The History of China - #285 - Mongol 11: The Khan Is Dead; Long Live The Khan! (Ögedei Full)

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Genghis Khan is dead, and his 3rd son Ögedei has ben selected to lead the Mongol Empire into an uncertain future. Once he is confirmed on the throne, he'll strike on in every direction against every foe at once. On the way, there will be virgin sacrifices, talking wolves, free money, mass enslavement, Persian princes, Assassins, poison, angry water spirits, battle-mages, cannibalism... and that's just the tip of the iceberg! Time Period Covered: 1227-1234 CE Major Historical Figures: Ogedeids: Ogedei Khaghan Subotai the Valiant General Chormakhan General  Dokholkhu Cherbi   Minister Yelu Chu Cai Toluids: Tolui Khan Sorkhakhtani Beki Khatun Chagatids: Chagatai Khan Khwarazmia: Jalal al-Din Kingdom of Georgia: Queen Rusudan Jin Dynasty: Emperor Aizong General Wanyan Yi General Cui Li Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast, available on all podcasting platforms, or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Mongol XI. Ogedei cometh. In the year of the rat, Chagatai, Batu, and the other princes of the right hand, Ochagi Noyan, Yugu, Yusunge, and the other princes of the right hand, Ochiginoyan, Yugu, Yisungay, and the other princes of the left hand, and Tolui and the other princes of the center, together with the princesses,

the sons-in-law, and the commanders of the 10,000 households, assembled in their entirety at Kodeu Arau on the Karaloon River. In accordance with the decree in which Genghis Kayan had named him, they raised up Ogei as Great Khan. From the Secret History of the Mongols, as translated by Ergonga Bonon. Genghis Khan, the mighty Temujin, Great Khan of the Steppe, uniter of the Mongols, conqueror of the earth entire, the punishment and the scourge of God himself, was dead. He had been, in the language of the ever death-averse Mongolian writers and storytellers, carried off to heaven, as though he himself had ascended to godhood in the Chinese year of the Water Snake, or mid-August of 1227,

while on what would be his last campaign against the Tangut rebels of the Western Xia regime. And really, who can say that he had not ascended, in fact? For surely his name and his legacy endured, and still endure, far beyond the limitations of his mortal coil. His name still lingers on our lips today, and can still invoke the passions and light the heart fires and night terrors of many. As he had approached the end that he knew in his increasingly aching and weary bones was inevitably coming, Genghis had ruminated on the world that he would never live to see. The world that he had, through fire, blood, and steel, forged from his youth of hunger and poverty. A future in which his own family and people might no longer live as wild dogs on the edge

of civilization, but as the all-powerful kings at its very nexus. And he had succeeded so wildly and completely that by the end of his life, even he seemed scarcely capable of truly understanding the change that he had wrought on the fundaments of the world. Were we to erase the strictures of our inherited calendar system and build one anew, seeking to divide time once again into a distinct before and after, we might well do better than to choose a son of a Palestinian carpenter, and we could certainly do worse than to choose the lifespan of Genghis Khan as the changeover point. For whereas teachings of Jesus of Nazareth would take centuries to percolate and fulminate across the limited geography of the Roman Empire, and ultimately

across the whole of Europe, it's only in distant retrospect that we can look back and see a distinct pre- and post-era by which we might define that time. Not so with Temujin of the Borjin. The world that he was born into was so radically different from the one that he left behind, that the latter is scarcely recognizable as having even come from the former. Change is wrought largely by his own hand. There was a distinct period of human history that is before Genghis, and a distinct period that is after Genghis. And so today, we enter the AG era.

Toward the end of his life, Genghis had realized the predicament that his empire would likely find itself in upon his passing. He had four primary sons, each of whom held a strong potential claim to succeed him as Great Khan, and none of whom the Great Khan himself thought particularly well-suited to the task. His eldest son, Jochi, though intelligent and a decent commander, was moody, unpredictable, with a rebellious streak, and over his whole life had a dark cloud of questionable parentage hanging over his head. His second son, Chagatai, was stubborn, stupid, bullheaded, and guided more by his fists and his

cock than his head or his heart. Moreover, Jochi and Chagatai hated one another, there was no two ways around it, to the point that Genghis long ago understood that should either be chosen to rule, the other would surely rebel. One possible choice particular to Mongolian culture, and dear to Genghis's own heart, was his ojgin, Tolui, his youngest son. Tolui was most like his father in virtually every respect, a prodigious battlefield commander, well-respected by his peers, and even Genghis's own generations of generals and warriors. Tolui was said to be the bearer of near-supernatural good fortune, and even a degree of mystical precognition. Yet in his twilight years, Genghis had come to understand that Tolui, like himself,

was a perfect choice of a Khan meant to burn down an old world order and conquer a new one. Yet his bone-deep streak of vengefulness, his brutal tactics, and harsh measures would win him no love as a ruler. He, like Genghis, had been made to conquer, but not to rule. In the end, then, it would be his third son, Ogaday, that Genghis, and by virtue of their mutual private assent, his sons, found most acceptable as his successor when the time came. Ogaday was, in many regards, everything that his brothers were not. Affable, even jovial, and generous certainly far past the point of wastefulness. He had an undoubtedly sharp mind,

though perhaps calling him intelligent might not be as accurate as calling him wise. He had a natural bent toward diplomacy, and in working things out in a mutually agreeable, peaceful fashion rather than employing brute force, at least until you pushed him. At least that is, when he was sober. Because if Ogedei could be said to have only one vice, it would certainly be his lifelong love of strong drink. And when he was in his cups, his darker, more murderous side could, and often did, emerge in full fury. He was certainly no perfect choice,

and even said as much when his father and brothers agreed to elevate him as their heir. Yet he was the only choice. It was Ogedei or fracture and civil war. It was Ogedei or watch Genghis's life work disintegrate around them. And so, Ogedei it would be. Or at least, that had been what the brothers had agreed to while their father yet lived. With their lord father now dead, or ascended, however, the answer to the question of succession had become something a bit more fungible. This is because, in spite of them all having worked it out in advance amongst themselves, according to the ancient traditions of the steppe and of Genghis's own Yasa Codex of Law,

formal succession of a great Khan could only happen with the convocation and ascent of a Kurilthai, a great congress of the chieftains and headsmen of the whole empire, to affirm and swear their continued support for and loyalty to the new emperor of all. Such a gathering, of course, took time. Messages would need to be sent, preparations made, replies made, gifts procured, and ambassadorial missions laboriously assembled and made ready for the arduous journey, to a place called Kodeu Aral, in the banks of the Kharalun River in Mongolia, where the curl tide, by law, must take place.

It was possible for a Mongol-era messenger to make such a journey in the span of perhaps a week, but a royal caravan traveling from the furthest reaches of the empire could expect a journey of many months. Thus it was that for some two years following Genghis Khan's departure, the empire sat without an effective head of state, and though the natural slowness of messages and travel at the time account for some of that, the blame for the majority of that unconscionable amount of time between death and succession falls squarely on the foot-dragging and bickering amongst the three surviving sons of the departed Khan. In the interim, it fell by custom and law to the hearth-keeper, the Ochkin, Tolui, to act as the regent of state affairs, and surely there were no objections to such an outcome.

Whereas Genghis himself had come to understand the wisdom of a change in style of governance, from the back of a horse to the seat of a throne, most of his men did not have such vision. In the eyes of the Mongol nation, great and small alike, worth was proved and maintained through might, and none could doubt the reputation or ferocity of Tolui as a great warrior, almost a mirror image of his lord-father. Who better, therefore, to lead them onward? Compared to them, how could Ogedei, convivial, overweight, drunkard Ogedei, hold a candle? From MacLynn, quote,

To the conflicting claims of primogeniture, ultimogeniture, the traditional Mongol way, and lateral succession to one of Genghis's own surviving brothers, the choice of the Great Khan himself became an additional element in the turgid political broth of the Mongol nation that it would have to sup at its next kurultai to choose the new emperor. In theory, the kurultai was an assembly that merely ratified by public acclamation choices that had already been hammered out in the 13th century's equivalent of smoke-filled rooms, but it seems that the succession issue was fought all the way to the Great Assembly of 1229." Such an extended period of power vacuum was damaging to the Mongol Empire, both internally and externally. On the major warfronts of the period, the mop-up job against the Jin Dynasty of northern China was effectively put on pause,

allowing the beaten and bloodied Jurchen to capitalize on the inexplicable disappearance of their conquerors beyond the Gobi, and recover at least some of their holdings across the Henan and Hebei regions. The extended shutdown of the Khanate would not ultimately spare the jinn from final destruction, but it did drag it out unnecessarily. Internally as well, there would be widespread and lasting ramifications to a lingering question of just who was in charge now? It seems as though Tolui might have been lobbying hard to overturn his father's commandment of Ogaday's accession. Yet for that, that outcome also seems impossible, or at the very least, highly unlikely. Of the four sons of Genghis, only really Ogaday and Tolui shared anything close to what we'd call a brotherly affection. And for them, it seems to have gone even well beyond that, to a degree in which even Giovanni would later describe

as, quote, beyond the degree of brotherhood, end quote. Tolui had sworn to obey and protect the life of Ogedei to his father unto the very end, a promise that he'd given undemanded and unprompted. Here, MacLynn posits that it might have been the nobles themselves who wished for the accession of Tolui over Ogedei, and it may have taken considerable persuasion to turn them to the paramount will of Genghis. Another possibility lays in Genghis's close advisor and personal court astrologer, Ye Lu Chuzhai, who is said to have, quote, argued persuasively for a Chinese model of hierarchy, a Khan of Khans at the top, princes of the Blood as second, a wider imperial family third, and a host of courtiers and nobles beneath it, end quote. This is typically dismissed, however,

as myth or hearsay, since it dramatically overstates the level of influence one such as Yebu could have had, or even would have had the legal ability to speak out as such. The explanation that seems closest to the truth is the one put forward by Thomas Alson. He states that Tolui did indeed put forward a competing claim to the throne, but with no actual expectation of winning, nor any hard backing to press it. Instead, it was done only to reaffirm the commitment already given by Ogedei himself at the private conclave that they'd hammered out with their father years prior, that Ogedei would receive the top job, as would his sons, but that Tolui and his family line were the designated backup should the line

of Ogedei ever fail. What is clear is that, whatever the player's internal motivations, this first succession of the Mongol Empire would proceed peacefully and without any major breach in the agreement of etiquette. The notables would assemble and convene in the autumn of 1229. Once they'd all gathered along the great rolling fields, among the tents and banners waving under the blue sky above, the ceremony began. The assembled nobles one and all offered the throne to Ogedei, who in equally ceremonial fashion declined it multiple times, citing that his other brothers had the same rights as he, and especially Tolui was a better choice than he, before he was at last persuaded to accept the will of his people.

He thereby assumed the old Turkic title Kayan, or Emperor, as a means of distinguishing himself from his brothers, who now bore the lesser title of Khan. To demonstrate the acceptance of his elevation, Ogedei was lifted onto the throne by his chief potential rivals for the crown, his brothers Tolui and Chagatai, and his uncle Tamug Ochigin. Then, in the words of the Secret History, the guards and the quiver-bearers were, quote, delivered unto Ogedei Kayan. That is, the reins of government were placed into his hands. End quote. Tolui then held up a cup and toasted the new emperor. May the realm be blessed by his being Khan!

The enthronement ceremonies at an end, a large celebratory feast was held over the course of three days, at which the new Kayan dispensed gifts and thanks to the assembled notables. It was during this period that events took a dark turn indeed. Jiveni writes that in order to appease and honor the spirit of his father, Ogedei ordered that, in accordance with the ancient yasa and their usage and custom, they should provide vittles for the soul of Genghis Khan, and should choose forty beautiful girls of the race and seed of the emirs that had been in attendance on him, and having them decked out in precious garments And if that skated right by you, what that means is that they took 40 Persian girls and horses up to Genghis Khan's burial site,

and then sacrificed them all to give to his spirit. With that gruesome business attended to and the grand celebration coming to a close, Ogedei went about enacting his own first addition to the Yasa Codex. In accordance with his father's wishes, he granted a blanket amnesty for all crimes and misdemeanors that had been committed during the two-year interregnum before his own enthronement, but made it clear that the free pass was now over, and he intended to drop the hammer and dispense some indiscriminate justice on any and all corrupt administrators, embezzling governors, and anyone else trying to worm their way out of paying their full share to the imperial economy.

Crucially, MacLynn writes, quote, he confirmed that the system of appanages and the division of the empire into spheres of influence, the sensitive balance of power between his sons that Genghis had aimed at, end quote. Ogedei and his family would retain their direct rule over the far north and west, the Targatani Ranges, the Karya-Ityar Valley, and stretching all the way westward from the Altai Mountains to the shore of the crystal clear and infinitely deep Lake Baikal. His favored younger brother was confirmed as the lord of the homeland, Mongolia itself, as the inheritor of the bulk of his father's military forces and resources.

Chagatai would retain his sole governance over the richest section of the empire, the territories of the former Kara-Ketan and Trans-Oxiana, though crucially neither Samarkand nor Burkara city were part of his domains, as they and their vast trading wealth had remained a part of the central imperial chancellery and were now thus under Ogedei's direct oversight. Finally, the family of the dearly departed Jochi retained all of their rights to the lands between the Urals and the Irtish, including the dead and dismembered corpse of the former Khwarizmian Empire. Upon Jyoti's own untimely death, that realm, what would in time come to be known as the Ilkhanate, had been further subdivided between his three sons. The eldest,

Orda, received Sirdaria. The second son, Batu, the land from the north coast of the Caspian, as far as the Ural River, as well as a proviso that it would include all of the lands west of the Caspian as far as the hooves of Mongol horses could reach, and finally to the youngest, Shiban, the upper reaches of the Urals into the Irgiz rivers. Age 43 at the time of his coronation, Ogade is described, rightly, as a massive man, both physically and in terms of personality. This is at times a positive descriptor, and at others positively vile, mostly contingent, all sources agree, on how much he'd had to drink that day. We get an almost Jekyll and Hyde type of duality in this second con.

MacLynn puts it, quote, Ogedei in person was a mixture of the wholly admirable and the despicable. Intelligent, shrewd, conscientious, tolerant, open-minded, usually calm, When roused into such an ire, he could become the very embodiment of the ancient stereotype of the Oriental Desvet, with the historian Juzjani, for instance, calling him a, quote, butcher and a tyrant, end quote. Though it must be noted that Juzjani held a personal hatred for Ogedei that bordered on the maniacal, so maybe we should take what he has to say with a grain of salt. Still, other accounts bear this vision of fickle brutality out.

As we already discussed, he positively insisted on, even during his coronation, the ritual slaughter of 40 young, beautiful girls for his father, in spite of the fact that the whole of the empire had already been in full mourning for more than two years by that point. He could decide to kill out of sheer jealousy or perceived slight, even one years or even decades in the past, as when he recalled a fellow Mongol, Belkohu, of his having been,

as he saw it, elevated above him by Genghis in his affections. Yet by far his worst atrocity, and for which he is rightly most infamous and reviled, would occur in 1237, when the Oirad tribe had entered into rebellion against his rule. They had not done so through force of arms, but in trying to subvert his bizarre ruling that all young and beautiful women of the empire were to be married to husbands of his own choosing. The Oirads had therefore tried to loophole their way out of this bizarre and cruel ruling by immediately marrying all of their young girls and unmarried women to members of their own tribe. It was for their own protection that they wouldn't be simply carted away, never to be seen again. When word reached him of this flouting of his imperial will, though, Ogedei

was well and truly furious. He ordered the entirety of the Oirads captured and rounded up, and then that all of their young women, save for those who could prove that they'd been married far before his ruling had been pronounced, were to-raped by his soldiers in front of their families. Any men who tried to resist or stop this brutality were slaughtered on the spot. Some of the girls, especially the younger or very much older ones, did not survive the pitiless attack on their bodies. But even then, it was not over. After this horror show was finished, Ogedei ordered that the survivors be divided into three groups. The most beautiful were to be hauled off and kept for his own private imperial harem. Those ranked as average-looking would be sent to the diplomatic houses across

the empire to service foreign emissaries and dignitaries. Finally, the homeliest of women of the tribe were to be given over to the lowlifes of the Mongol Empire, the imperial servants, falconers, and animal keepers, making special mention of the leopard and cheetah keepers in the secret history for some reason. That was Ogedei at his worst. But if you can't handle Ogedei at his worst, then you don't deserve him at his best. On his good days, he was sentimental and generous to a fault. It would be hard to envision a better friend or more open-handed gift giver than the great Khan. When an elderly man asked for a loan to start a business, the Khan would give the money

freely without any precondition or collateral demanded. And when his financers yanked their beard hairs out and asked, sire, but why? Ogedei would simply shrug and reply that the old-timer didn't have long to live anyways, so what was it with all the fuss? When someone else came begging, and his advisors pointed out that the guy was already massively in debt and was making no moves to pay it off, Lacan simply shrugged, paid off his original debts, and then lent him the additional money he'd asked for. He was a less-than-forthright merchant's dream come true. Show him something. Anything. Get him remotely interested in it, and no matter what

outrageous cost you might ask of him, he'd probably just shrug and agree to pay for it. If he was walking down the street and saw the city's worst craftsman, who just no one would buy from, he'd often feel sorry for the guy and just buy out his entire stock. When he learned that his money men had tried to delay or at least reconfirm some of the many debt reliefs or payments that he'd promised, since they thought that he might have been insensibly drunk, which was a fair assessment, to be sure, and that he might not have meant it, he threatened to execute the lot of them because I am the Khan, dammit.

Do as I say, even if I have to slur it. Enemy country? Well, maybe they just need money. Let's give them a bunch and then maybe they won't want to be our enemy anymore, and we'll be our friends. The guy just did not care about money, to the point where his officials were at least figuratively, and quite possibly literally, tearing their own hair out as he time and again threatened to somehow drain

the bottomless Scrooge McDuck-style pool of treasure his imperial treasury had amassed. In fact, when he was informed of the expenses involved in just making sure that the imperial treasury was kept sufficiently well-guarded, this information actually got him irritated. Why in the world are we spending money to guard our money? He ordered the treasury guard staff removed and issued a decree that, hey guys, if you just need some money, I mean, there it is, go get what you need, it's fine. If you're inclined to believe Juvaini, and generally I am, those are all actual incidents that actually happened.

If this isn't all silly or foolish enough for you yet, it extended well beyond straight money matters. A famous tale is of the Khan presiding over the case of a rogue wolf that, after a long stint of terrorizing and stealing Mongol sheep, had at last been captured. Brought before the great Khan prior to its execution, the criminal wolf was unexpectedly pardoned by the beneficent Ogedei, on the sole condition that he instructed the animal, and it, go on to relate to all the other wolves, that they must move themselves away from this place into another area, and to be good little doggos from here on out. After a long moment, he stated that the wolf had agreed to the deal, and it should be forthwith

taken out of the city and released. His officials, no doubt utterly baffled by this doctor-do-little farce unfolding before them, took the wolf out, let it go, and then immediately set the imperial hunting dogs on it, ripping it to shreds. When the great Khan found out about this trickery, he was, of course, enraged, and had all of the offending hunting dogs executed at once for treason. There are dozens of such stories of the great Khan Ogedei's munificence, both heartfelt and farcical. Yet for each of these, there's always that edge of blood, rape, and slaughter hiding beneath the laughter and praise. Ogedei was perhaps the most gentle and good-natured of the Borjgin men, but I'm still not sure whether that

makes him any less of a monster for it. Perhaps just one wearing Khan makeup and asking if you want a balloon that floats. Regardless, Ogedei was certainly an inspired choice by Genghis to be his successor in at least one respect, that he understood, like his father, that for the Mongol Empire to survive and thrive, it would have to grow, and grow endlessly. Conquest empires are an inherently unstable enterprise. They're begun by a unified vision and sense of self, but also through a desire for more. The pillage of the exterior is what feeds the engine that drives success and wealth untold,

and demands always more. Ogedei Khan began his reign with a burst of activity that the Khanate had been, well, waiting for, literally for years now. Again, all major operations and decisions had been put pretty much on hold until the Kuril Tai had been officially completed, which is to say, there was a lot to get done. Now, Genghis had, across almost his entire life,

ascribed to the philosophy of the great Ron Swanson, never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing. He'd spent a lifetime methodically moving from one campaign of utter destruction and terror to the next in turn. First Mongolia, then Xisha, then Jin China, then Karakhetan, then Khwarezmia, and perfectly willing to add a traitorous Xisha kingdom back onto his to-do list for appropriate attention when he got around to it, but unwilling to divide his attention across multiple targets. Destroy one kingdom, destroy it well, and then move on. Ogedei was, as with so many other things, rather unlike his father in this regard.

This isn't to say that the second Great Khan had any intention of half-assing a bunch of projects. Instead, he resolved to whole-ass every single project almost all at once. This was not, in spite of what it sounds like, a crazy or critically unwise decision or assessment of his or his empire's capabilities. Ogedei had, after all, spent his life in the saddle as a commander of the Mongol armies on campaign, and knew very well of their efficacy and abilities against their myriad foes. Moreover, he knew that he had come into possession not of the little ragtag group of nomadic herdsmen wearing voleskin robes and had been laughed at by their enemies because their

horses were too skinny and their saddles didn't fit. That had been the army of Genghis. No, the Mongol Empire Ogedei now helmed was the richest kingdom in the world, or near enough, and militarily second to none. They could afford to launch operations across multiple theaters of war, and it would be arguably irresponsible not to, given the insatiable hunger of the empire's population for more plunder and further conquests. The first significant project Ogedei would undertake as the new Great Khan, as with most successors, would in fact be a holdover from his father's time, something the old man

had meant to but never quite gotten around to finishing. Well, that wouldn't be entirely fair to Genghis, since he had delegated it years back to his eldest son, Jochi. It had been Jochi who'd pouted and delayed, and shuffled his feet right up until he'd dropped dead with the task still undone. Genghis himself, of course, had had bigger and closer fish to fry, and so now it fell to Ogedei to carry on the task his father had left off. The campaign would be into the heart of Western Asia, in the region around the Russian principalities, and directed against the free tribes that yet roamed the Kipchak steppes in defiance of the great nation's rule. That was about to come to an end.

In 1229, Ogedei Khan dispatched three fully staffed and battle-ready tumen to the lower Volga region to clear it out and prepare for further operations between the Volga and Ural rivers in western Asia. In spite of this force of 30,000, which you may recall had been more than sufficient under the command of Jeb and Subutai to raise and pillage all the way from Azerbaijan to Volgograd and back again, as had been the case on the Great Raid, the Kipchak Turks put up an unexpectedly fearsome resistance to Mongolian incursions into their lands. This is hardly surprising. After all, they were almost one and the same in terms of fighting styles and battle tactics. The Mongols

could offer up few cavalry-based surprises against the Kipchaks, who were in just about every way equal in the ways of horse and bow. Nor could the Mongols rely on their conscripted forces from their sedentary populations, which would, I mean just ask anyone from Wu of Han to Crassus to Bonaparte to Hitler, tend to get swallowed up and ripped apart when getting involved in an infantry-based land war in Asia. It was inconceivable. Forced therefore to rely on light cavalry against other light cavalry, rather than overwhelming numbers of infantry, the campaign against the Kipchoks would require significantly more time to conclude than Ogedei had initially planned or would have liked, and it further

delayed his follow-up operations west of the Ural mountain ranges. It wouldn't be, in fact, until Ogedei dispatched his greatest weapon, the aged General Subutai the Valiant in 1235, then age 60, that the troublesome Turks would be at last brought to heel, and the great attack on the West could begin in earnest. Round about the same time as the three Tumans were dispatched against the Kipchaks, Ogedei would likewise dispatch a force to deal with yet another old enemy of his fathers, the one that had gotten away, the crown prince of Khwarazmia, Jalal al-Din, who had managed to hide out past the Hindu Kush and take refuge with the Sultan of Delhi, where even mighty Genghis and his armies could not reach. Once the major Mongol

operations across greater Persia had wrapped up, and Genghis himself had returned his full attention to the Tangut kingdom of Xia, al-Din had determined that his time to reconstitute his father's lost empire had come at last, and returned to the region of the Caspian Sea. There, he had declared himself the champion of all Islam, steadfast against the infidel barbarians on all side, be they Mongol or Christian, and poised himself against the closest and easiest target, one already heavily maimed by the passing of Jeb and Subutai's Great Raid back in 1221-1222, the kingdoms of Georgia and Armenia.

Well, in Georgia's case, it was kingdom in name, but a queendom in practice, since as we talked about the last time we discussed them, because of the death of her brother, George the Brilliant, at the Mongols' arrow tips, Georgia's sister, Rusudan, had become the queen regent, and had been spending the intervening years moving heaven and earth to reconstitute her nation and its defenses, all the while assuring the pope in distant Rome that no, no, it's fine. It's just a flesh wound. It's just a scratch. We're fine up here. Don't worry about us. It was certainly noble, but it was no winning strategy, especially with the return of a galvanizing Muslim ruler like Jalal al-Din in 1224 and 1225.

Though Rusadan and the Georgians would fight unresolutely and almost constantly from 1225 onward, time and again they were soundly and devastatingly defeated. Still, Georgia was not Jalal's only focus, and much of his concentration and energies remained focused on reconstituting his larger empire across former Khwarezmia and Azerbaijan. In this, Jalal al-Din, to quote Maclean, had a complex about the Mongols after his defeat by Genghis on the Indus, end quote. Thus, when his armies had been able to launch a counterattack against Mongol allied forces in eastern Iran in 1228, and managed to rout the army as well as capture some 400 soldiers,

it was Jalal himself who served as the headsman for the executions until he physically exhausted himself. He went on to trumpet his victory all over Asia, of his triumph against the supposedly invincible Mongol armies. To this claim, however, the as-yet-unenthroned Ogedei was not willing to give oxygen or allow such a propaganda victory, however minor. Ogaday had penned an open letter of reply to Aldin's crows of victory over his forces, saying in essence, nuh-uh. From the Richard's translation of the Chronicles of Ibn al-Atir,

quote, these are not our followers, we had already banished them from our presence, end quote. Interestingly, many of those who had escaped capture and execution at the hands of Jalal al-Din would flee westward, and at least some of them found refuge with the infamous Nizari Ismailis, a.k.a. the Assassins, which had been operating out of the mountain holdfasts in northwestern Iran since 1080. In any event, the minor victories scored here and there against the Khanate by Jalal al-Din proved short-lived. By the time he'd turned back towards Georgia, he'd found the indomitable Queen Rusadan had forged an alliance with the sultans of Rum and Damascus, effectively sealing off the way west for him and forming an anvil against which Ogedei's hammer could strike. Jalal al-Din's downfall would come in 1230, following a devastating defeat by the Seljuk

forces of Rum and Damascus that August at the Bay of Arzincan, costing him tens of thousands of troops in the span of three days of battle. Jalal would retreat only to find yet another massive force of Mongols, commanded by Ogedei's personal pick of general, the imperial Kashyyyk companion, General Qorma Khan, whose deeds and exploits would rank him in time nearly alongside that of Jeb and Subutai in the Mongol chronicles. The Great Khan had ordered his general in no uncertain terms that Qorma Khan was not to let up or accept anything less than the utter destruction of Aldin. Moreover, even the assassins themselves had made it known that they too intended on pursuing joint action in their common defense against this clear and present danger in Jalal al-Din. Quote, Korma Khan knew

of Jalal's methods and his reliance on speed, so concluded that he could outsmart him by moving with even greater velocity. Once across Amu Darya, and with intelligence from the assassins on Jalal's whereabouts, he acted decisively. Endively." In a series of forced marches that would have been all but impossible for any other army, but was little more than standard operating procedure for Mongol cavalry battalions, Kormakhan drove through the Khorasan to Ray and then to the outskirts of Tabriz with a swiftness that took the city's defenders completely by surprise. Not content with a single-headed serpent strike, as per the Mongol norm, as his main force thus moved, several other Mongol units moved in and captured Qom, Hamadan, Far, Kirman, and others

in rapid succession. Realizing at last what danger he was in, Aldin desperately tried to make peace with the Seljuks and Georgians to rally a defense against the Mongol invasion, only to find, to his horror, that, surprise, no one was willing to lift so much as a finger to assist or save him this time. Therefore, as had his father a decade prior, Jalal al-Din bravely turned and ran away. And Qorma Khan followed. The Muslim prince was nearly caught for the first time in the city of Re, having mistakenly concluded that the Mongols pursuing him, since they'd vanished from sight, must have given up the chase, Aldin ordered a three-day-long feast in celebration. But no, they'd actually just been off surveying the wider area, and later that

night returned in full force to seal the city off. Jalal managed to escape only by convincing his top general, Orhan, to conduct what amounted to a suicide mission of raising the prince's standard and then dashing off into the night, to be inevitably caught and executed by the Mongol army, while Jalal himself slipped away. He'd not prove so lucky a second time. While encamped near Amid in the region of Kurdistan, bandits caught sight of his nighttime fire and set upon him and his entourage. Either not recognizing him, or perhaps just not caring, the bandits slew the entire party and looted their treasure. Though a number of false Jalal al-Din's would rise up in the intervening decades to attempt to take up the mantle against Mongol subjugation, this is, in the end, all

sources agree, how he met his ignominious end, a fact that gave General Chormakan no small degree of delight. His foe had not gone out in a blaze of glory like a hero, but had had his throat cut in his sleep like a dog. Even Jalal's few defenders and admirers in the histories are forced to conclude, as from Nassawi, quote, Chormakan would stay on as the military governor of Greater Persia, preordained by fate that this bravest of lions should be slain by foxes. End quote. Chormakan would stay on as the military governor of Greater Persia from 1231 to 1237, keeping himself busy by putting down the various rebellions and uprisings along the Caucasus, and otherwise basing himself among the fertile plains of Mughan that struck his fancy. Chormakan, though not nearly the rabid anti-Islamist as Ogedei's elder brother Chagatai,

nevertheless seems to have pursued a governorship largely hostile to Islam, and more or less friendly towards Christian kingdoms, with the notable exceptions of Georgia and Armenia. The king of Cilicia, for instance, Hetham I, was able to submit early on to Mongol overlordship, and in so doing, made a point to stress the convergent interests of the Great Khan and Christianity, as it applied to Islam. Nevertheless, the campaign that would prove to be the feather in his cap would not be against Muslim kingdoms, but rather Georgia and Armenia in 1236, which had proved thus far resilient enough to have survived not only two concerted attacks by Jeb and Subutai,

but a subsequent three more by Jalal al-Din. proved thus far resilient enough to have survived not only two concerted attacks by Jeb and Subutai, but a subsequent three more by Jalal al-Din. Neither would, however, prove capable of standing up to General Chormakan. He had waited, as per orders, until he had received confirmation that the army of Batu had reached the Bulgar steppes and was en route to conquer Russia. Chormakan's army thus moved in sync with Batu's force to effectively seal off any avenue of escape into the protection of the Caucasus for the Rus princes, or reinforcements from those kingdoms. Georgia, already thoroughly weakened by more than a decade of warfare, this time fell quickly enough, and Rusadan was at last forced to flee the country entirely. Before her departure, she left orders with the governor of

Tiflis, that is Tbilisi, that he should, before the city fell, set fire to the lower class and working quarters of the city, but to make sure to leave the wealthy districts and the castle itself intact. A little over-eager, or more likely just panicking, the Castellan would instead have the entire city burnt to ash, leaving nothing for the Mongols to seize or for the Georgian queen to ever come back and reclaim. The Armenian campaign, which opened in 1239, would prove a far more ferocious and bloody conquest. The sieges of Ani and Kars cities were reportedly especially sanguinary affairs. Even so, by 1240, Chormakan was able to send a detailed report back to Ogedei Khan, informing him that all Mongol objectives in the Caucasus had been secured, and that both Georgia and Armenia had been reduced

to rubble and bone. Serendipitously, it was at this, his moment of crowning glory, that Chormakan's health utterly collapsed. He mysteriously lost the power of speech and resigned, dying the following year. His wife, Altan Khatun, would rule as governess regent in his stead until a new permanent appointee could arrive the following year. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the center of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower.

Listen to Season 1 to hear about England's first attempts at empire building, in Ireland, in North America and in the Caribbean, the first steps of the East India Company and the political battles between King and Parliament. Listen to Season 2 to hear about the chaotic years of civil war, revolution, and regicide which rocked the Three Kingdoms and the fledgling empire. In season three, we see how Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ruled the powerful Commonwealth and challenged the Dutch and the Spanish for the wealth and power of the Americas and Asia. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.

The westward campaigns were proceeding apace, but strategically, the far more important campaign overseen by Ogre was to the east, against the remnants of the Jin dynasty and the Jurchen Altan Khan that yet claimed to control it. The interregnum of 1227-1229 had given the northern Chinese kingdom precious time that it had needed to stabilize and recover some of its badly depleted strength. The Jin emperor, Aizong, had attempted to offer something of an olive branch following Genghis's death, sending an envoy bearing gifts to honor the spirit and memory of the departed Kayan. Yet Ogedei had turned them away, and sent a reply envoy saying that any such offer with needs must be accompanied by a declaration of submission to the Khanate. When the message had been delivered, Aizong ordered that all of the envoys be killed.

And so, it was back on, and to the bone. Now, as we got into much more from the Chinese side of the conflict, the Jin government had been massively bolstered in confidence by its reclamation of central Shanxi, and more than anything, thought that maybe they had weathered the storm, and that the Mongol retreat post-Djingis' death was somehow permanent. Maybe, in spite of it all, they'd driven off the barbarians for good, and Kaifeng was safe at last. From Ogedei's perspective, such an outlook was of course laughable. He raised an army of at least a hundred thousand, and along with his brother Tolui, once again crossed into Jin China

to settle the score once and for all. This time, Ogedei was not so interested in seizing new lands or cities, but in breaking the back of the Jin military and its ability to go on fighting at all. The Mongols marched through Shanxi and Shanxi, which are two different places, I assure you, annihilating more than 60 forts and all of the soldiers stationed within. Temporarily bogged down at Fengchang City, Ogedei and Tolui were nevertheless able to not just turn back the Jin counter-assault led by the Jurchen's two top commanders to relieve the garrison city, but to definitively crush and totally defeat them both. The Jin Emperor thereafter sent no further reinforcements, and Fenchang was methodically taken apart and scourged from the earth bit by bit. By May of 1230, then, the Mongol strike force had retaken all of its territories across the Wei River Valley that their temporary absence had allowed the Jin to reclaim during the phony war of 27-29. Ogedei confided in his brother, Tolui, that he planned to enact the strategy recommended by their father

as the campaign season of 1231, to divide his army between himself and Tolui, and then confound and distract the Jain by very visibly retreating northward, while Tolui would quietly march his forth southward, looping around, near, and even through southern Song territories, and then swinging in a wide arc to surprise Kaifeng from the south. Ogedei's plan of action would, as per the usual Mongol operations, function like something of a hydra of co-operational heads striking from multiple directions at once, in this case, the classic three. Tolui would come up from the south, while Ogade's would, at the appropriate time, turn and charge back down through Shanxi, while the third strike force on the left wing would be left to the ever-reliable Subutai the Valiant, who'd be tasked with moving south along the eastern coast of borders and protecting the Great Khan's left flank. Of the triple-headed campaign, easily the most important and interesting was that of not the Great Khan or his generalissimo pressing inexorably southward, but that of Prince Tolui striking north

across enemy territory as an unexpected lance of destruction in the flank. The Song government was, as we've seen at length in their own episodes, rather bizarrely unpredictable with dealing with Mongol emissaries. When Ogedei sent a contingent of ambassadors to secure their crossing through Song territory in mid-1231, the Song border patrol killed them outright, in spite of the fact that the Song had not that long ago outright asked the Mongols for an anti-Din alliance. Then, when Ogedei dispatched a second mission demanding an explanation, the Song sort of scuffed its foot in the dirt and apologized, but still remained weirdly non-committal about the idea of allowing the Mongols' leave to cross their territory.

It remained unspoken due to internal political necessities, but they did manage to convey through elbow nudges and long winks that while they couldn't outright say it was okay for the Mongols to enter Song territory, the Song wouldn't actually do anything to stop them from getting to the Jin borders. With this tacit understanding, Tolui made ready for yet another of the famous Mongol long rides. Alongside some 30,000 horsemen, Tuolui led a wide-flanking loop far west of Jin territory and deep through the established Song territory. He crossed the Upper Wei River and then ascended into the Qinling Mountains, suffering no small number of casualties from frostbite and starvation in the process. Descending the southern slopes, the force crossed

the Han River and then based itself between the Han and the Dao Rivers, after taking the city of Hangzhou and putting its population to the sword. The total slaughter was in large part thanks to Song's reliance on and mastery over their own river systems and transportation thereon, which so frustrated the Mongols. After some 40 days of siege, about 12,000 Song soldiers had escaped from the garrison city on ships and rafts downriver, enraging Tolui and causing him to slaughter the remaining population as a punishment when the city was finally taken, apart from some women and children who were kept on as slaves. Pressing further south, down the Jialing River's course and deep into Sichuan,

so far west that the men could reportedly describe the distant peaks of Tibet, in November of 1231, after sacking some 140 towns and garrisons along the way, Tolui at last turned northeast. By that December, the army made its camp on the banks of the Han River for a time, and after recovering their strength for about a month, crossed into Jin territory in late January of 1232. The appearance of Tolui's army in Henan quite understandably caused something of a stir amongst the local populace, as well as in the Jin capital, Kaifeng. The imperial ministers urged Aizong to recall his population to a more defensible position within the fortified cities,

arguing that these Mongols must be so exhausted by such an extended ride that they must only have the energy to immediately lay siege to one or two of these cities at most, and that the rest would be safe. Emperor Aizong, however, decided that his people had suffered enough already, and should not need to be asked to remove themselves from their lands. Instead, he mustered a grand army to march southwest and repel these Mongol interlopers in the field of battle. Tolui, however, had other ideas. Having taken deep counsel with General Subutai and his position that the soft people of the sedentary societies of the south could be easily worn down through attrition, thus making outright battle much less necessary, Tolui opted to wear his enemies down rather than crush them outright. Using

hit-and-fade tactics and cleverly stealing the Jin army's baggage trains while it passed through a woodland area, the Mongol army was able to sap the strength of the Jin. The Jin commander, meanwhile, desperate not to look the fool and to be seen incompetent by Kai Feng, reported to the emperor that not only was all well, but that he actually had engaged and defeated the Mongols in a great battle, much to the emperor's delight. On the ground, however, the ongoing humiliation of being pricked and prodded and picked apart little by little wore on the nerves and the sense of the Jin army. Ultimately, they so desired revenge for these insults that they were more than willing to bite when Tolui at last presented them with an

opportunity. Goaded onward with long-range storms of arrows shrouded by blinding blizzard winds, and further ambushes from every flank, the Jin army was lured into chasing the main Mongol host into the mountains, where they thought that they could trap the barbarian force. This was itself, of course, a trap. Quote, Tolui had prepared camps for his men in the caves of the mountainside. Bit by bit, they lured the Jin ever upward, past the snow line. Unprepared for the snow, the jinn lost large numbers of their men to cold and exposure." It was another victory for Tolui, though it would prove to be a Pyrrhic one. As the last stint in the mountains had already demonstrated, the Mongol army simply did not have the supply reserves to adequately see them through any extended stay in a mountain retreat. Thus,

we get one of the truly well-sourced and irrefutable instances of Mongol cannibalism in their history. Still, in the end, Tolui's army was able to drive off the Jin force, and, so heavily committed, now had little option but to press onward toward the great fortress at Dongguan Pass, near the confluence of the Wei and Yellow Rivers. Here, Tolui and his army were presented with a quandary, for the Djinn had blocked off the pass with an enormous army, dwarfing that of Tolui's own. Retreat, he knew, would likely mean an ignominious end to his entire campaign, since his men were already low on morale after having, well, how can one put this delicately, eaten their buddies just to survive.

They needed to attack, and they needed to break through. There simply was nothing else for it. Tolui's initial strategy was to send his ranking general, Dolkho Kuturbi, with a thousand riders on a semi-suicidal plunge against the Jin lines, almost, but hopefully not quite, within their error range in an attempt to lure them into a pursuit. Unfortunately, the djinn reacted far quicker than Tolui had expected, resulting in heavy casualties and a hasty withdrawal by General Dol Kalku. It was therefore time for a more mystical solution.

Turning to his battle sorcerers, and yes, you did hear that right, battle sorcerers, Tolui took their suggestion that they could make it rain. Now, I mean, explain it however you like. Maybe they'd known that a storm was coming by some quasi-scientific barometric reading. Or heck, maybe they could tap into the lay powers of the firmament to induce a magical squall, but I'll be damned if the battle mages didn't make it rain, and make it rain hard. From McLean, quote, A deluge came down, and Tolui ordered his men to and make it rain hard. From McLean, quote, A deluge came down, and Tolui ordered his men to don their heavy rain gear. Screened by the stair-rod-like precipitation, Tolui's army passed across the front of the Jin army and on into a region where food and clothing was plentiful, much of it left behind

by the peasantry fleeing from yet another war visited on them by their social betters. End quote. The storm raged on for more than three days, with even the Mongols forced to seek out shelter from its driving fury by billeting themselves in the farmers' abandoned structures. Ultimately, amidst this insane squall, the Jin commanders realized that they had been bypassed by the Mongols and set their forces off in pursuit. This was ill-timed, however, as on the fourth day the rain turned to freezing, and they found themselves caught in a full-force blizzard, trapped out in the open. Though they tried again and again to seek out some sort of shelter in surrounding villages,

in each they found it pillaged and destroyed in the wake of the Mongol passing. The blizzard howled on for a further three days, with the Jin soldiers freezing outside, while the Mongols huddled safely and securely in their own temporary domiciles. On the fourth day of this, though the snow still fell, it had let up, and Tolui deemed that his own men were well enough rested and fed that he ordered them out to sweep the lands clear of their foe. Doubling back, they found the Jin soldiers huddled like a flock of sheep with their heads tucked into one another's tails, end quote. The sheep, as it were, were headed for the slaughter, and by the end of the attack, at least some 5,000 lay dead and staining the pristine snow crimson. What would prove to be Tolui's final great exploit would demonstrate Mongol ingenuity at its finest. Reaching at long last the banks of the Yellow River, near the ancient city of Luoyang, they found the ever-capricious body unexpectedly inundated with the recent heavy rain and snowfall.

Fortunately for the approaching force, the waters had washed down with them a plethora of large stones onto the banks. Thus, Tuolui set his men to the task of taking those stones and constructing a breakwater to divert the mighty river into a number of hastily dug channels upstream of the crossing. By the end of the laborious process, they had rendered it passable to an army. It would take some three weeks of near superhuman effort to complete the task, but it was done, and allegedly the first time that anyone had succeeded in fording the lower Yellow River, ever. What had baffled the Chinese and the Jurchen for literal centuries, how to get horses and men across a deep, wide river like the Yellow, took a Mongol force of 30,000 just three weeks to solve.

Once safely back on the northern bank, Toli was at long last within range of sending a messenger to his elder brother, Ogedei, to inform him of his exploits and his whereabouts. Ogedei had been deeply concerned about his beloved brother's dangerous mission, and as such was delighted to hear about its success, harrowing though it had been. The Great Khan himself had by this point advanced to the southernmost extreme of Shanxi before turning eastward toward the Jin capital at Kaifeng. He'd been temporarily held up there at the siege of Hezhong for a period of 35 days, before his forces had constructed a 200-foot-tall pyramidal tower to overcome the walled defenses and put the city to slaughter.

Meanwhile, the third head of the Hydra, commanded by Subutai, perhaps had the toughest mission of the three, since he faced off directly against the greatest of the Jin commanders, General Wanyan Yi. It had been General Wanyan who had been directly responsible for almost the entirety of the Jin battlefield successes during the Thoni War of 1227-29, and had even bested Dolkoku Chirbi in the field. This sparked an interesting political incident all of its own when Dolkoku, unwilling to accept responsibility, had blamed his defeat on none other than Subutai. And since Dolkoku was the brother of Borchu, one of the late Genghis's oldest and most celebrated comrades-in-arms, already long near deified in the Mongol pantheon,

Ogedei accepted the patently baseless excuses and pinned the failures on Subutai, whom he had, quite inexplicably, never cared for at all. Perhaps the most amusing aspect of this particular incident was Ogedei's own minimizing of the defeat at the time. He wrote, in a masterpiece of rationalization, quote, Since the reign of Genghis Khan, we have fought many times with the great army of Kitai,

and always defeated them, and we have taken the greater part of their lands. Now that they have beaten us, it is a sign of their misfortune, a lamp which, at the time of going out, flares up brightly and then goes out." Ah yes, you see, by beating us here, you are only showing how, um, weak and defeated you actually are. Right. In spite of Ogedei's ready willingness to pin the blame for any failure onto his back, Subotai, as usual, availed himself very well indeed in the course of the campaign. After suffering a minor setback at the hands of the

General Wanyan, his next assignment in East Shanxi and Liaodong saw him win over the region handily. This latest victory, at last, seemed to win over the Great Khan to his general's worth. It seems to have only been here and now, once Tolui had completed the nearest circuits of the entire Jin Empire and emerged battered, bruised, but intact on the north side of the Yellow River, that the Jin commanders finally seemed to realize that his was not the actual invasion force. They had diverted the majority of their efforts to tracking down and attempting to destroy this 30,000-man raiding force, only to suddenly discover that it had been little more than a distraction all along. Now that they were thoroughly wrong-footed

and with the two main Mongol armies of Ogedei and Subutai in position, they began their major thrust southward into the heart of the remaining Jin territories. Somehow, the Jin commander, General Wanyan-i, was able to scrape together a sizable defensive force in a desperate final bid to stave off the coming assault. Yet this force, purportedly as many as 110,000 in number, was cut off from the Jin capital by Subutai's army and trapped in a defenseless open plain to be systematically destroyed. It would be the last time that the Jin would ever mount a full army on any battlefield. Taken captive, the great Jin general, Wanyan-i, was given an offer.

He had proved his valor and worth on the battlefield. Now he had but to pledge himself to the service of the Khan, and he would not only keep his life, but be raised up as a general of the Mongol armies. Wanyan, however, refused, saying that his sense of duty and honor would not allow such a betrayal of his people in homeland. He asked only that before being executed he be allowed to meet face to face with that his most worthy of foes, Subutai the Valiant. Against him he'd played round after round of the ultimate strategic game, but had never met in the flesh. It was a worthy request, and it was granted to the defeated warrior. The last, and indeed only, meeting between the two must have been a significant letdown for Wanyan-i.

Taken before Subutai, who was busy overseeing the executions of Jian soldiers, Wanyan paid him the highest of compliments, that it was not mere chance, but fate itself that produced great conquerors such as him. Subutai coolly regarded the prisoner, possibly not even recognizing the man, and said little. He'd never after all been considered an especially charming man. Then ordered that Wanyan be taken down to the execution ground and his punishment meted out in turn. So much for a great meeting of the minds. Here and now, it seems that all was truly lost for the Jain Empire, unless perhaps they could convince the Southern Song to intervene on their behalf. It was an extreme long shot, to be sure, but one that

Emperor Aizong deemed worth at least trying. Thus, the Jurchen Emperor wrote to the Song monarch, begging for aid against this mutual threat, for surely if the Song stood idly by and allowed the Mongols to smash the Jurchen, they would be next on the menu for the insatiable barbarians' appetite. The Song, however, were in no mood for such an alliance with their longtime foe, and went so far in their refusal as to mock the Jin's supposedly superior status in their feudal relationship. Thus, it could only be left to the fates, and perhaps to disease, to determine the fate of Kaifeng and the future of the Jin. Again, from McLean,

quote, the task of the besiegers was very difficult, for Kaifeng was a city of nearly one million inhabitants. The people had clean water and febrifuges, which is fever-reducing medicines, which the Mongols did not, and it was well known that Henan province was a hotbed for plague, dysentery, cholera, and especially smallpox. Perhaps nature would do what the Jin could not, end quote. The Mongol Great Khan seemed to take heed of this danger, and along with his younger brother, retreated north for the height of summer, leaving General Subutai to oversee the continuance of the siege against Kaifeng. It is curious, therefore, that at precisely this time of the jinn's hour of greatest need,

or at least so the stories go, Ogede Khan was indeed stricken with a powerful affliction. From the Secret Histories, quote, Ogede Khan then set up camp at Shirad Dektar, where he fell ill, lost the use of his mouth and tongue, and was in great distress. Various shamans and soothsayers made the following divination. The spirit lords of the Kitad, people's lands and waters, rage violently against the Kayan,

for their kinsmen have been plundered and their towns and cities have been destroyed. We should give people, kinsmen, gold, silver, livestock and food in the Kayan's stead. End quote. All of these means of appeasing the angered Chinese spirits were attempted, but the Khan showed no improvement. The shamans then asked of the spirits,

Would a kinsman suffice as an offering? At which point, the Khan was at once aroused from his death-like state and called out for water to drink. When he'd been quenched, he asked what had happened, and the shamans explained that the spirits had released him. The spirit lords of the Chinese people's lands and waters were raging violently against you, because their lands and waters have been destroyed and their kinsmen plundered. We asked by means of divination, what other substitute can we give?

Thereupon you suffered violent cramps. However, they released their hold on you when we asked, would a kensman suffice as an offering? We now leave it to you to decree a decision. Ogedei asked who among his family was nearby, and it was none other than his brother, Tolui. When himself informed of the situation regarding Ogedei's affliction and the spirit's conditional release of the Khan, Tolui replied, Although you have both elder and younger brothers, our fortunate father Genghis Khan chose you, elder brother, as Kayan, Tolui replied, End quote. I am ready. Shamans, perform your spells and swear your oaths. The rituals were performed, and the spells cast, and at last a draught of liquid was brought forth to the waiting Tolui, what the shamans referred to as an oath-swearing water. Tolui took the proffered cup and drank it, waited a moment, and then declared,

I have become drunk, and now must sleep. Until my waking from this state, O brother, I leave it to you to take care of our family and your widowed sister-in-law. That is all I have to say. I am drunk. Tolui then exited the Gur, collapsed, and soon died. His sacrifice, however, was not in vain, as the great Khan Ogedei was indeed released by the Chinese spirits and recovered to full health in short order. So goes the telling of the secret history.

Juvaini tells a markedly different tale. That Tolui, like all of his brothers, save for Chagatai, was a notorious drunkard, and had overindulged in a massive drinking session, contracted alcohol poisoning, and died after an agonizing three days at the age of 40. A third, and perhaps most convincing telling, is that an anti-Taluid faction had developed in the highest echelons of the Mongol ranks, possibly amid the Jochids, or even amongst the Ogedids, and had arranged to have the man poisoned. MacLynn writes, The endemic factionalism that would later destroy Genghis's united empire was already at work. All the steppe nomads were especially adept at the secret administering of slow-acting poisons. They obtained venom from the Mongolian viper, particularly abundant in the late Baikal areas,

by squeezing it out of the snake's fangs onto a plate. The dried venom was then left for later use." As for Ogedei himself, he made a great show of weeping over his dead brother, and apparently was truly very devastated by this loss, as the two had always been close. Though he did try to arrange for a political move to secure his brother's domains for his own son, Guyuk, by marrying him to Tolui's widow, then-Historian Christian Sorkhaktani Beki, when she declined the offer and invoked her right to devote her life to the upbringing of her four sons,

Monka, Kubilai, Hulagu, and Arik Bok, Ogedei showed his esteem for his brother's family by making Sorokhaktani the administrative overlord of Mongolia and northern China. Meanwhile, back in the south, Subutai retained his stranglehold over Kaifeng, beginning formal siege operations on April 8th, 1232. Some three months later, the Jin Emperor Aizong sent out missives asking for peace terms, though that was stymied when a war faction within the city killed the reply emissaries from the Mongols. Ultimately, Ogedei agreed to allow the Jin Emperor to retain his title, but that the Jin would need to pay homage and tribute to the Khanate from Huron out, an offer that Aizong jumped on, since it beat certain death by a long shot, and he even ordered his men to cease firing on the Mongol troops arrayed outside the city walls while negotiations

continued. General Subutai, however, was having none of that nonsense. Using the excuse that he'd received no countermand from the Great Khan for his standing orders to take the city by force, Subutai refused to let up his Siege of Kaifeng. In fact, he now pressed it all the harder. The Siege of Kaifeng was quite possibly the single most difficult battle the Mongols had ever faced up to that point. The citadel city was ringed by the now familiar sight of an impenetrable wall of clay stamped and baked to the hardness of reinforced concrete, atop which sat a dozen

guard towers, and all of which was manned by 60,000 crack imperial troops. Unlike the siege of Beijing, this time there really was nowhere for either the imperial family or the defenders to slink off to, and so they would fight to the death. Suvite commanded that ramparts be constructed as high as the walls themselves, over 40 feet tall, using the captured soldiers and civilians taken from the countryside as the labor force. This meant of course that they would be the ones to soak up Kaifeng's arrows if the defenders wished to halt construction. Then came an unceasing bombardment of rocketry, bombs, and fire arrows for a sustained 16 days designed to break the Jin will to resist. Yet when the enemy did not crack, Subutai decided to pull his forces back and reassess the situation.

This would turn out to have happened not a moment too soon, as shortly after the Mongol army had withdrawn a distance from the city walls, a devastating outbreak of plague ripped through the beleaguered city over a period of 50 days, decimating the military and civilian ranks alike, and further withering the Jin defenders' morale. The siege would resume the following September, with mangonels, trebuchets, and gunpowder rockets howling over the city walls and lighting the buildings within a blaze. There are even reports of the Mongol siege engineers debuting a primitive cannon made of bamboo tubes which fired after being ignited by a slow-burning fuse. The two sides were similarly matched in terms of both weaponry and resolve,

but what ultimately proved decisive was that while the jinn were cut off from any reinforcement, meaning that every casualty was an irreplaceable loss of strength, the Mongol army pulled liberally from the surrounding countryside, forcing Chinese conscripts to do much of their dirty work in endless numbers and sacrificing them without qualm or compunction. Subutai had likewise been overseeing a building project of his own, surrounding the walled city with a second wall, some 54 miles in length, to better ensure that anyone attempting to leave the party early would not get far. Nearly designed trebuchets devised by Subutai's Muslim engineers proved capable of hurling stones up to 170 pounds with such force that they could penetrate 7-8 feet deep

into Kaifeng's outer walls where they struck. In February of 1233, Emperor Aizong's nerve finally cracked. After trying to escape proved unsuccessful, and woefully costly in the attempt, leaving more than 8,000 corpses on the field as the emperor barely made it back inside the city. Aizong would try once more, only to discover that this time the city had been sealed off so completely that it was said that, quote, a flamingo would have had trouble escaping, end quote. Realizing that his emperor's dithering would result in the total slaughter of everyone in the city, at last the commander of the city guardsmen, General Cui Li, staged a coup,

executed the civilian governor of Kaifeng as well as all officials loyal to the emperor. Cui then sent word of his actions to Subutai and asked him what terms would stop this fighting. Subutai, for his part, was interested in the prospect of taking the city without the needless sacrifice of his own men, and replied that any and all defenses of the city would need to be completely torn apart and that a tremendous war indemnity would be paid to the Mongols. General Cui, knowing this was his best and, indeed, only option, replied in the affirmative by sending a large trove of jewels and treasures, as well as a harem of the most beautiful palace girls that he could muster, to prove his sincere intentions. Cui then ordered the immediate arrest of the entire Jin royal family, then sent them on to Subutai, who had the princes of the blood immediately executed and the princesses enslaved and shipped

back in chains to Karakorum. When Subutai at last entered Kaifeng in triumph, any sense that he might be magnanimous in his victory went right out the window. Quote, his troops then went on the rampage, looting, pillaging, and raping in defiance of the pledges Subutai had given to Cui Li. Subutai had always hated the Chinese and considered them subhuman, and this breach of undertaking was his cynical way of showing his contempt. End quote. Such rapine cruelty was one thing, but a complete destruction of the enemy capital city was something that even the great Subutai could not order on his own without imperial dispensation. Thus, he wrote to Ogedei, asking that as recompense for the massive loss of Mongol life in the effort, that his men be allowed to take the full measure of vengeance against Kaifeng.

Here and now, none other than Ogedei's chief advisor, Yelo Chutsai, stepped in to intervene on Kaifeng's behalf. The city had already surrendered, he argued to the Great Khan, and its inhabitants were now the subjects of the Khanate. To kill them now would be only to lose tens of thousands of productive taxpayers, and that was not even to mention the thousands of skilled artisans and other useful people that could be put to far better use than simply as targets of Subutai's bloodthirsty vindictiveness. Ogedei was duly convinced by Yellu's reasoning, and sent word to Subutai that, no, you may not kill them all. Only the royal family, thank you very much. Some 500 members of the Jin royal household tasted the headsman's axe within Kaifeng, but the emperor himself was not among them. As for Cai Li, the general who had betrayed his emperor to, he'd hoped, save his people,

his reward was nothing more than an assassin's dagger in the back. Not for his treachery, as one might think, but instead from an officer enraged that the general had apparently raped his wife. As for Aizong, he had escaped into the night with his family and made for the nearby city of Caizhou, what would be his final resting place. Subutai, meanwhile, was deeply angered by Ogedei refusing his request to sack the city, an implicit rebuke by the Khan, but was smart enough to know what disobeying such an order would mean for him. Instead, he simply moved on and looked ahead to Saijo, telling himself, well, Ogedei never said anything about me not burning that city to the ground.

Having arrived in Saijo, Aizong could think of little more to do with this frustration and fear than to order the execution of all of his generals who had quote-unquote betrayed him, aka been defeated in arms by the Mongols. In his mind, there was still the hail-merry possibility that the Song might now realize the danger that they faced were the Jin gone, and step in to bail him out. Those fantasies were thoroughly disabused, however, when the Song government signed a treaty with the Mongols, agreeing to provide a supporting military force of 20,000 Chinese troops as well as huge stores of grain to the final conquest of the Jin Empire.

The end came at last on February 9th, 1234. For some time by that point, Aizong's remaining commanders had just, um, not told the emperor about the strategic situation outside of Taiji's walls, since that would only upset him and wouldn't really help anything. Instead, they simply left the emperor to play with his toys and his concubines within his harem, while they dealt with the impossible hand they'd been dealt. It was only when his own wives were crying and weeping about the imminent fall of the city that Aizong at last realized that, oh yeah, there's still a war on, and we're apparently losing it... badly? A brief dalliance with trying to escape was quickly disabused when he saw that all exits had been thoroughly blocked off by the Mongols.

Looking out over the city suburbs and seeing the first fingers of flame licking over the rooftops, Aizong decided that rather than captivity and humiliation, he would take the expressway out and hanged himself. So ended the Jin Dynasty, and such was the Mongol conquest of northern China finally complete. The Jin had been the toughest opponent the Mongol Empire had ever faced to this point, and had steadfastly resisted the onslaught of the northern tide for 23 years. Yet for all that, the Mongols had demonstrated their own inevitability. As stated by Barfield, And so, next time, we'll pick back up with the second half of Ogedei Khan's reign over the Mongol Empire,

as his armies expand like a land-bound kraken in every direction at once, and ultimately bring the Yika Mongol Ulus to the height of its power and size. And while it's good to be the Khan, temptation toward overindulgence has long been Ogedei's weak point, and it will prove to be his undoing in the end. 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.