Was Genghis Khan Really As Barbaric As We Think? | Line Of Fire | Chronicle

foreign [Music] Century a new and devastating plague struck at the heart of Central Asia Rippling outwards to envelop the lands from China to Poland this was a plague of unbridled Terror not of rats and disease but of men the Mongolian tribes exploded out of the Central Asian steps with a ferocity never seen before on a campaign of bloodthirsty Conquest that would last for the next 100 years the Mongolian Battlefield tactics and their remarkable courage and resilience have become the stuff of Legend they were simply natural Warriors but it took one leader to unite and lead them on the path to power that leader was Genghis Khan [Music] foreign [Music] I think Genghis Khan's Legacy today is his reputation as a great conqueror and ruthless ruler under him the Mongols were able to sweep out of Central Asia and take over most of the known world I'd say that when Genghis Khan was alive he would claim that he had conquered the world and conquered the people who taught 720 languages and he conquered the states of five different colors so that he proclaimed mongolia's Independence throughout the world one of the common myths about Genghis Khan Genghis Khan is that he was a sort of barbaric strong man who managed to somehow unite Fierce and free nomadic tribes into this horde that then rampaged across Europe but the reality is something I think much more interesting so I think we could compare him to someone more like William the Conqueror he's a nobleman effectively he's an aristocrat and at that time step Society was divided between Aristocrats and commoners and high office was only held by aristocrats Genghis Khan was born about the year 1167 with the original name of temujin his father was a local Chieftain and nephew of the former Khan or ruler of the Mongol tribe at the tender age of nine his family escaped to safety after a rival tribe murdered his father and it was while he was in Exile that tamujin met boto his bride to be the young man was given a black Sable coat to use as a dowry he used the coat to buy influence and favor with tribal elders and with the leader of the karite a tribe in central Mongolia the tribal leader took to mujin under his wing but the new alliance was tested when the market a rival tribe from the north raided the karite camp and kidnapped barter mustering all the support he could to mujin and his new tribal allies met and defeated the market in battle and rescued Barton by now tamujin was growing in status and power making alliances with other tribes and calling in the favors once owed to his father in 1202 he surrounded and crushed the tatas near the river kalka in eastern Mongolia in an early example of his distinctive style of military rule he forbade his troops to loot until the tatas had been completely crushed he even went as far as to confiscate The Spoils of those who disobeyed him with this significant Victory under his belt and helped by the constant warring between other tribes temujin became the dominant figure in the region soon other Mongol leaders have pledged their allegiance to him and had proclaimed him Universal ruler chingas Khan history has forever known him as Genghis Khan I think that Genghis Khan's success really depends upon his ability to produce plunder conquests for his supporters and The Wider his territories grew the more he was able to recruit subject Nations who also benefited from Mongol expansion although we might think of the steps as marginal far away distant places and it's very easy to think of them as remote and desolate actually these are centers of power they might look geographically very dispersed you might have difficulty seeing settlements and so on but taken together if you gathered together then the horses and the people from these steplands you had most enormously powerful capabilities militarily in the year 1206 with most of the Mongol tribes United under one ruler for the first time in their history Genghis Khan was declared king or Khan of Mongolia his reputation alone earned him many followers who weary of constant tribal conflict flocked To His Banner to share the comrade Chip And The unrivaled Spoils of his military campaigns the charismatic new King was physically very different to most of his Mongol subjects he was comparatively tall and powerfully built with piercing gray green eyes sure as he could be of his domestic position Genghis was able to set his sights on foreign conquests and he first cast his eyes towards neighboring China Conquest may have seemed impossible even suicidal to attempt but in the early 13th century China was stricken with internal divisions the nation was carved up into three fragments the Qin empire in the north the sheer Shear in the Northwest and the song stayed in the south a lot hinged on the success of the Chinese campaign it would be the mongol's first test against a land of settlers they could not be certain that their Nomad Battle Tactics would work Genghis was well prepared before he set off to fight the chin State firstly to test the Mongol Army his commanders fought and took the tamgud and ergood states without him taking the field this meant that Genghis was able to assess his Army's strengths and weaknesses he also used the term good and ergood campaigns to practice and refine his methods for attacking and destroying fortified places and using their resources to build and test his Siege engines so Genghis was well prepared to face the Qin empire after subduing the weakest of the three Empires the sheer Shear in a brief campaign during 1209 Genghis Khan turned on the chin state in 1211. armed with 180 000 men the Mongol Force plundered and looted to within 25 miles of Beijing however the Mongol Advance was slowed by one weakness that would haunt them for years to come the inability to besiege fortified cities an aspect of war that was new to the Mongols Genghis Khan and his men struggled at first to adapt their Battlefield tactics to the requirements of Siege Warfare but Genghis Khan was unafraid of new ideas so with the aid of Chinese prisoners and their knowledge of engineering he had Siege machines built and troops specially trained for besieging cities the new tactics worked handsomely as the cities of Herbie Shandong and shanzi all fell ow engineering Genghis improved the engineering part of his army by utilizing the skills of The Artisans and Craftsmen of the lands he conquered members of the Mongol force would search for any advantages in armaments that the defeated enemy possessed and instead of shutting it down we'll develop the technology and channel it back into their own Force foreign by doing this the more people the Mongols conquered the greater the improvements in their Army's capabilities in 1214 the exhausted Chinese emperor finally surrendered giving his daughter to Genghis Khan along with a thousand child slaves three thousand horses and vast amounts of Gold Silver and silk Beijing threw its gates open to the Mongols who showed no mercy because they savagely ransacked the city [Music] the capital safely conquered Genghis Khan felt confident enough to leave one of his generals to oversee the rest of the China campaign so in the spring of 1216 he decided to focus his attention on Central Asia by this time the most western reaches of the Mongol territory shared borders with the Islamic State of quarasam a vast but disorganized Empire covering modern-day Iran its leader Shah Muhammad had foolishly executed a caravan of Mongol Traders at utra and had then made matters worse by having the envoy sent to his court to demand an explanation put to death with these ruthless murders the Shah had signed his own death warrant and signaled the end of his Empire the response of Genghis Khan was chillingly Curt you have chosen war that will happen which will happen and what it is to be we know not the success of the Mongol military machine lay in its disciplined skilled and well-equipped army part of the Mongol Army was the horse which was not only crucial to the Army But Central to the Mongol way of life Mongol children were taught to ride horses from a very early age and horse thieves were summarily executed with saddles and stirrups Mongol Riders had all the stability they needed when shooting arrows on Horseback at high speed as a result it was possible to inflict heavy sometimes crippling losses on an enemy during the Skirmish phase of battle long before the main armies actually clashed in combat Cavalry was the most powerful and useful military device a herd of horses if you like was a super carrier at that time thousands of horses meant the ability to move and strike much more quickly than the Agricultural and urban Defenders could catch up with you one of the key Mongol techniques was to use not just one or two horses but whole strings of remails so a single soldier would often lead several horses and this allowed them to change horses when the first horse was tired and to keep moving this allowed unparalleled Mobility they were able to cover um the sorts of distances that in medieval times armies couldn't usually hope to to cover these sorts of distances advances 50 60 70 miles a day were recorded for whole Mongol armies and these are enormously quick especially when they're kept up over over many days so that in some cases Mongols could move ahead of the news of their arrival they'd appear unexpectedly in front of a town or city before The Messengers had even had a chance to arrive from their previous Conquest history hit is an award-winning streaming platform built by history fans for history fans enjoy our Rich library of documentaries covering key events and locations of the medieval period history hits medieval offering features leading historians such as Dan Jones Elena yanega and Katz German not only that but with a rich library of audio documentaries covering every period of History through our network of podcasts sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Chronicle at checkout each Mongol cavalryman was equipped with a horn and sinew bow that gave an impressive firing range of around 300 meters two types of arrows were kept in separate Quivers 30 light arrows for firing at a distance and 30 heavily tipped arrows for use at close range some arrows even had incendiary heads nomadic life was a perfect training for Warfare everyone was a consummate Horseman and also knew how to use a strong bow this meant that they were very mobile and could put down literally a barrage of arrows on an enemy in addition the great Khan sponsored something called the Great hunt in which everybody was encouraged to go out and round up a huge quantity of of game this encircling maneuver could then be translated into military strategy and used to defeat enemies Army had a 10 system so he had divisions of ten thousand one thousand one one hundred and platoons of 10. the system meant that his army was easy to control and formations were organized effectively also one division had the job of scouting ahead and collecting information on the geography of the area they were to attack where would be the best place to attack the enemy Force how many men made up the force and what were its strengths and weaknesses the Mongolian Army was very disciplined and if one soldier disobeyed an order then the whole 10 or platoon was punished that's why genghis's soldiers tried not to make any mistakes as they did not want their fellow soldiers punished because of them this is why discipline was a strong characteristic of genghis's force Mongol warriors were issued with small swords a wickerworks shield two or three javelins and a dagger strapped to the inside of the left forearm Soldier wore a raw silk undershirt which acted as a protective vest if a warrior was struck by an arrow the silk would wrap itself around the arrowhead reducing the impact and enabling it to be removed easily and painlessly each man was also issued with a waterproof hide saddlebag which could be inflated for River Crossings the bag contained enough supplies and rations to enable a Mongol Warrior to exist completely independently of the main Army what the Mongols also possessed was the psychological weapons of Terror they were utterly ruthless they devastated territory and this meant that people who face them in war were already half beaten you might say before they encountered them we could also compare it if you like to Modern strategies after all at the time that was an accepted sort of approach to strategy and to politics much as mutually assured deterrence was so important in the Cold War we've got a situation where um over the heads of the various Nations was held the destruction of whole cities in both cases so deterrence also provided a key plank in chingaskan's strategy to convince the subjected his his conquered subjects that if they did Revolt they would not be spared Not only was the individual Mongol Warrior well prepared and equipped for battle the army of which he was apart was also a highly organized fighting machine but it would not be long before this effective fighting force would meet its first Challenge on the banks of the Indus River although the kawasam Shah ruled a great Empire it should not be forgotten that this was a recent creation of Fairly uncertain loyalty and this explains perhaps why Shah Muhammad didn't really want to engage the Mongols in battle in 1219. another problem was that he had very extended front along hundreds of miles on his eastern border he had to spread out his defensive Army formations because he really had very poor intelligence when it came to what the watching is Khan's intentions or Roots were Genghis Khan left Mongolia in the spring of 1219 with an army of 150 000 men meanwhile his enemy Shah Muhammad deployed three hundred thousand well-equipped troops along a 500-mile stretch of what is now the Jacksons River but still the quarasmian Border was dangerously vulnerable from 1219 to 12 20 in a sustained highly coordinated three-pronged attack the Mongols systematically destroyed the Shahs Empire chingus Khan and his master a tactician subordai had devised an extraordinary plan to conquer the juarezman Empire they divided into separate columns those were separate independent armies that were able to move over hundreds of miles to attack the juarezim Shahs Empire from different directions one column was led by chingas and subadai himself another was led by his eldest son Joshi and Josh's job was to move up and down the eastern border of the juarezamshas realm creating a defensive screen if you like raiding towns taking cities and this generated a real sensation of panic on one side pressure on one side of the Buddhism Shahs Realm but at the same time he was being outflanked through the kisilkum desert itself which was thought to be impossibly inhospitable and quite impassable chingaskhan and subatai found a route to emerge at the gates of bohara where the quality was quite unexpectedly after two days the Mongols made their move [Music] fifty thousand tajik infantry poured out of the city to meet the Mongols but resistance was futile five days later the king's uncle defected along with tens of thousands of mercenaries joining the seething Mongol horde to batter down the city Gates the Shah managed to escape his Mongol pursuers only in the spring of 1221 to die a broken and defeated man on a remote island in the Caspian Sea in the summer of 1221 Genghis scaled the Hindu Kush to Search The quarasmian King's son who it was rumored was trying to raise troops near ghazni in Afghanistan Genghis Khan sent 40 000 men ahead to gather intelligence north of Kabul at powan the Mongol reconnaissance troops had been beaten by a force twice the strength of Their Own but by the time Genghis Khan had reached ghazni defections had caused the quarasmian Army to shrink to half its former size in an attempt to regroup jalala Deen had fled to the Indus Valley but this time the Mongol forces were in Hot Pursuit they caught up with jalala Deen and his soldiers at night as they made preparations to forward the river Indus the following day break 50 000 Mongol Warriors faced 50 000 quarasmian troops then the Shah ordered Enya Malik on his right wing to charge the Mongol left driving it back seeing that the mongol's right flank did not seem to pose a threat jalala Deen weakened his Left Flank to reinforce Malik's success on the right the Shah then prepared to land what he believed would be the Fatal blow for the Mongol Army leading from the front jalaland headed an enormous charge aimed at breaking the Mongol Center now the Shah have the chance to avenge his father's death he directed his troops straight at Genghis Khan himself For the First Time The hitherto Unthinkable Prospect of defeat for the great leader and his army was very respect to the in the great battle with the Corazon charm Genghis Khan actually adopted quite quite a cautious strategy and allowed Jalal din to launch an attack on him of course this this was a deception and so it meant that the Islamic Army was really sucked into the center of the Mongol Army allowing an outflanking maneuver which really had not been anticipated as Muhammad and his men fundered into the Mongol Center Genghis Khan leaving his hard press Center to defend themselves LED his Imperial Guard in a charge so Fierce that it completely shattered the force of India Malik who had previously been so successful on the Mongolian Left Flank then came the Tactical Master stroke unknown for jalaladin Genghis Khan had also ordered a division detached from his right wing to scale the mountains encircling the quarasmian Left Flank it was this force that fell upon the Shah's men who were unprepared for the sudden Savage assault soon the Mongols had blocked the king's Retreat to the South the role of the respective leaders in battle is a little bit difficult to identify from the sources that we have today but I think we must see Genghis Khan as having the kind of energy and ability to direct his forces which the Muslim Commander seems to have lacked in essence though when jalaladin committed himself to a headlong charge he lost Commander visibility to run the battle you might say it's important to remember that in this period communication is essentially personal it's tempting to view Genghis Khan as a man who could sort of move the pieces on on the chessboard at will and perhaps if anybody could command Battlefield troops in this era he did as well as any but in actual fact it was more like a Clockwork toy that you wound up and then set on its way hoping that people would carry out their instructions to the letter himself had escaped the Carnage but his army had been torn apart doubtless concluding that the discretion was the better part of valor he flung off his armor mounted a horse and with 700 lucky survivors forwarded the Indus River to escape to Freedom in his desperation to flee from the Mongolian Army Shah Muhammad had been forced to leave behind his young family and the unfortunate infants were shown no pity they were unceremoniously flung into the swirling Waters of the Indus River is in the year 1227 that Genghis Khan finally breathed his last he was 65 years old and he left behind an Empire that stretched from the East China Coast to the Caspian Sea the first Mongol incursions had already been made into Russia and the states of modern Pakistan and Northern India conquered and ransacked the driving force behind Mongol expansion in the 13th century has to be the standard nomadic desire for plunder for slaves for Domination managed by a leader who can deliver that who can organize the balance of power between conflicting tribes between ambitious Warlords and so on and and so Genghis Khan has to play a big role in ensuring Mongol success but if you like he uses the natural forces of his type of communities the nomadic tribes in order to achieve Empire but he was also able to do something else he was able to organize the resources of the Regency conquered to generate springboards for further conquests so this is if you like not just a victory of wild barbarians from the steps over civilized nothing nothing of that case at all instead it's a victory if you like of long traditions of of statehood of careful um diplomatic leadership and of a real coming of age of Step leadership where chinkus Khan was able to make use of the conquered Nations as well to to increase the size and extend its Empire with Genghis Khan gone it was eight years before the great Mongolian war council called the quarrel tie assembled to determine the next stage of Mongolian expansion they decided to turn their attention to Russia and Europe it's true to say that by the 1230s Western Europe was pretty well uninformed about the danger of the Mongol threat the Russian principalities had a much Keener awareness of the presence of Mongol military power because they had been defeated in the battle of the the kalka river which lies just to the north of the Sea of azov in 1223 but then the Mongols left because Genghis called back his Commander summer day perhaps suspecting him of getting too big for his boots and it may be that the Russians thought the nomadic threat had gone away as it had done frequently in the past and certainly they did not unify and present a determined front when the Mongols returned 20 years later politically and strategically the Mongols could not have timed their campaign any better the struggle between the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the pope was nearing its climax weakening any hope of assembling a United European Force to repel the Eastern Invaders what was more the last attempt by Europe's monarchs to form a united front against an alien enemy the fifth crusade had collapsed in disarray some years earlier this was a time when Europe was bitterly divided all the monarchs of the region ruled um sets of nobles who were more or less independent from them so there was real problems with Europe getting its act together in the face of a Mongol threat there was a basic division along religious grounds between the Latin West and the Orthodox East the crusaders had actually conquered Constantinople in 1204 and in so doing destroyed the balance of power which had been maintained by the Byzantine state for eight centuries this meant that the nomadic dwellers of the step and the Islamic East with its great city-states were played off against one another this was something that the westerners simply couldn't manage Crusades were useful military tools but they were often had specific objectives and also they were quite temporary agglomerations of troops so they didn't necessarily help in the long term extra raids made in the early 13th century the Mongols probably knew as much about their prospective enemies as technical limitations of the age would allow this intelligence was used a good effect on the campaign trail with light Cavalry leading the way up to 100 miles ahead of the main Force thereby decreasing the possibility of any unwelcome surprises the Europeans on the other hand were in Blissful ignorance of the terror lying in store for them rumors had reached them about a new military Force destroying parts of the Islamic world and these were welcomed as confirmation of the legend of prester John who would one day come to the assistance of the besieged Christian nations battling the Islamic powers in Spain and the Middle East others thought that they were probably pagans but held the tantalizing idea that the Mongols might be converted to Christianity and brought into a giant coalition to crush the Muslim world the legend of prester John was that somewhere far to the east on the other side of the Islamic Nations by which the West felt so threatened there was a great Christian King when the Mongols appeared and were attacking and destroying Islamic States people in the west thought ah at last that the the Christian King has come to save us but of course it was a complete fantasy and when the Mongols themselves arrived they proved to be worse than the Islamic Nations Marco Polo states that the material the reality behind the myth was actually a man called Wang Khan now there was a Christian ruler of a step polity himself was a nestorian Christian and nestorians were a sect of Eastern Christians who'd split very early on when a patriarch of Constantinople had had to leave as a result of religious disputes in Constantinople and and fled into the East when the armies marched from the East the Mongols included a number of different Nobles some of these were nestorian Christians so the strange reality the weird reality is that the reality Behind These myths ended up as being the Fearsome Mongol conquerors from uh the steps of Asia [Music] after spending the summer of 1236 subduing the bulgas and the kipchaks the Mongols decided to mount a military campaign that hundreds of years later would be beyond the armies of Napoleon and Hitler once the ravages of winter had taken hold the Mongols invaded Russia the Mongols of different sorts of Invaders they were very well adapted at moving around in Winter they came from the freezing steps of Mongolia even colder than the Russian steps and the frozen rivers actually formed highways through the otherwise very difficult terrain of of woods and Hills poor roads so what appears to be a barrier a river can turn into a highway and the Mongols used this their Ponies were not Shard they could keep their grip on the slippery ice and they used these channels to move through the through Russia to surprise their Russian opponents to emerge outside towns and cities often before the news had got to those cities that the Mongol invasion was underway the Mongols had a supremely efficient intelligence system which enabled them to infiltrate the countries and the courts of potential victim States if you like and to choose the moment to attack the Russian principalities did not help themselves because they allowed their nomadic allies the palazzians to execute Mongol ambassadors and this really was an important stimulus to the Mongols turning their bdis upon Russia 13th century Russia was in disarray with most of its population living in about a dozen principalities sharing little but a common religion after crossing the river Volga with the force of 120 000 men Genghis Khan's grandson Batu and subordai a veteran commander of the quarasmian campaign carved through Central Russia with the aim of driving a wedge between the principalities of Novgorod and Kiev the cities of ryazan Moscow columnar susdal and Vladimir all received demands for surrender from the rampant Mongolian Invaders each and every city refused to surrender believing no doubt that like other nomadic Invaders before them the Mongolians would not be able to break down on the city walls [Music] the Mongolian Army thought otherwise and swiftly said about battering their way in with their Siege machines every city was sacked plundered and burned and its inhabitants put to the sword the Mongols are famous if you like for the great Terror that they inspired in their enemies and there's no getting away from the fact that this was an element a part of their strategy chingaskhan was famous for being very Resolute when it came to enforcing what he thought of as The Honorable surrender of cities if a city surrendered straight away it was almost always left unharmed plundering might take place but it was generally controlled and well ordered and often there wasn't any substantial plundering if cities resisted they risked being being annihilated and worst of all was if a city surrendered and then vaulted in this case the Mongol forces made a point of annihilating inflation including women and children so there's no doubt that this was important and of course if a Mongol Envoy appears at a city demanding surrender people were bound to take it pretty seriously when they'd heard about the fates of other cities but I think we have to get this in perspective it seems barbaric of course it was but it was also not unknown at the Times a fairly standard tactic four months into the campaign the Mongols discovered one of Russia's most formidable natural defenses as in the spring Thor of 1237 the ground transformed itself into a bottomless Quagmire of mud the appalling conditions underfoot forced them to abandon their main objective in Northern Russia and so Novgorod was spared took the opportunity to rest their weary troops and it was not until the summer of 1240 that they resumed the Russian campaign rejuvenated Mongol Army was under the area around Kiev was devastated in the same way as much of central Russia had been in early 1238. in early December of that year Kiev itself was stormed and although it was by far the largest and richest of all Russian cities it succumbed after only two days of savage fighting and was raised to the ground only the Cathedral of Saint Sophia a symbol of the faith shared by all Russians were spared for very tolerant of different religions their own background was Pagan if you like eclectic they didn't were quite happy to mix one religion with another the Mongol imperial capital of karakoram for example eventually had chapels churches mosques Buddhist temples all in the same location so this became if you like one of the Diplomatic cards which Genghis Khan was able to play it was well known and he made sure that it was well known in the surrounding regions that the Khan was tolerant of all sorts of religions because you can conquered people with the sort but couldn't conquer their minds so he decided to play with religion in karakoro he gave representatives of many different faiths the freedom to practice their religions by doing this he thought the people of the lands he controlled would be less hostile to the Mongols and enable his rule to continue for many years to come on foreign [Music] ruins and the rest of Western Ukraine and tatters battle Consolidated his forces in Southeastern Poland and it was here that subadai revealed his plans for his most daring campaign yet an invasion of Hungary with one hundred thousand Men by way of the Carpathian Mountains unstable Hungary offered excellent grazing land for the horses of the Mongolian cavalry same fertile land had been used by Attila the Hun some 800 years earlier in any case Hungary would have to be crushed if the Mongolian Drive Westward was to continue super dai's strategic plan to invade Hungary was daring and vast the campaign called for a force of about twenty thousand to invade Poland acting as the Army's Northern flank so but I would lead a long-range group through the Romanian Plains and up the Danube Valley to attack Hungary from the south Baylor IV the young Hungarian King gathered an army at Buddha later to become Budapest to face the Mongolian Invasion he may even have been confident of success after all the Hungarian Army was well prepared and trained and anyway the Mongolians would first have to cross the treacherous Carpathian Mountains any hope that the mountains would slow the Mongolian Advance was ended on the 14th of March 1241 when Baylor received the unwelcome news that the Mongols had not only scaled the Carpathian Mountains they were advancing towards Buddha at a rate of 50 miles a day [Music] LA's position was even worse than he imagined for unbeknown to him a second Mongol Force Under Batu was heading towards him from the West by the end of March the Mongol armies had reunited outside pesh in panic King Bala sent his wife to Vienna [Music] his Barons and unruly and disloyal collection were not slow to spot an opportunity and made a series of Demands to the king before they would pledge to fight eventually the stage seemed set for a bloody and momentous battle it was then that the Mongol Army seemed to vanish Into Thin Air in the context of the Hungarian campaign of 1241 the Mongols feigned Retreat really was a classic tactic they were capable of doing this at a tactical level their horse archers riding forward and then seemingly running away and drawing people into a trap or an ambush but they also did it at a strategic level by advancing into Hungary and then retiring to some well-watered grazing lands and waiting for the Hungarian King to come and attack them on the 10th of April the Mongols retreated to mohi near the Carpathian Mountains with plentiful grazing alongside the river sajou abundant marshes and a forest canopy the Mongol Army simply set up camp and waited they had found a battlefield that suited them perfectly the Trap had been set and it was completed when subadai LED 30 000 men around and behind the Hungarian Army leaving it completely surrounded sadly for Baylor he remained in complete ignorance of the Mongolian movements King Bella of Hungary had very poor intelligence of Mongol movements in part this was his fault because his Kuman allies who were Nomads themselves were quite capable of Rapid movement and discovering what the Mongol intentions were but they simply weren't trusted by the Western Hungarian nobility and in fact had been expelled as a fifth columnists if you like so King Bella simply had very poor intelligence because he didn't use the tools at hand to improve his options on the 11th of April 1241 batu's men although vastly outnumbered by the Hungarian Army began their slow advance even by their standards the Mongols were facing playful numerical odds and they were beginning to suffer terrible casualties when subodi's Force suddenly appeared to the rear of the Hungarian positions they surged forward behind a hail of arrows and before long the Hungarian Army had been driven back into their own camp now Superior numbers meant nothing Hungarian morale began to collapse the hungarians were trapped in their fortified cab under a constant murderous barrage of capital projectiles however the Mongols did not storm the Hungarian positions instead they formed lines opposite the camp that were punctuated with gas many hungarians seized by Panic made a frantic Dash to escape through the gaps in the Mongol line presenting easy targets for the pursuing Mongol archers who picked them off one by one as they surged through some hungarians including the Knights Templar chose to stand their ground and die fighting for the last man King Bala himself managed to escape with a handful of survivors to the Croatian island of trogir behind him lay an Army in Ruins and a battlefield soaked with blood of the 100 000 strong Hungarian Army seventy thousand men had been killed and 25 000 had been taken captive after a break of eight months the Mongols resumed their campaign on Christmas Day 1241 by advancing into Western Hungary clearly Austria and Croatia were firmly in their sights the city of Zagreb was sacked and preparations were being made to besiege Vienna when fate came to take a hand Fortune favored Europe because in 1241 the Khan son of chingas Khan ugudaikan died back in the Mongolian Capital far away in karakoram and the Mongol generals who were leading the attack on Europe withdrew their armies and returned East to work out who would succeed ogadaihan as the new leader of this Imperial Juggernaut of the Mongolian Empire and they took their armies with them they might need them for a trial of strength if this dispute became violent and so Poland and Hungary were abandoned Europe had been spared by pure chants the Mongols never threatened the West again one of the abiding questions of history is whether the Mongols could have conquered Western Europe if the great Khan had not died when he did one argument is that once they run out of the grazing land which was necessary to support a nomadic Army and you don't really find that east of the Hungarian plain that they wouldn't have been able to maintain the logistical support in contrast to that if you look at the way the Mongols conquered China they adapted within a couple of decades to fighting a fortress-based Warfare and so maybe they could have done it in the west but they were getting a very long way from their Asian and stepland Heartland and at some point what had already been conquered became an important enough prize worthy of internal dissent and and squabble so by that point if you like the Mongol Empire was already on the verge of breaking into its constituent parts and that's in fact what happened over the next few decades so maybe Europe would have been ruled by the Mongols but there's a good chance I think that even if not died that the Mongol conquest might have stopped somewhere in Central Europe rather than rather than running right through to the Atlantic coast the next war council convened by the great Khan manku in 1251 decided on Twin campaigns against song China and the Islamic empires of the Middle East it was during the Middle Eastern campaign that a Mongol Army 25 000 strong that was advancing on Egypt was met and defeated in battle even though they were crushed by a sheer weight of numbers such a defeat was without precedent and the myth of Mongol invincibility was shattered under the inspired leadership of the first great Mongol leader Genghis Khan the Mongolian Empire expanded at a rate never before witnessed in human history dismissed as Nomad barbarians by the Islamic and Western Worlds the Mongolian Army proved themselves to be adaptable resourceful astute and disciplined by the year 1300 the Mongol Empire stretched from the Eastern Polish border to the Sea of Japan Genghis Khan summed up perfectly the philosophy of the Mongolian Soldier his words provide a chilling reminder of why the Mongolian warrior was so feared by his enemies the greatest pleasure will Vanquish your enemies and chase them before you to Rob them of their wealth see those dear to them bathed in tears to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 366,893

Keywords: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries, Khan's conquests, Mongol Empire history, Mongol dynasty, Mongol tribes unity, ancient conquerors, ancient emperors, battlefield triumphs, conqueror documentaries, conqueror legacy, empire history lessons, empire rulership, historical leadership, historical triumphs, medieval rulership, medieval warfare tactics, military conquests, siege warfare tactics, war campaigns, warlord legacy, warlord tactics

Id: shOB2sUtEXA

Length: 49min 46sec (2986 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023