of the blue sky above, the smoke from the Gur fires wafting black and gray, and the ochre steps underfoot. As ever, Okan, spattered with human blood. Thanks for listening. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your

podcasts.