Ghengis Khan

Temujin-iron worker.

See the movie "The Conqueror", with John Wayne and Susan Hayward. Wayne plays Genghis Khan. John Wayne's worst movie, bar none. See it just for laughs.
Best line, delivered in Wayne's cowboy drawl: "This Tartar woman stirs my blood!"

According to Hollywood legend, this turkey was filmed in the desert near an atomic bomb test and all the cast and crew was irradiated. Wayne and many others in the crew eventually died from cancer, possibly due to exposure during this movie's filming.

I see. So conversely the Chin Dynasty, Kwarazmian Empire, Xi-Xia rulers, Persia, the principalities of Russia, Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria were all tribes. No nations counted among them.

Setanta, your pompous love for hearing your own rhetoric undermines learning.



Oh, so wrong again, master orator Setanta. Russia was humiliated and defeated in battle several times under the Khan's armies (which they outnumbered upon the opening of each clash, by the way). Batu Khan and Subotai not only took Kiev (the capitol of the Russian civilization at the time), but indeed captured Moscow in 1238. (Look it up, before speaking out of your ... turn). You say that that nation was never broken, but Russian historians point to the Mongol/Tartan invasion and domination as directly responsible for many of the developments of modern Russia, to include a perpetuation of some of the most autocratic governments in Europe, and the retarding of technological and progressive advances in Russia.



Look at that, a historical truism. Though, Ogodei Khan's army did reach the gates of Vienna and the Danube River. The mongols under the generalship of Subotai also defeated the Germans when he crushed them with the Teutonic Knights and the Poles at Leignitz, 1241 (look that one up too). Not many days afterward Subotai annihalated the royal Hungarian army under King Bela. The Mongols ceased their invasion of Europe of their own accord, much to the relief of Western Europe which would have probably fallen given a focused Mongol assault.



Back to complete historical inaccuracy and unreliability are we. Genghis Khan personally invaded Afghanistan in 1219, subjugating the entire country and destroying most of the land's cities (not that they were great in stature). False statement, though that seems to be becoming the pattern.



Another catagorically false statement. If you meant the quriltai that immediately followed his death then you should know that there was absolutely no struggles for power between his sons and generals. Ogodei had already been chosen successor by Temujin. Subotai and Jebe (His two greatest generals, just in case) were fanatically loyal to the Khan's word. His sons and grandsons were given administrative authority of vast khanates, but power struggles between them did not transpire till almost two generations later.



That you elevate Charlemagne above the Khan nails the final stake into your coffin of absurdity. I won't even spell out the details. Suffice to say, I guess you never heard of the Khan's Yasa legal code, military decimal organization that is still studied today at West Point, first pony express (and indirect mail system) in history, or the first official international trade regulation in Asia.

Setanta you are as eloquent as you are farcically mistaken. Please research all your erroneous points and then return to attack my claim.

I've nothing of yours to attack, and care little for your inability to understand what i write. Your hositility is evident, and it informs your obsessive desire to prove me wrong. Have fun.

The Mongols did indeed conquer those nations, but I don't think Genghis (he is the topic) headed many of those campaigns.

Inability to understand. Well said, soothsayer. I am unable to understand misstatement and falsity as they can be rather difficult to decipher. You haven't said that any of the errors I pointed out were not true mistakes of yours, consequently I imagine you own up to them. Then, in the spirit of concession, yes I don't understand much of what you write.



Nothing obsessive about it, however, I can see how you would like to think so given the blatant mistakes you included in your Genghis Khan post. "Have fun." With you I do.

Again, the sneer is supposed to be the icing on the cake Lusatian, not the only stock and store.

Read the post Craven. The facts will be self-evident. I didn't post the flagrantly spurious information. Those who write bombastically verbose posts filled with incorrect information should own up to the facts and say that they were wrong. Otherwise they should better ponder runaway lectures.

I think you have "Setanta" tatooed on your bum with cross-hairs over it. It can't be a healthy obsession.

You needn't defend him Craven. He is a grown man and should stand by his falsities. You pride yourself in factual intellectualism, why then do you now defend someone who talked himself into a noose. By the way, anyone who employs such better-than-thou tones and then proceeds to spew historical fiction deserves a reminder whether it be me, you, Setanta or otherwise.

The day I quote such embarrassing nonsense (especially something involving facts flawed so obviously) I perfectly expect and even hope to have my misstatements brought to my attention.

I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree in regard to who deserves just what then.

See you soon.

I'm sure you think so. As for blatant mistakes, given that you refrained from the acid and childish sneers of your earlier post, i'll be more than happy to point out that you are wrong about that.



Here you demonstrate your lack of a subtlety of comprehension. Certainly the nations to which you refer saw themselves as nations, but Chinggis did not. To all and sundry, Chinggis and his personally loyal officers offered the choice of conquest and enslavement, or death. This is very much the attitude of tribal conquest, and the most notable aspect of Mongol conquest while Chinggis still lived is that there was no effort made to take advantage of the systems and polities already in place--beyond imitating the effective revenue collection methods of the Mandarins. Kubelai rises above the tribal level of his contemporaries because he saw the value of re-establishing the Mandarinate and the entire imperial apparatus of China, thereby effectively establishing a dynasty--something Chinggiss failed notably to do himself. But the Yuan was a feeble dynasty, and a pushover for the Ming.



Absolutely, Batu Khan, the Khan of the Tatar Golden Horde, burned the little wooden-walled settlement of the Kremlin--which can conveniently be referred to as Moscow--eleven years after the death of Chingiss. Batu Khan was the grandson of Chingiss--and his armies were Tatar, not Mongol; although certainly, Mongols formed a part of his army. To suggest that having had Chinggis as a grandfather makes Batu and the Tatars into Mongols is as absurd as saying that the accession of Georg, Elector of Hanover, to the English throne in 1715 as George I makes the English Germans. The specific point leads to the thesis which i expounded at the end of my post. The destruction of the Kievan Rus by the Mongols, while the Grand Duchy (Archduchy, Principality--the terms can here be used interchangeably) of Vladimire/Muscovy survived had precisely the effect i described. It was catalytic, but not foundational. The authority of the Kievan Rus was obliterated. The authority of the Moscovite Grand Dukes, descended from the Kievan Rus Prince, Vladimir Monomach, was established by the destruction of Kiev. The subsequent conquest of the Kremlin and Vladimir-Suzdal by the Tatars had far-reaching consequences indeed. The Mongols conquered and destroyed. Batu demonstrated that he had a good deal more canny understanding of upon which side his bread was buttered than did his famous, and politically clueless grandfather. The Tatars who followed Batu (by no means all of them, as many had always resented the Mongol influence) withdrew with him, and eventually established themselves in the Crimean. From there, they demanded tribute from Muscovy, and when it did not arrive, or even when it did but they felt the desire for a little sport--they raided the Ukraine and rounded up thousands, and in many years, tens of thousands of peasants to be used as slaves, or sold in Constantinople as slaves, after the conquest of that city by the Osmanli Turks in 1453. This rather witless response to Muscovite trucelence did no harm to the Muscovite Grand Dukes, but it gradually drove the Don Cossacks into a roughly stable alliance with Moscow. I acknowledge that the manner in which i wrote my remark can be construed to mean that the Mongols could not have overrun Moscovy--and that definitely would be an incorrect statement. That they did not, is, however, very significant, in that it left Muscovy as the only center of authority among the Rus.



Once again, Chingiss was dead and buried for 14 years when this event took place. The commanders of this army, equally composed of Tatars and Mongols, were Baidar and Kaidu, the latter a grandson of Ogedai. Subotai and Batu Khan were moving to the south, in the campaign which would lead to the defeat of the Hungarian King Béla, to which you referred--i have absolutely no reason to assume that Subotai was present at Leignitz, and much reason to believe he wasn't.

My response to this is to ask how one can consider this to be evidence that the Mongols could have overrun Germany or France? Baidar and Kaidu left Poland, and never returned. Alexander II of the Vladimir principality (i.e., Moscovy) was made the Prince of Novgorod in 1236. In 1240, he defeated the Swedes on the banks of the Neva, and got his cognomen, Alexander Nevsky. In 1241, the same year as Leignitz, he defeated the Teutonic Knights, and drove them from Russia. He then crushed them at Lake Peipus in Estonia, in 1242. The chronology begs your contention that the defeat of a handful of Teutonic Knights who had joined Duke Henry of Silesia, and the Polish Pans and their fuedal levy at Leignitz is evidence that all of Europe trembled before the Mongol. If the Teutonic Knights were destroyed by Baidar and Kaidu at Leignitz, how were they able to make so marvelous a recovery as to attempt to again invade Russia in that same year? In fact, the Mongols destroyed a largely Polish army at Leignitz; the Teutonic Knights who joined the Poles and Silesians did so volutarily, as the main body of that quasi-religious order were preparing an invasion--the invasion which was defeated in Estonia by Nevsky the following year. It is a completely false statement to contend that the Germans were defeated at Leignitz. The Germans present there were Silesians; although Germans, this hardly authorizes a blanket statement that they "defeated the Germans when he crushed them with the Teutonic Knights and the Poles at Leignitz." Some Germans were slaughtered at Leignitz. The ability of Nevsky to raise a Russian army which could effectively defeat the Teutonic Knights in the following year also gives evidence that the influence of the Mongol raids into eastern Europe was not at all as great as your post would suggest--both Germans and Russians had more than sufficient energy and resources to continue their military bickering.

When Ogedai died in 1241, Subotai, Baidur and Kaidu all returned to Mongolia. Torogene became the regent for her son Guyak, but with his death in 1248, the Mongols were again left leaderless, and it was not until 1251 that Mongke became the final ruler in the "dynasty" of Chinggis. In Europe, as in Asia, the Mongols were a force of destruction, of subjugation, of slaughter for its own sake. No lasting polity or culture was founded by them, apart from Kubelai's feeble Yuan dynasty, which did not survive him by even a century.

Furthermore, that the excellent discipline and horsemanship of the Mongols allowed them to defeat one enemy after the other, in the open plains and steppes of central Asia and eastern Europe is no evidence that it would have served them to assure the conquest of Germany and France. The deep forests, the rolling wooded hills, the myriad rivers and streams of central and western Europe would likely have negated their tactical advantages as surely as it did the Huns more than seven centuries earlier. Aetius and his Frankish allies defeated the Huns because they (the Huns) could not deploy and attack as was their custom. When the advantage of mounted troops was made null by terrain, the equivalent displine of the Gallic foot on the Roman model commanded by Aetius, and the expertise of the Frankish horsemen in precisely that terrain, spelled doom for the Huns. There is no reason to assume that the Mongols would have fared any better, and much reason to assume that they would not have done any better. The Poles and Magyars defeated in 1241 and 1242 were wild, undisciplined horsemen. The handful of Teutonic Knights at Leignitz fought on foot. The feudal levy of the French in the 13th century might have been as militarily weak in terms of organization as were the Poles and Magyars, but their discipline was far better. Duke Henry's Silesian levy's were certainly no match for the Mongols and Tatars, but that is no evidence that the Mongols could have overrun the heavily forested highlands of Bohemia and driven across the Rhine. That the Mongols reached the gates of Vienna is not evidence of their invincibility, either. The Osmanli Turks managed that feat on more than one occassion, and they failed utterly to drive out of the Balkans and establish themselves.

Writing in Military History magazine in June, 1997, Erik Hildinger sums up very well the meaning of the invasions of Europe in the early 1240's, in his comment on Leignitz:

Terrible as the debacle at Liegnitz was, it had ultimately been pointless--a Mongol effort to support a conquest [i.e., a Tatar conquest] that was suddenly abandoned, leaving nothing but a wide swath of destruction and death as the Mongol legacy in eastern and central Europe.

Which has been my point all along. The Mongols left no legacy but bags of ears rotting away to nothing, bloodsoaked battlefields and villages, and a brand new political playing field for the survivors.



This is a false statement, not the one i made. You have, conveniently for your argument, ignored this portion of what i wrote: "They did not penetrate to the Hinud Kush, although bound in that direction." Once again, the effect of the Mongols as catalytic was felt. As you point out yourself, the cities of Afghanistan were not great in stature. The life of the Afghan peoples (many tribes, many ethnic groups) has never revolved around the cities, and many invaders have made themselves masters of the cities, only to be driven from the land in defeat. The point about the Hindu Kush is crucial; first, it is evidnce that the Mongols did not in fact, as you contend, "subjugate the entire country." The other important aspect of this fact, is that, as the destruction of the Kievan Rus allowed for the rise of the Vladimir, or Muscovite principality, so the destruction wrought in Afghanistan allowed for the rise of the Pathans in the Hindu Kush (those tribes who are these days commonly referred to as the Pashtoons--or however it is that westerners have decided to spell it currently.) Once again, my point is made--the Mongols were catalyst, but left no foundation.



Once again, your capacity for subtlety fails you. I do not say here, nor was there any inferential basis to suggest that i was saying that there was a power struggle within the Mongol tribes. Your facile statement here ignores several salient points. The Mongolian steppes were occupied by far more tribes than those who were called Mongols. The armies of the Great Khan were recruited on the Mongolian steppes, in the Kansu corridor between China and the central Asian steppes, and in the central Asian steppes proper. The tribal struggles to which i refer are the power struggles within those tribes which were satellites and allies of the Mongols, and they engrossed the attention of Chinggis' loyal adherents for years--on the occassion of his death, at the death of Ogedai, at the death of Guyak, and after the death of Mongke. The devil's bargain made with the Tatars was definitely a realistic decision on the part of Chinggis--the attempt to obliterate them, a tribal society every bit as disciplined as the Mongols, and every bit as militarily effective, would have bled Chingiss' armies white, and ended his roll of victories. His canny decision, as a tribal leader, to involve the Tatar in his conquests assured massive new levies of reliable warriors, and prevented the continuance of the worst blood-letting of Mongols which had occurred since he had begun his conquests. Although none of the other tribes of the Mongolian steppes, the Kansu corridor and the central Asian highlands attained to the excellence of the Tatars and Mongols--each set of brush fire uprisings at the death of each successive Khan assured the gradual, and rather rapid, enervation of the Mongol armies. With the death of Ogedai, the attempt to overrun Europe was abandoned altogether. The conquest of the middle east continued, but as i have noted, it was stopped in 1260 by the Mamelukes, and the death of Mongke in 1259 (while the Mongols were conquering the Song--more than 30 years after the death of Chinggis the conquest of China was still not complete) assured the withdrawal of Mongol forces beyond the Oxus--a frontier they would never again cross. The very loyalty of the Mongol "Princes" and the military leaders under their command assured that each new thrust to the west, the southwest or the southeast would be abandoned upon the death of whoever currently held the Khanate. Chingiss in 1227, Ogedai in 1241, Guyak in 1248, Mongke in 1259--each event caused the Mongol "empire" to contract far more quickly than it had ever expanded.



None of these "innovations" survived Chingiss. The Yasa code, the decimal system and the express couriers were simply outgrowths of Mongol military practice and tradition, and were not writ large until Chinggis had gotten a good look at the efficiency of the Mandarinate in China. Revenue collection by the Mongols, on those notably rare occassion in which any of their victims survived to generate any revenue, was a direct imitation of the Manadarin system. These were imitative, and not innovative--and they melted away with the collapse of the Mongol "empire" after 1260. Kubelai squandered the military resources of the Yuan in his reign, and that "dynasty" was already enervated and supine three generations after his death when the Ming arrived. I have not "elevated Charlemagne above the Khan." I have simply pointed out that Charlemagne rose a little above the tribal values of the Salian Franks in instituting education and communications systems--and he, like Chinggis, simply copied the achievements of an older, much better organized empire--in his case, the incomplete memories of the Romans. In fact, his decision to honor the tribal value of partible inheritance, and the consequent fragmentation of his kingdom upon his death, clearly demonstrates that he rose very little indeed above the level of the tribal. You seem to think that the ability to slaughter wantonly over vast distances somehow gives Chinggis and the Mongols a claim to "greatness." By such a standard, any number of petty rulers throughout history who have had no qualms about putting entire populations to the sword have a claim to greatness. When you write something out in long-hand, you are using the direct descendant of the carolignian script first regularized in the reign of Charlemagne. The major highways of France, and the river boat routes used to this day were first established in his reign. For all of its absurdities, the Holy Roman Empire was the most notable product of Charlemagne's rule--for whatever its failures, it was the major political power in Germany until Frederick II just managed to squeak out a victory in the Seven Years War. Chinggis left no such legacy behind.

Therefore, i revert to my original analysis:

"The biggest single effect, to my mind, of the irruption of the Mongols and Tatars into the center of Eurasia was the collapse of the Kievan Principate, the fatal wounding of the remant of the Roman Empire, and the death of the Ayyubid Dynasty. The consequence of that was new authority with different appeals to legitimacy in the form of the Muscovite Archdukes, the Osmalin Turks, the Mamelukes. The Mongols did not provide foundation, they were simply catalyst."

I find your arguments to be either naive, or disingenuous because of a desire to ridicule me. I don't care about that of course, and i'll make no personal remarks about you--i don't know you, am unlikely ever to meet you, and don't really care what you are like personally. I will note however, that dripping acid contempt upon the ideas of others does you no good, and does nothing to increase the force or validity of your arguments.

Set, you have left out the one lasting legacy the Mongols gave to the west, bubonic plague. The continuous movement of populations east to west brought with it previously unexperienced disease that, like native Americans in the 16th century, decimated Europe in the 14th.

Gotta love this place.

I really don't think there are too many places where a discussion of Genghis Khan would lead to so much passion that people's bums end up with cross-hairs painted on them.

A good point, Acq--just as the delivery of malaria to the "new world" killed the Arawak more surely and more swiftly than the tender mercies of the Conquistadores. I don't for a moment deny the "effect," i simply disagree that there was anything new in the Mongol plaugue, beyond, perhaps the degree of the slaughter. Perhaps the Assyrians could vie with them for title of most pointless murder committed.

There was also the effect of the stirring of the gene pool. The human race always eventually gets re-invigorated by a dip in the gene pool--but this of course, is a tragic and unacceptable method. Craven and i have discussed the extent to which the influx of new people into North America was by far the lagrest factor in continuing economic growth and health of the United States (and Canada also). There were similar effects in other parts of the world when migration occured on a large scale. With Nevsky's defeat of the Teutonic Knights, and the relief of the eastern Baltic littoral from the constant fire and bloodshed of the days when that order hunted the "pagan" Balt and Lett, christianity finally did get a hold in that region. I would certainly be the last one here to assert that this was necessarily an automatic conferral of benefaction on that previouly benighted people. I would note, though, that it provided them security from being hunted down by the Teutonic order. The take-over of the Knights by the Hohenzollern clan, originally from Franconia, resulted, eventually, in the recognition of the family as a "House." From that point, by accretion, the Brandenburg Electorate was formed, and that family rose to the dignity of Margrave. Those portions of Silesia which had reverted to the Austrian Archdukes upon the destruction of Duke Henry were then given to Brandenburg when the House was raised to the dignity of the Electorate.

This would appear to have nothing to do with migration, but . . . when the Wends and the other slavic tribes had begun to push in to central and southeastern Europe, in the power vacuum at the conclusion of the Hunnic era, they abandoned the land which the Hohenzollern's would claim as theirs by right of conquest. Prussia was a region of stunted pine forests and sandy hills. Throughout the history of the rise of the House of Brandenburg, its more canny rulers imported population to settle an area which few would likely have chosen on their own. The House provided provender, seed, tools, livestock and tax incentives, not at all unlike a modern American city giving away the candy store in the hope of luring industry to employ their citizens. In Prussia, the equation was more crucial--the Brandenburg House needed peasants settled on the land to assure their very survival. Their leaders were intelligent enough, and grasping enough, over the centuries to acquire bits and pieces of Germany all over the "Reich." The upheavals of the Reformation would work greatly to their advantage when they provided haven to oppressed protestant small holders and craftsmen, from France to Hungary.

When ever migrations have occured, and for whatever reason, it has leavened the culture of the race much to the advantage, sooner or later, of all of the human race. And, as catalysts go, the Mongols were pretty damned dramatic.

The Orator Returns
Dear Setanta:
I had written an reasonable response to your long-winded diatribe of a backtrack, but the server failed to post them. Consequently, I am forced to produce a replica of the case in point.



Setanta backtrack Exhibit A



Such subtlety Setanta. Since you know what Temujin considered "nations" (You are a Central Asian historian aren't you?). No Setanta, you stated that he "did not conquer nations, only tribes". But I guess that's a subtlety now isn't it?



Setanta backtrack Exhibit B



Oh, so they did take Moscow after all. Then you follow such admission with yet another falsity "Batu Khan's army was Tartan and not Mongol". Look it up, Mongol forces made up the core of the Golden Horde. But wait, doesn't this look familiar: "even by the Mongols and the Golden Horde"?
Oh, did I miss a subtlety there? Wasn't Batu Khan's army that took Moscow named the Golden Horde? Setanta so far you wouldn't even make a good lawyer.



Speculation or fact? Did they or did they not invade and trod on most of Afghanistan? Here is Setanta backtrack Exhibit C:



Ask anyone in the military today how much of Operation Enduring Freedom - aka Afghanistan - is in the Hindu Kush and you will find that the Hindu Kush is barely on the border of the country. You either have a peculiar lack of knowledge of geography (don't think that's it), or you merely allow yourself incredible liberty in declaring what is considered Afghanistan (hoping no one will know enough to call you out on it).

Admit it, you said we would have to speculate how they would have fared in Afghanistan, but you really meant the Hindu Kush. Oh, I see. Another subtlety, eh?

Lastly your dismissal and censure of Genghis Khan's achievements, especially given your station, is injudicious and pompous. You call my arguments disingenious, yet you seem to think that long paragraphs cover up factual error and give pretentious analysis weight. (Perhaps the weight of words, many of them).
Well, there are armchair quarterbacks who think they have the authority to realistically critique sports. I guess why should history be any different.

Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
Sir Francis Bacon

You are eloquent Setanta, I'll give you that, long and eloquent. But then, I guess you are well versed in the art of subtlety.

You cannot imagine the belly laugh i got in reading a comment from you about discretion in speech . . .

I wasn't the one caught in blatant error and forced to use "subtleties" to backtrack. If you catch me spewing such "subtleties" I would expect, and actually hope, that you call me out on them.

Subtle enough?

The Washington Post ran a series of articles on "The Man of the Millenium" in 1999, the question being what single man has had the greatest impact on the history of the last thousand years, and the answer as you might expect, was Chengis Khan. Nobody else even comes close. Mongols invented getting around, moving entire cavalry armies 100 - 200 miles in a day and getting messages from Beijing to Moscow in five or six days via pony express. This was in an age in which Europeans and Chinese knew nothing of eachother at all and few Europeans ever saw anything more than 20 miles from where they were born.

Mongols reopened the great trade routes which had been broken for centuries and when Tamerlane destroyed those routes 150 years later, the Europeans, having gotten used to spices and the trade of the orient, began their great age of sailing around Africa to Asia. The modern age thus pretty much starts with Chengis Khan.

Charlemagne by way of contrast may or may not have ever actually existed; many view him as a sort of a German King Arthur. There is apparently no physical evidence on the planet of his existence and some of the stories you readabout taking on Avars and later day huns don't really make sense from a perspective of military history.

WHY did the Mongols invade Europe?
One thing I don't get is..

Why did the Mongols want to invade Europe in the first place?

"This question is going along with the theory that all nations plan to gain something from expansion."

What were the Mongols planning on gaining?

All I can find on the internet is that most people believe that the Mongols Invasions were pointless b/c they conquered most of europe and then just left.

If anyone has any answers at all please respond asap b/c I need this info for school. Any motives that you can think will be just fine.
-thanks
~Carly