The History of China - Bonus - Mongol 7: The Punishment of God

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

Genghis Khan leaves the Jin Empire's subjugation to his generals, and makes his way home to Mongolia... only to find that his 5 years of campaigning have left his homeland in a bit of a mess. Siberians in rebellion and old foes cropping up in new places are things he can deal with... but when an unfamiliar warmongering powerhouse to the far West picks a fight, the nearly 60-year-old Great Khan will unleash the wrath of the Eternal Heaven down upon them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Mongol VII, the Punishment of God Master, Slave, you who have survived thus far, God. Master. Slave. You who have survived thus far. The lottery of who will live and who will die. Contemplate Genghis Khan. Great Ocean Khan. Born Temujin.

Master-slave. From the Fourth Hour of the Night by Frank Bidart Genghis, great Khan of the Mongol nation, had been away from his home for too long. For five years of near-continuous campaigning, the sovereign of the steppe

had made war south of the Gobi and laid the once-proud Jurchen people and their so-called Golden Jin Empire low, raising their capital at Zhongdu to the ground, slaughtering its inhabitants, and pillaging the southlands for all the wealth the Mongols could possibly carry. Thus it was that in early 1215, the Great Khan left the further reduction of the Jin to his trusted and capable general, Mughali, and set out once again for the waters of Dolonur, to wait for the Gobi to become passable and the way back home to Mongolia made open. These southern lands and its people were rich and soft, but their ways were strange to the

point of alien for the Mongols, and the climate ill-suited them. Before setting out from the ruins of the Jin Empire, the Mongols had one final punishment to dole out to the defeated Jurchen and their subjects. In their campaigns back and forth across this land, they'd been repeatedly slowed down and otherwise annoyed by many of the changes these southerners had made to their natural environment. The plowed fields made horses and deer movement through them slower and more arduous, as did the stone walls and deep canals and waterways that crisscrossed the landscape. Should Genghis ever need to send his armies down here again to remind the Jurchen of whom they'd pledged to serve, he didn't want any of that standing in his men's way ever again.

Thus the ditches were filled in, the walls pulled down, and the tilled fields repeatedly trampled by the Mongol horse herds all across what is today Inner Mongolia, preparing the land to return to its natural state of open pasture and forest. It would serve as both protective buffer between the tribal lands of the steppe and the tilled fields of the southerners, and as a stark reminder of the cost of defying the Khan's will. As they rode north, along with their horses, the Mongol armies trailed behind them caravans of people, animals, silks of every color, so much that they'd begun using the cloth itself to wrap their other goods, and even as ropes in place of their rawhide. Quote,

They bundled robes embroidered with silver and golden thread, the designs of blooming peonies, flying cranes, breaking waves, and mythical beasts, and they packed silver slippers sewn with tiny pearls. But not just silks. Anything that had caught the eye of one of these conquerors had been gathered up and brought with them. Lacquered furniture, paper fans, porcelain, metal armor, bronze weapons, carved saddles, perfume, makeup, jewelry of ivory, tortoise shell, turquoise, jade, and studded with all manner of gemstones. Wine, honey, bricks of dried and pressed tea, medicines, aphrodisiacs, and incense were all brought by the cart and camelback full north and back to the waiting tribes beyond the desert.

Behind them marched the captives. Anyone deemed useful or skilled enough to have caught the Mongol interest were now to serve their new masters directly. They included entertainers, beautiful maidens, and boys young and strong enough to be deemed useful but not dangerous. Nobility and clergy from every faith that they had encountered, alchemists, pharmacists, craftsmen and artisans, astrologers, jewelers, magicians, and translators, and above all else, so far as the Khan was concerned at least, the most magical of disciplines, scribes, who could write information down and keep it safe for later recollection. Like many illiterate rulers who interacted substantively with literate societies, Genghis Khan was fascinated by the power of the written word.

He had seized his opportunity in the early years of the 13th century during his campaign against the Naimans, where he had taken captive Patatonga, a Naiman man able to read and write in the old Uyghur script. He had subsequently been commissioned by the Great Khan to reformat and adapt the Uyghur alphabet to fit the Khalkha dialect of Mongol speech, and teach it to members of the Khan's court. Though Chinggis himself would never learn to use the written script that he himself had commissioned, he remained fascinated by writing as a concept and very aware of its power in bringing and then maintaining law and order in a much more stable and permanent fashion than the steppe people had ever known before.

With writing, laws could be set down and codified, as could the consequences for infraction. They could be set and enforced across vast territories, far beyond the direct sight of any ruler. And they could escape the shackles of time and mortality, and live beyond the normal bounds of human will. It was, in effect, a form of mortality, a concept that Genghis, now in his mid-fifties, was beginning to ponder with increasing frequency. Of course, there would be a flip side of the coin to this sudden glut of material wealth. One of the more interesting, and sometimes most annoying, aspects of our human brains

is their elasticity. Our minds adapt to the circumstances surrounding us, whatever they may be, which is objectively a good thing for a mind to be able to do, most of the time. However, when it comes to pleasure and happiness, we, one and all, are susceptible to the hedonic treadmill. Without getting too overly in-depth about it, we each pretty much have an individual happiness baseline that can be deviated from in short bursts, either negatively in the event of a tragedy, or positively in the event of, say, winning the lottery. But over time, whether good or bad, that change becomes the new

normal, and our minds readapt its baseline around that situation. In essence, what once made you terribly sad can become normal, just as something that once made you unbelievably happy can as well. Moreover, the very process of that once outstanding event becoming the new normal makes it increasingly difficult to feel anywhere near as strongly about it in terms of happiness again. Chemically, this is also the basis of addiction and why drug users so often end up chasing the dragon and seeking that initial feeling of the first high even though nothing else ever quite measures up. That can happen with drugs and it can also happen with material boon. What had begun as the most

successful smash and grab raid of all time, showering the Mongol people with more wealth and luxury than they could have ever dreamed before, quickly became simply the basis for them chasing the dragon. And like a Powerball lotto winner, sudden plenty often begetsmen needed more raw materials. To feed those workers, constant supplies of barley, wheat, and other food commodities had to be hauled across the vast wasteland separating the herders' pastures and the agricultural fields of the south. And the more captives Genghis Khan brought home, the more food and equipment he had to obtain to supply them. Novelties became necessities. The more he conquered, the more he had to conquer. End quote. It would be that insatiable dragon of expansionism that he would spend the remaining decade and a half of his life chasing, as would his sons and their sons after

them in the generations to follow. Before all of that, however, Genghis returned home to find that he'd had some rather extensive housekeeping that needed to be taken care of. His extended absence from Mongolia had caused several of his more remote vassals to begin to forget that their pledges to him were not of an, if I feel like it today, variety. Right at the top of that list of forgetful subjects were the Siberian tribes of the Taiga forests, and those people bordering the Uyghur farmers to the southwest.

The Siberians, known as the Tumad people, had for years at this point taken advantage of the Great Khan's absence to simply choose not to send their required yearly tribute of furs and women. In fact, upon the death of their chieftain, his wife and Khatun, a woman known as Bokhwi Pahun, which is apparently not her name but more of a description roughly translating as big and fierce or as Orgung Onan translates it violent and fat, had seized control of the tribe in her own name. An emissary had been dispatched from the makeshift Mongol capital camp at Avarga to investigate, but he did not return. Eventually, Genghis sent out a second emissary to investigate the disappearance of the first, only for this one to go missing as well. It would later be discovered that Botokhui Tarkun had taken both emissaries captive, and possibly had even wed them both, in a marked reversal from usual gender roles.

By 1218, and down two good negotiators at this point, Genghis decided that the time for tiptoeing around this northern bush was over, and instead of sending another peace delegation, this time he dispatched one of his generals, Warakhul Nuyang, and a detachment of soldiers to investigate what had become of his men at the hands of these Siberian tribesmen. For more than a decade now, Mongol troops had been refining and perfecting their particular art of warfare via the horse and bow, and they rode north confident that it would take little to bring this rogue band of forest tribes to heel.

But Siberia was not Mongolia, and the taiga was not the open step. Many of the tactics they had learned to employ to deadly effect were now negated entirely by the very strictures of the shadowy and claustrophobic forests they now padded through. From Weatherford, Usually, the Mongol crossed the steppe by spreading out and moving forward on a broad front. In the forest, however, they had to follow one another along the narrow trails. Butohwe Tarhun's forces heard them coming long before they'd arrived on her territory, and like any experienced forest hunter, she set a trap for them. She sent a contingent of her troops to seal off the trail behind the men to prevent their escape.

Then, she ambushed them from the front. Otokwe Tarkun's forces triumphed, and in the battle, her warriors killed the Mongol general. Perhaps the Tumad and their queen celebrated this shocking victory over their Mongol overlords, and maybe they even thought that they had won. But if that was the case, they clearly did not yet understand just who they were dealing with in the person of the Great Khan. When news that Mongol blood had been spilled, and one of his generals at that,

Chinggis was not defeated but enraged, threatening to personally lead his armies to grind the Tumad into dust. This he was ultimately dissuaded from carrying through, at least personally, and instead opted to entrust the punitive expedition to another of his commanders instead, asking him to win by whatever means were necessary. And that's exactly what they would do. Setting out a small force ahead of the main body to act as a distraction by pretending to guard a frontier road between the respective territories of the Mongols and the Tumans, the main Mongol army moved in secret to the edge of the Taiga forest. But they were not about to make the same mistake of fighting on terrain that they were not the masters. They fought best on open steppe terrain, and so they would turn the forest into that. With saws, axes, and chisels, they hewed a wide road straight through the thick woods, and then directly to the main camp of the Tumad Queen.

From the Secret History, quote, Genghis appointed Dorbe Dorkshin of the Dorbets to array the soldiers in strict order, parade to eternal heaven, and strive to make the Tumad people submit. Dorbe ordered his regular soldiers to travel by the paths created by the Red Bull, which was almost certainly a deer, and said that any soldier who gave up would be beaten. He made them cut, chop, and saw the trees that blocked the path created by the Red Bull, to clear a way for the attack. His men went up the mountain and suddenly descended as though through the top of the Tumad people's smoke holes, plundering them as they sat feasting. End quote. In the aftermath of this

stunning reversal, the Tumad camp lay in ruin, and its people bound into captivity, including their queen, Botokwi Tarkun. In compensation for the death of General Borakul, the Great Khan made 100 of the Tumad people the Bol slaves of the slain commander's family, 30 Tumad girls as the wives of the emissary captured, and formally wed the tribal queen to Kadakoye Beki, the second envoy captured. Though perhaps this was already a fait accompli, given that she'd held the envoys for so long after all. Genghis then proclaimed, According to the secret history, some 45,000 people were divided up by this decision amongst the Borjigin clan.

The fate of the Tumad people of the Taiga forest indeed showed that the Great Khan was back, and that he'd lost none of his potency while down south. In practice, however, it was little more than a brief distraction from the issues and problems already reaching a rolling boil to the south among the oases and shifting sands of the Taklamakan, and the Uyghur subjects who made that region their home. The Uyghurs themselves had proven to be model subjects to the Khanate. The Uyghurs, who had widely adopted the Muslim faith by this point and for several centuries, were so devout and steadfast in their devotion to Genghis Khan and his Mongol nation

that they had attracted the attention of several other groups of Muslim peoples along the foothills of the Tianshan Mountains across Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Xinjiang, China. Chief among those who would send emissaries from the west to treat with the Great Khan of the Mongols were the people of Kashgar, who now found themselves under the oppressive rule of the Kara Khitan, meaning the Black Khitan. Their name belied their origin as the breakaway remnant of the ancient Liao dynasty of the Khitan people of Manchuria,

who had survived by fleeing far to the west and beyond the reach of the Jurchen emperors. In fact, their own name reflected this idea that they were a continuation of the legitimate Liao dynastic line, calling themselves the Great Liao, and known in Chinese sources as Western Liao. There, these Buddhist rulers had lorded over their Muslim subjects, and were now commanded by Gushlug Khan, the son of Dayan Khan of the Nayan, Genghis's one-time primary enemy. Gushlug had, upon fleeing Mongolia and Genghis's wrath, married into the Karakatan royalty, and then usurped his father-in-law's power as his own, circa 1211. This he'd managed to do by forming an alliance with the emir of the neighboring and rising power of Khwarizmia, with whom Bikara Khitan had formerly been at war.

Unlike the Black Khitan he now ruled over, Kutslug was, like many of the Naimon, an Astorian Christian. His wife had apparently managed to convince him to at least nominally convert to the Buddhist faith of the Khitan, but regardless, the Khan and the Buddhist nobility could agree that oppressing the Muslim populace was of primary importance. Quote, In this newly acquired position as ruler of the kingdom, Guslok began to persecute his Muslim subjects by limiting the practice of their religion. He forbade the call to prayer and prohibited public worship or religious study. End quote.

The Persian scholar, Adam Malik Juveni, writes that he at one point ordered an imam crucified to his madrasa's front door. He wrote, quote, In Khotan, he drove the great imams out on the plain and began to discuss religion with them. One of their number, the imam Ala-Ad-Din Muhammad of Khotan, ventured to dispute with him. After undergoing torture, he was crucified upon the door of his college. End quote. The citizens of his capital, at Balasagun, grew so fed up with Gutslug's treatment of them that when he rode out on campaign in the mid-1210s, they closed the city gates behind him and attempted to prevent his return.

Guclug was therefore forced to lay siege to his own capital city, take it, and then raise it in response. Suffice it to say, there was little love lost between this last king of western Liao and the bulk of his Muslim population, who were now, very understandably, all ears when they heard from their fellow Muslim Uyghurs about this Genghis fellow to the east who was going around destroying everyone who stood against him, but then letting the people believe whatever they wanted as long as they paid their tax on time. Sounds like a pretty good deal when your religious scholars are getting nailed to school doors by the king.

For Genghis himself, some 2,500 miles away, he must have thought rather little of this remote band reaching out and begging for his aid, certainly not enough to trouble with rousing himself to attend to it personally. He would not again leave his homeland for such a small task as this. But, on the other hand, an easy walkover of these western Khitan and the further expansion of his realm was something the great Khan was never one to turn his nose up at. Moreover, Guchlug of the Naiman had been one of the very few of his enemies to yet escape his wrath, and an opportunity to settle that score certainly sweetened the pot.

Thus it was that he dispatched his right hand, his straight and true arrow, Jeb, to lead a force of some 25,000 Mongol warriors to bring the Khan's justice to his long-evasive foe. The campaign was as swift as it was surgical. Since it was conducted at the behest of the Khan's Leo-Uyghur subjects, Jeb was instructed to allow no plunder, undue property destruction, or killing of civilians, especially those of the Muslim peasantry. This was a targeted strike in a fashion that would time and again become the calling card of Genghis and the Mongols across Central and Western Asia, aimed not at the complete ruin of the impoverished, but the

decapitation of the wealthy elites who lorded over them. And while it's certainly easy to begin buying into some Robin Hood-esque version of the tale of Genghis robbing from the rich to give to the poor, which he most certainly was not doing, and it is always important to remember that tens of millions of innocent civilians would in fact die terrible deaths at the hands of the ruthless Mongol conquerors in the decades and centuries to come. Almost without fail, they were inordinately targeted at urban populations, especially those whose lords resisted him. But even by this point, the Mongol Khan had taken to heart the wisdom imparted him by his captured Chinese officials, that it was better, meaning in this case more profitable, to allow the bulk of the population

to live and to tax them than to exterminate them. Better to shear the sheep than to skin it. Commanded by Jeb, the Mongol army rode against Guchlug's Black Catan army, destroying it with such apparent ease and speed that it barely warrants a passing mention in the secret history. Quote, Jeb pursued Guchlug Khan of the Naimon, overtook him at Sari Khun, Yellow Cliff, where he destroyed them and returned home. End quote. Guchlug fled, but was captured and, in a punishment fitting of his crimes, and therefore considered low by Mongol standards, he was beheaded, thereby allowing his lifeblood, his soul,

to pollute the dusty, dry ground somewhere in the sweeping expanse of the modern Sino-Pakistani border region. A herald was dispatched to the waiting populace of Kashgar, announcing that their liberty had come in the form of the Great Khan, and that henceforth their religions would be protected by the magnanimity of Genghis. Juvaini would later write that the populace celebrated and proclaimed their new Mongol overlords as, quote, one of the mercies of Allah and the bounty of divine grace, end quote. This victory meant little enough in itself to the Great Khan. Yet another enemy destroyed, yet another old foe brought low, yet another people to pay

him homage. What was important in his crushing of Western Liao, however, was that he now held an effective stranglehold over the critical link in the Silk Road between the Chinese and Muslim worlds. From Weatherford, quote, inserted himself into the central artery of the global trade network. He had positively made himself its gatekeeper. Now it seemed he could finally rest. He was nearing 60, venerable, approaching ancient by the standards of the day, and had done more than any Mongol could have ever dreamed. He and his people had more goods and luxury than they had ever before known existed, more than they could use in a dozen lifetimes, and with more pouring in by the day from all corners of the known world. Now his great task of securing his people's place in the world. As Petit put it, quote, having nothing more to fear either from the east, west, or northern parts of Asia, end quote,

he instead attempted to shift gears and become Genghis, the emperor of trade, rather than world conqueror. As such, he reached out to the most likely candidate, the emir of his powerful new neighbor to the distant west, the emir of Khwarazmia, whose own mighty Turco-Persian empire extended from the mountains of Afghanistan to the shores of the Black Sea, including Transoxiana, Afghanistan, Sistan, Faraza, Mazandaran, and Iraq Ademi. Khwarizmia was ruled by Ala ad-Din Muhammad II, who had come to the throne at the age of 31 in the year 1200, just six years after his kingdom's formation, by his father, and had spent the subsequent decade and a half following up his father's campaign to expand and consolidate Khwarazmian rulership over the whole of the region, conquering the Ghurid Empire, Zamarkand from the Karakhanids,

and seizing large stretches of territory from both the Karakhetans and the Adabeg Turks. By 1217, having reached the height of his power, Muhammad attempted to bestow upon himself the ancient Persian title of Shah, and demanded that the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad recognize his claim. At this the Caliph balked, however, and denied him the title, prompting Muhammad to raise an army and march against Baghdad, only to be stopped by a blizzard while attempting to cross the Zagros Mountains. Put simply, Muhammad II of Khwarazmia was every bit the conqueror king within his own piece of the world,

as Genghis Khan was in his. Yet until 1215, neither had even heard of the other. They were quite literally a world apart, and with the Qaraqitan planted firmly between them and acting as somewhat of a buffer state. That mutual ignorance would begin to crumble, following Muhammad learning more about the so-called Golden Empire of the Jurchen, what he knew as Kitei, and thereafter sending a trade mission to collect more information about this eastern Eldorado, only to find instead the still-smoldering ruins of Zhongdu in the aftermath of the Mongol sacking, with the sun-bleached bones of its population stacked atop one another all the way to the horizon. As of 1217, having pursued the fleeing Naiman forces of Guchlug into Khwarazmian territory,

Genghis Khan was now also informed of this western-seeming mirror image of himself, a powerful, wealthy emperor, someone with whom he had no grudge or blood feud, at least as of yet, someone far enough away that he did not pose an immediate physical threat, someone with whom, perhaps, trade relations could be opened for the benefit of all. Again from Petit, quote, he endeavored to cultivate a sincere friendship with the king of Poirism. He therefore, toward the latter end of the year 1217, sent three ambassadors to him with presents, to ask that their people might trade together with safety, and find in a perfect union with one another, that repose in plenty, which are the chief blessings that can be wished for in all kingdoms, end quote. The Mongol embassy would arrive in the spring of 1218, and upon being received at the Khwarizmian

capital of Samarkand, delivered a letter of greetings and friendship from the Great Khan. It read, After several days of further negotiations, Amir Muhammad at last agreed that a trade treaty be struck between his own empire and that of the Mongol Khan, albeit with some suspicion and reluctance. It seems that the Amir, having already learned much from his own subjects on the nature of the Mongols' exploits across northern China, a civilization whose cities and fortifications were reported to have dwarfed those of his own, and to an extent that could scarcely be believed, had reached his ears, as had the devastation wrought against the

late king of the Karakatan. Already he wondered whether mere trade was truly the sole interest of this Mongol king, or whether that might just be a clever in to advance a more sinister goal of further conquest. On his end, as I read it, it seems like Genghis was being pretty much open-handed about his desires and expectations of his budding relationship with this distant neighbor, and upon learning of the Amir's acceptance of his trade proposal, he began making the arrangements to send forth an initial shipment, a show of good faith and investment toward future deals. Some 450 to 500 merchants

and their retinues from all the peoples and nations now under Mongol control, though most of them Muslim, were assembled into a vast caravan. Their mounts and carts laden with all forms of luxury goods. White camel cloth, fine Chinese silks, silver bars and ingots, jade, both polished and raw. One and all, they were dispatched from Avarga to make their way south and west, past the Tien Shan mountains and to the waiting Amir Muhammad at Zamarkand. Riding ahead of the main body was an Indian ambassador of the Khan named Ukhanan, and bearing the title of Khair Khan. Bearing a message declaring Genghis's continued friendship and good feelings for the Amir,

and inviting trade so that, quote, henceforth the abscess of evil thoughts may be lanced by the improvement of relations and agreement between us, and the pus of sedition and rebellion removed, end quote. It was not to be. Fatefully, the Mongol caravan's route passed through the Khwarazmian province of Sir Darya, and its regional capital, Otrar. The governor of Otrar was Inalchuk, a relation of Amir Muhammad's mother. It would be he who stopped the caravan's procession,

and after meeting with their ambassador and the other heads of the group, ordered them all detained. The stated reason was that one of their number, a man Inalchuk had apparently known previously, had supposedly addressed the governor without his title of Ghayir Khan. It would become quickly obvious, however, that this was little more than a convenient excuse, and that the governor was in fact simply meaning to seize the caravan's rich cargo for himself. Upon taking the Mongol caravan captive, Inalchuk sent a message to his emir, telling him that he had captured a host of Mongol spies and proposing their immediate execution. Whether because he actually believed his governor's accusations, or, somewhat more likely, that he

saw it as a chance to seize the goods for himself without need to pay it back, the emir agreed to the execution of the entire band, and that the stolen goods be taken to the city of Bukhara and sold. So it was done, and it might have been that the Mongol caravan was simply never heard of again, excepting that one of their number, a lone camel driver, managed to escape capture and fled back to Mongolia, bearing witness to the great Khan of the Khwarizmians' treachery. From Leo de Hartog, The Mongol was furious.

He went to the top of a mountain, as was the custom of the shamans, and remained there for three days and three nights. During his sojourn there, he told Tangri, I was not the author of this trouble. Grant me the strength to exact vengeance. In spite of this egregious offense, the killing of a Mongol ambassador was one of the most serious possible offenses, as was the theft of the Khan's goods, Genghis was as yet willing to make a final attempt to avoid all-out war. A new embassy was sent to the Khwarazmian capital, this time consisting only of one Muslim and two Mongols, to demand an explanation from the Amir Muhammad for his egregious breach of international etiquette.

Perhaps it was, after all, that the Amir was blameless in all this, and that the blood lay on the offending governor's hands alone. If that were the case, the ambassadors demanded, Muhammad must turn over the governor of Uttar to them in chains, to be taken back to Mongolia and face the Khan's justice. At this, Muhammad balked. He would do no such thing, and the fact that these three foreigners had the audacity to stand before him making such demands was an insult to his station and power. Especially insulting to him was the fact that the lead ambassador was a Muslim like himself, yet paid his service and power. Especially insulting to him was the fact that the lead ambassador was a Muslim like himself, yet paid his service and loyalty to this heretical barbarian king of the east. Muhammad II's response was swift and damning. The Muslim ambassador was executed on the spot,

and the two Mongols were instructed to ride back to Mongolia and inform their king that if he wanted his treasure back so badly, then he'd have to come and take it, if he could. Yet before they were even allowed to leave with their lives, the emir either had their beards shaved off or, in some tellings, disfigured their faces, a sign of extreme humiliation in either case, and the executed ambassador's head was sent off with them in a box. The two Mongols would arrive back at Avarga and the great Khan's Gur in late 1218, burying their grisly box and their fateful response from the emir. Unquestionably, Muhammad II had calculated such a move to humiliate the Mongol leader and

teach him his place in the order of the world. The self-styled Shah of Khwarizm was supreme and undefeated, and it was he, not some eastern infidel chieftain, who called the shots and determined justice, life, and death. Yet instead of putting Genghis Khan in his place, he had unwittingly signed the death warrant for not just himself, nor even his entire nation, but the entire civilizational order upon which it was all established. As Giovanni would later put it, the governor of Otrara's attack wiped out not just a caravan, but, quote, laid waste to the whole world. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death,

people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with

remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. So, just to quickly recap here. The three major events we've been talking about, the Tumad Rebellion in Siberia, the campaign against Guslog and the Karakatan, and the back-and-forth escalation of tensions with Khwarezmia were all more or less happening at around the same time, circa 1217 to around 1218.

And it was this final, fatal insult by Amir Muhammad, however, that finally got Genghis to tell his respective generals, Jochi in Siberia and Jeb in Transoxiana, Okay, quit your goofing around, stop playing with your food, we've got serious business to attend to here. Finish up whatever you're doing, and get over here. Thus, by the new year of 1218, both of the former campaigns were hastily and brutally finished off to make way for the prosecution of this third one, and the entire border between the now-conquered Western Liao territories

and that of Khwarizmia, a region marked out by the Irtish River, was occupied by the Mongols and the forces under their command. Lhikan called his banners, rallying the armies of those lords and kings who had sworn their aid and support to him. Of particular note was his message to the emperor of Western Xia, known in Chinese sources as Xia Shenzong, and in Mongol sources as Berkhan. Genghis's missive stated, The golden reins of my authority has been severed by the treachery of the Sartawu people, which is the Khwarizmians. I'm writing out to settle the score with these rebels.

I bid you join yourself with me as my right hand, my army, and ride out. End quote. The Mongol message was read out before the Tangut court, and Shenzong considered how he should reply. Yet before the Xia emperor could make his response, his chief ambassador, Asha Gambu, made a boastful reply of his own. Quote, End quote. Thus he sent the Mongol emissaries back to Genghis without any Tangut troops at all. Upon hearing this report, Genghis was puzzled. Why would Ashagambu say such things to us?

He must know there would be no great difficulty in destroying the Tangut kingdom set out for Khwarizmia to bring justice to its Amir. As they rode out, Genghis took stock of the intelligence his spies and informants had been able to gather about his latest foe. For though the Muslim ruler knew precious little about the Mongol Khan that he faced, as evidenced by his foolhardy dismissal of even the pretense of civility, as ever, Genghis prided himself on knowing all he could about friend and foe alike. Like a hunter studying his targeted game, sussing out areas of strength to be avoided and weak points to fracture. This last his agents found in abundance across the Khwarizmian emir's empire. A young empire cobbled together from many disparate peoples and cultures, much like the

great Khan's own, meant that any leader had a limited number of options for how to maintain order and control. For Genghis, that had been the almost superhuman sense of loyalty that his force of personality inspired in those around him. His penchant for seeking out the best qualified individuals for any position, regardless of previous station or relation, his ruthless stamping out of individual tribalism in favor of a greater sense of pan-Mongol identity, and of course all backed up with a goodly smattering of terror at what the outcome of defiance would inevitably be. It was, over the course of his whole life, a near-perfect balance of carrot and stick. Obey me and we all prosper together.

Defy me and face annihilation alone. Muhammad II, however, had built his reign on a much different combination. A whole lot less carrot, and a whole lot more stick. From de Hartog, as workers and were obliged to show utter submission. The primarily Islamic population of these regions were only aware of a tribal relationship, there was no notion of nationalism. Other unfortunate circumstances attended the rule of Sultan Muhammad. The incessant warfare, which had prevailed during his father's rule and continued under his own, caused much suffering in most of the region. The Khwarizm army, recruited mainly from foreign mercenaries of Turkish origin, terrorized people with savage cruelty. This army of mercenaries was, however, the sole support of Muhammad's throne, and in his own interest he was obliged to subordinate the protection of his

peoples to the pleasure of his army. End quote. It's the eternal boondoggle of regimes that rule through fear and military subjugation. If the only thing protecting you from the people is the army, then you have to do anything and everything to keep the army happy, even if it means inflicting further suffering and engendering more hatred from your people. What was worse, there was no central administrative organization within the Emir's government, and in fact, many of the empire's regional governor posts still sat empty or occupied by family members who could barely stand their supposed ruler, and like as not, wouldn't even listen to him. Chief among these was his own mother, Turkin, who pretty much ruled

the geographic center of Khwarizmia in her own name as Khatun, and who regularly ignored the dictums of her own son. Thus, though geographically large, Muhammad II ruled only nominally over large parts of his empire, and could count on no one but the soldiers whose continued loyalty was contingent on the size of their upcoming paycheck. This was all bad enough, but it got worse from there. All this was compounded and exacerbated by his own apparent lack of realization about what a precarious position these circumstances placed him in. Quote, End quote.

He had as yet no idea of the kind of education he was about to receive at the hands of an illiterate step-herder educated by the school of hard knocks. Even so, Muhammad was smart enough to understand that a Mongol response would be forthcoming. After the mass murder at Otrar, how could it not? Convening his council of war, then, they discussed how best to counter the Mongol incursion. The emir's son, Jalal al-Din, put forth the plan that the Khwarazmian army mass along the empire's eastern border along the Sirdaria River, near Uttara itself, arguing that by so doing, they could deny them any chance of rest before meeting in battle. Jalal al-Din offered to lead this force himself, though it seems that the majority of the emir's other advisors did not favor this strategy, and instead urged Muhammad to withdraw his armies behind the Amu Darya River. It has been posited many times by subsequent historians that the emir's failure to take his son's advice and concentrate his forces for a mass attack against the Mongol army cost him the war.

But de Hartog points out that, given the endemic problems of Khwarezmi at the time, that would have been a virtual impossibility. To cope with the increasing tension on the eastern frontier, he had to reinforce his army. To do this, high taxes had to be imposed, a measure strongly resisted in his newly formed empire. Here and there, the people rose in rebellion. He could not therefore concentrate his army all in one place. In order to keep the peace, the Khwarizm Shah was obliged to post numbers of his troops all over his territories, a dislocation of the Khwarizm army, which Genghis Khan swiftly and expertly exploited. In other words, because he needed a large army to deal with the

Mongols, he had to raise taxes. But because he raised taxes, he could not mass his large army in order to counter the Mongols. He'd put himself into a classic catch-22. The Mongol force arrived at the eastern border of Khwarizmia in late 1218. From the secret history, quote, he rode past the settlement of Alai, taking with him his Merkid wife, Kulan Khatun, as companion, and leaving his brother, Ochigin, in command of the great camp at Avarga. The first army he sent out was commanded by Jeb. Behind them, he sent another led by Subadai, and behind them a third under Tokutar. Sending off these three commanders, he told them, Famously, Genghis employed one of his favorite tactics once again in his initial invasion of

the empire, that of attack from a direction the enemy thinks is impossible. Though a division of his warriors kept up appearances of a typical line of attack by advancing in the usual direction against the Khwarizmian border cities, Genghis and the backbone of his force instead plunged headlong into and through the Kizil Kum, the infamous Red Sand Desert that covered nearly 300,000 square kilometers of modern Uzbekistan. With summer temperatures having been recorded as reaching highs of more than 52 degrees Celsius or 125 degrees Fahrenheit, it was with good reason that caravans along the Silk Road had for more than a thousand years detoured hundreds of additional miles to make their way

around the deadly wasteland. But by allying with the local desert nomads of the Kizilkhum, Genghis was able to plunge his army through it and arrive intact on the other side, leaving the Khwarezmian forces not just outflanked, but utterly gobsmacked. Though at first the Mongol armies rode past Khwarezmian cities without stopping or attacking, their mere presence had the perhaps known and intentional effect of breaking most of the populace's will to put up any resistance outright. In droves, the people fled to the Mongol lines to submit, bringing with them yet further information about the fracture points within the military and political situation of the enemy empire.

Elsewise, they fled in the opposite direction, toward the nearest great city of the region, Bukhara. As far as the Mongol commanders were concerned, that was actually the better outcome. Just as they had done to the Jin Empire in the east, they now used terror as a means to stretch the supply limits of this sedentary society to, and then past, its breaking point. If they wanted to hide behind their walls, as the Jurchen had done, and these Persians surely would as well, well, then best to fill those walls to the brim with useless mouths and grasping hands. Better to deplete the city's supplies and pillage their farms well ahead of the first Mongol even arriving at the city gates. The border towns under the command of Amin al-Muq were thus taken and plundered, and the governor

himself fled to the prince Jalal al-Din in an attempt to bolster each other's forces against the Mongol advance. As I mentioned earlier, the greater part of the Khwarezmian armies were Turkish mercenaries who had rather early on in the conflict begun rapidly doing the calculus in their heads and determining that, you know what, regardless of what amount of payment was promised to them by the emir, it was actually a pretty bad deal if they were too dead to spend it later. As such, especially early on in the war, although it would continue throughout, entire city garrisons of ostensibly Kharyzmian troops closed and sealed their city gates only to begin negotiations with the Mongol armies upon

their arrival. They appeared to think that, given the fact that large numbers of the Mongol armies were likewise their Turkic brethren, that they could bargain their way out of the fate that awaited them and join the winning side, maybe even getting a better deal in the process. The Mongol emissaries were more than willing to hear these garrison commanders out, as well as their terms. Sure thing. Open the gates, and yeah, we'll let you live. Heck, you can join us, we'll pay you guys well. Shiny new hats while we're at it. The works. Mm-hmm. Yep. Whatever you say.

Yeah, but first, open the gates. When the Turk soldiers were sufficiently satisfied that they were totally about to be on the ends with the Mongols and join up, they'd throw open the gates, as promised, and let the conquerors inside, only to be duly disarmed and mustered in the city square along with the rest of the populace. It was only then that they realized, far too late at this point, that those honeyed words they'd been told from the other side of the wall now meant exactly nothing from this side. Moreover, what possible use could the Great Khan, or any of his commanders, have for cowardly soldiers who fought only for money and would turn their cloak at the first sign of trouble?

No, the Khan valued above all else loyalty, and just because you cheated on your prince for him doesn't make you any less of a cheater. Their terms of negotiation were therefore retroactively amended, and they would one and all receive precisely the reward for their service to the Khan that their actions deserved, a traitor's execution to the last man. De Hartog notes that such a brutal and and arguably underhanded, tactic was a military necessity, especially early on in the war, at least while the Khwarizmian army remained as yet unbroken. Quote, The numerical inferiority with which Genghis marched into Khwarizm demanded absolutely loyal troops.

In 1221, when he no longer had much to fear from the enemy's army, and it was necessary to replace his losses, Turkish troops were indeed accepted from the Khwarizm army, even in fairly large numbers. End quote. The Mongol Expeditionary Army pushed westward, crossing first the Chu and then the Talus Rivers, along whose banks Tang Chinese and Abbasid Muslim armies had once clashed almost five centuries prior. By the late autumn of 1218, Genghis himself had arrived outside of Uttar, where his great caravan had been slaughtered by the governor, who yet huddled within.

His sons, Chagatai and Ogedei, were entrusted with the siege of the city, while Joch took his tomb and force up the eastern bank of the Sir Daria to pillage the towns of Signak and Jand, thereafter moving north into the steppe to engage the nomadic Kipchak and Kangli tribes, both of whom were close allies of the Khwarizmian ruling house and thus deemed themselves rebels. Altrar would fall in the night through one of the many acts of self-serving treachery by the Turkic guardsmen opening the gates to the Mongols in an attempt to save their

own skins. In short order, and seemingly without much internal resistance, as much as 90% of the soldiers garrisoned within the city were killed either as they slept or in the subsequent slaughter. That left perhaps as many as 2,000 to 6,000 troops alive and within the central citadel, who were able to bar the gates and man the walls where the governor ensconced within. It would be for five long months that the defenders held out, until at last they slipped up, once again through an act of self-serving cowardice.

A senior commander of the guard attempted to flee through a posthumous gate, but was immediately caught and executed, for treachery of course, by the Mongol besiegers. Then they forced their way in. From John Mann, quote, Realizing they were doomed, the defenders staged suicide assaults on Mongol spearmen and bowmen, 50 at a time, until finally, Anilchuk and his few surviving bodyguards were trapped on the upper floors. By that point, they'd been reduced to hurling little more than bricks loosened from the walls down at their ever-encroaching foes. At last, as per the Great Khan's order, Inalchuk was taken alive and in chains. After the appropriate pomp and ceremony for one so infamous to the Mongols for his crimes

against them, he faced his public execution. The more colorful telling of the tale of the fall of Uchar has a truly karmic death for the greedy governor. All this had been started over his hunger for gold and silver, and thus let it so end. The governor was restrained, ingots of the precious metals were melted down in cauldrons, and then, yes, exactly like Game of Thrones, the molten stream was poured into the eyes and ears of the governor. Awesome? Yeah. Brutal? Definitely. Likely? Not so much. Such an end, creative and poetic though it certainly would have been, would have

been rather uncharacteristically un-Mongol of Inulchuk's executioners. There's a certain brutal simplicity and elegance and, well, calculus to Mongol dealings with death. Unlike many other medieval societies, where the pain of the torture is the point of an execution, Mongols tended to view such things with a more simple and dispassionate frame of mind. Why waste the time and the gold on such an exotic method,

when the simple stroke of a sword would accomplish the same goal? Or, even more likely, given the Mongol aversion to shedding blood, and particularly noble blood, a far more characteristic method would have been to sew him up, perhaps in one of his own fine carpets, and then either have a herd of horses repeatedly trample him to death, or simply throw him into a river to drown. It's less flashy, yes, but it's a much more typical Mongol approach to an execution. Having left Ogedei and Chagatai to deal with the offending governor of Otrar as they saw fit, with or without the molten gold. Genghis himself, along with his youngest son Tolui, rode on, moving their main force southwest and across the likely frozen and thus easily crossable Siridaria River to the fortress

at Zarnuk. Though heavily fortified, it surrendered without offering resistance, and after occupying and then reducing its population, they turned away from the road to Zamarkand, and instead followed several hired Turkoman guides up the little-used road to Nur. It too would surrender without a fight to the forces led by Subutai, and would become one of the few towns across Khwarizmia that would not face the Mongol extermination command, and was indeed demanded a comparatively low tribute. In the cases of both Zarnuk and Nur, though the soldiers within were

exterminated, and the young men were conscripted into the Mongol force, the rest of the population were allowed to eventually return to their lives, and not enslaved and shipped back to Mongolia. It was about the best that anyone would get. In February of 1220, the dawn of the Year of the Dragon, Genghis Khan reached the great city of Bukhara, with a population of some 300,000 almost rivaling that of Baghdad itself, and where the Amir's ill-gotten treasures had been taken and then sold off. The Mongols invested the city in a siege, which lasted for three days, before the garrison force within, reportedly as many as 20,000 soldiers,

sallied forth and attempted to break through the Mongol lines to freedom. Though a few did manage to reach the far banks of the nearby Amudarya and kept their lives, for now, the vast majority were wiped out in the attempt by the Mongols, who then turned back to the now completely undefended city. Abandoning all hope, the populace thereafter surrendered and opened its gates, allowing the conquerors inside. Given its almost singular position in the mind of the great Khan, as the very embodiment

of defiance against his will, Genghis broke with a tradition of his, of rather studiously avoiding setting foot in the disgusting and claustrophobic confines of settled cities. It's evident that Genghis well understood the importance of the city beyond its simple position in his own or his people's mind. Noble Bukhara had long been famed across the Muslim world as a center of Islamic piety and the ornament and delight of all Islam, and had been called by the 11th century anthologist Al-Thalabi the, quote, focus of splendor, the shrine of empire, the meeting

place of the most unique intellects of the age, end quote. Probably the greatest of noble Bokhara's gifts to the world had been the 11th century scholar and scientist Ibn Sina, better known across Europe at the time and for centuries thereafter by his Spanish moniker, Avicenna, whose compendium on maladies and their treatment, known as the Canons of Medicine, would be the medical textbook for the next 500 years. Thus, it was very much the 13th century version of playing to the cameras in a grand and sweeping propagandistic gesture that Genghis Khan rode through the city gates surrounded by his honored guard of Nakhur companions

and to the city's central square. The townspeople had been herded like cattle by their conquerors to amass there, and upon the great Khan's arrival, he called out to the hushed and huddled masses Weatherford notes that such an action was symbolic for the Mongols. By demanding such, and then having it provided for by the people, it signaled the submission of the populace and the Mongols' acceptance of their surrender, that they were now the vassals of the Khan, subject to his commands, but also entitled to his protection. With this token of submission completed, Genghis proceeded to the largest and most ornate building in the square, and indeed virtually the city as a

whole, and was asked if it was the house of the ruler. When informed that it was, in fact, the great mosque of the city, and not the house of any earthly ruler, but of God himself, Genghis made no reply. Quote, The one god was the eternal blue sky that stretched from horizon to horizon in all four directions. God presided over the whole earth. He could not be cooped up in a house of stone like a prisoner or a caged animal. End quote. He dismounted and proceeded, in one of the only known instances of him having done so in his life, into a building of stone.

He then commanded that the scholars and priests within likewise proceed outside and tend to and provide for his horses at once, again symbolically placing them all under his aegis of protection and vassaldom. When he emerged at last from the great mosque of Bukhara, Genghis Khan strode to the center of the square and called out, demanding that the wealthy tradesmen, merchants, and head families of the city, some 280 in all, be found and brought forth. They had, not yet after all, had their turn to feed the Khan's horses. Yet if they thought that was what he was going to demand of them, then they would soon be disabused of any such notion. When they had been amassed and assembled,

Genghis strode up to the steps of the mosque, before turning to the waiting crowd, elite and commoner alike. Through his interpreters, he lectured the denizens of Bacara on the nature of sin, and the specific sins committed by the emir and the elites of their city. Juvaini would later put pen to parchment and write down, according to him at least, the great Khan's own words. Quote, O people, know that you have committed great sins, and that it is the great ones among you who have committed these sins.

If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed these sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you. End quote. Mann notes that such words, though fearsome in their own right, were understood by the notable present to be neither personal nor vindictive in nature, but rather fitting of the circumstances surrounding them all. Khwarazm's leadership had been appalling, after all, and the Muslim populace had long been tearing their own society apart. Perhaps God had sent such a fate unto them for such blindness and arrogance. When he'd concluded his harangue, he instructed that the wealthy headsmen of the city be divided

up amongst his soldiers, not the common soldiers, mind you, his personal guardsmen, and that they were to hand over all of their treasure, especially those treasures that they had gotten from the pillaged Mongol caravan. But before allowing them to depart for their task, he admonished the wealthy to not waste anyone's time trying to show the soldiers where the wealth that they'd stored above ground was kept. His other men would find and gather all that up easily enough on their own. Instead, the needs must lead their captors to where their secret treasures were stored away, buried, or hidden. Leaving them thus to their task, the Great Khan turned at last to the final redoubt of Bukhara, the citadel at the city's heart. Within the nigh-impenetrable

stone walls of the central citadel, some 400 cavalrymen, who had apparently not received the memo about trying to break out sat in wait. With nothing else for them to do, surely they must have realized that their lives were forfeit in any event, they resisted the Mongol storm for a further 12 days. No doubt these warriors knew enough, or maybe had even faced themselves, enough nomad warriors to understand that no matter how fearsome they were on the open fields in battle, the step riders had absolutely no means to penetrate heavy, fixed fortifications. It's just not what they did. To this, however, Genghis had very little problem. Because that's when the Chinese designed and manned siege machines begin rolling up and being assembled right outside.

Catapults, trebuchets, mangonels hurling not just stones, but incendiaries, explosives, and long-burning naphtha liquids, both at and atop and over the structure. All the while, sappers dug under the walls to undermine them, while portable siege towers with extendable ladders pressed against them. Moreover, the Mongol commanders were only too happy to demand the surrendered populace – man and woman, old and young alike – now serve their new Khan in the further liberation of their city, quote, forcing prisoners, in some cases the captured comrades of the men still in the citadel, finally had enough and surrendered, they were led out of the fortress, divided into units of ten, and then exterminated the last man with a sort of ruthless, cold, almost industrial efficiency

that the world had almost never seen before. It was at last time for the remaining populace of Bukhara, they who had dared to profit off of the blood and stolen property of the Great Khan and his Mongol brethren, to learn of their own collective fates. For the wealthy merchants and traders, that would be of absolute exile. Genghis declared that their city and everything in it, save the clothes currently on their backs, were forfeit. They were to depart immediately into the desert and never return, and that anyone caught trying to remain, or to hide, or to return seeking their possessions would be ruthlessly slaughtered.

To the common populace, though the Khan had admitted himself that they were not personally to blame for this fate, their sentences would prove little better. They were now the servants of the great Khan, after all, and they would now be utilized exactly as such. From de Hartog, quote, The people were divided into various groups. The artisans were sent as slaves to Mongolia. The strong young men had to follow the army to provide an expendable vanguard at the next storming of a town. Families were separated forever. Women were also shown no mercy, and there were heartbreaking scenes. The Mongols raped the women under the eyes of their fellow victims, who could only weep at their helplessness. Many chose death in the face of such terrible things. End quote. The imam of the Great Mosque, even knowing that he'd be slaughtered for such

defiance, felt compelled to speak out against such evils, and as predicted, was cut down in short order. Finally, either by accident or simple malice, the city was set ablaze, and made almost entirely from wood and straw as it was, burned down almost entirely to the ground. The fate of Bukhara would serve as a grisly template for the remaining years of the Mongol conquest of Khwarizmia. Genghis's juggernaut rolled eastward, toward Samarkand, where Muhammad II at last realized that he had made a huge mistake. It paused just long enough to besiege and then take Khoshend on the borders of Ferghana, all the while driving the non-urban populace into such centers to decrease supply stores and increase the terror. Of the prisoner vanguards, one in every ten were given Mongol battle standards

and commanded to carry them forth into battle, giving the impression to any defenders that the Mongols possessed a host of enormous size rather than just herds of human chattel they drove before them. Arriving outside of Samarkand, the Mongols were probably shocked when the emir sent a brigade of 20 trained elephants, likely gifts from India, out of the main gates to engage the vast horde. Yet such a half-baked strategy almost immediately backfired when, faced by the thousands upon thousands of massed armed people, as well as the sting of Mongol arrows, the elephants turned and trampled their masters before escaping out into the open plains. It was clear that Samarkand, like Bukhara before it, was doomed. Facing the unthinkable, but suddenly inevitable, prospect, Muhammad II fled,

abandoning his capital and its populace to their grisly fates, and riding out at top speed across the countryside, as fast and as far as his mount would carry him away from the Mongols who now eagerly pursued him. In each place he stopped, he desperately warned all who would listen of the death that was coming for them all, and that they should likewise abandon their lands, take what they could, burn what they couldn't, and flee behind him. Genghis, now approaching 60, simply wasn't quite feeling up to personally chasing the emir across Central Asia, but knew that its needs must be done if this war could truly ever end in victory. Thus it would fall to his trusted Jeb and Thesubadeh and their combined tumens to hound the emir across Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran,

coming as close as a mere day's ride behind the fleeing prince at times, until they arrived at the shores of the Caspian Sea. Abandoning his possessions, Muhammad II and a small retinue, including his son, Jalal al-Din, rowed out in a small boat to a small island beyond the reach of the Mongols and their arrows, where, having at last evaded his tormentors, Amir al-Aldin Muhammad II of Khwarezmia, who had once fancied himself king of kings, died in poverty, despair, and shock at all he'd lost at the age of 50. There would still be some mopping up left to do, the cities of Garganj, Nishapur, and

Merv receiving particularly harsh treatment by the Mongols, who by that point were clearly ready to be just done with the Persian resistance. At Garganj, for instance, they would once again attempt that earliest siege tactic they'd tried to employ against their foes in Xishia, the ancient Chinese siege technique of river damming and diversion into a city. Once again, however, this would end in disaster for the Mongols, when 3,000 of their soldiers tasked with overseeing the operation were taken by surprise and killed by Irganj ambushers.

By the time the city was taken in early 1221, having conducted a brutal and extended house-by-house, street-by-street taking of the city once they'd torn the walls down brick-by-brick, the Mongols no longer had any patience for mercy. Giovanni describes that, as per usual, the city's inhabitants who were deemed valuable, some 100,000 of them, were led away to serve the empire. While for everyone else, no, they were not going to be joining the army this time. He tells of the city's population being apportioned out in groups of 24 to each of the Mongol army's 50,000 soldiers.

Over the course of that day, each and every one were executed in turn, which, if such numbers can be believed, makes some 1.2 million systematically slaughtered over the course of a single day. The Mongols are not done in the west, far from it, but next time we'll leave Jeb and Subedai to their reduction of Persian resistance at cities like Merv, and follow Genghis back east, where he has one final score to settle against the vassal who thumbed his nose at him when he'd asked for help, that traitorous Tangut emperor of western Sha. Because it was time for Genghis to ensure that, while he might be reaching the end of his travels, his legacy would endure. Thanks for listening. To be continued... If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast.

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