In the summer of 1241, the chancellor at the
University of Paris [SP1] announced that an alien people had come from the easternmost edge
of the world, riding and slaughtering over the whole of it. “A mighty nation that no other
nation has yet been able to resist,” he warned, with the “teeth of lions” that would
spare nobody. Advancing westward, these foreign marauders had overrun Poland and
occupied the Kingdom of Hungary. They were now poised on the borders of Germany, planning to
destroy all the remaining Christian peoples of Western Europe. Worse still, the pope had
recently died, leaving Europe without a leader to inspire resistance. The mysterious
invaders were the Mongols, led by Batu, the grandson of Chinggis Khan. Seeking
explanations in the Bible and ancient prophecies, many Europeans panicked that it was the end of the
world – and, in fairness, for not a few of them, the Mongol conquests actually were! But in
early 1242, Batu’s forces – which had crossed the Danube and appeared to be continuing their
unstoppable drive into German territory – halted surprisingly. Even stranger, the entire army
marched out of Europe, returning deep into the steppes and leaving a great historical
mystery in its wake. In this episode, we will look at the various modern historical theories to
explain why the Mongols withdrew from Europe.
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experience with Star Trek Fleet Command. After overrunning Eastern Europe and occupying
Hungary for a year, the Mongols’ withdrawal was so unexpected that many people initially
doubted its sincerity. King Bela IV of Hungary, who had fled from pursuing Mongols to the
islands on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, was so suspicious of the news that he remained
offshore for months, sending scouts to confirm it. But it was true. Batu and his whole
army had moved eastward through Bulgaria, returning to the great Eurasian steppes stretching
from Ukraine to Mongolia. Batu’s inexplicable withdrawal was often attributed to a miracle –
Christendom was saved from destruction. Certainly, no great crusading army had confronted the Mongols
and driven them away in a decisive battle. Rather, Batu’s army had left at a relaxed pace and in
good order. For those in Eastern Europe who experienced Mongol tactics, the withdrawal was
suspected to be a large-scale “feigned retreat.” Local people expected the Mongols to return,
since Batu’s new vassals [SP2] from Kyivan Rus’ reported that the Mongols still planned
to conquer the whole world, including Europe. Despite what anyone imagined, the 1242 withdrawal
was not a feigned retreat. Batu, as senior prince of Chinggis Khan’s ruling dynasty, dismissed the
other princes and established the Volga River as a base for his immense herds and followers.
Many other Chinggisid princes set up camp in territories appointed for them deep in Inner
Asia, east of the Ural Mountains and Aral Sea. The bases of Mongol power were now thousands
of kilometers from the heart of Christendom. So, what happened? It is hard to say. On campaign,
the Mongols kept their military plans top secret. For medieval authors, the events of Batu’s
invasion were so linked with destiny that there was no need to fully investigate the
matter: God had willed the Mongols to come and willed them to leave. Even up to relatively
recent times, historians were not overly curious about why the withdrawal happened. There
is an irony that an event that is often said to have saved Europe seldom gets more than a
sentence or two of explanation in history books. Today’s investigators, who possess the
ability to look at a huge range of texts, archaeological findings, and environmental
evidence, have tried to solve the mystery and explain what motivated Batu. But despite the many
pieces of evidence, historians have never been able to arrive at a consensus on what caused the
Mongols to abandon a campaign that seems to have been going spectacularly well for them. Debate
about the mystery continues 800 years later. Four basic theories gradually emerged for why
the Mongols left Europe in 1242. Historian Greg S. Rogers categorized and analyzed them. He
called the most common and popular one “the political theory.” It holds that Europe
was saved by the death of the great khan, Ögedei, in December 1241. According to this
theory, messengers must have reached Europe the following spring and given the news
to Batu, forcing the campaign’s leaders, Chinggis Khan’s grandsons, to return to Mongolia
to choose the next khan at a great assembly. The second broad type of explanation for the
withdrawal is “the geographical theory” or perhaps better termed “the ecological theory.”
The common thread is that the Mongols encountered difficulties with the environment in Europe
during the invasion – either insufficient grassland for their horses and livestock or
extreme weather. This environmental problem caused them to decide that the region could not be
occupied or incorporated into the Mongol Empire. The third argument is what Rogers calls “the
gradual conquest theory” but which could also be termed “the limited goals theory.” The explanation
behind any variation of this theory is that the Mongols never planned to occupy any part of
Europe when they overran it in 1241. Either they wanted to soften it up to make a later
conquest possible, or they merely invaded to chastise King Bela IV of Hungary for harboring
nomadic Cuman refugees that Batu considered his legal subjects. In that scenario, the attacks on
Hungary’s neighbours would have been to prevent them aiding the Hungarian king. With their mission
accomplished sufficiently, this theory holds, the Mongols called off their campaign and withdrew.
The fourth and final explanation is “the military weakness theory” which holds that the Mongols
withdrew because they were simply unable to accomplish the conquest of Europe. The war
that brought the Mongols to Latin Europe started already in 1236. Over five years, they
conquered the Volga Bulgars, most of Kyivan Rus’, the Alans, and the mighty Cuman-Qipchaqs. By the
time, they reached Europe, they would have been weakened. Likewise, strong resistance that they
encountered in East-Central Europe in 1241-42 could have at last convinced Batu to call off the
campaign, completely evacuating Europe without even leaving behind a rump force to garrison
hundreds of kilometers of overrun territory. It is worth exploring the evidence for and
against each theory as all are plausible and have some evidence to support them,
which is why they have persisted. However, they cannot all be simultaneously correct
because they contradict each other on key points like whether the Mongols even intended to
conquer Europe in the first place, and whether the campaign of 1241 was one of the most successful in
history or a strategic quagmire for Batu’s forces. The political theory that Ögedei Khan’s death
saved Europe and stopped the Mongols’ westward advance has been the most popular explanation
with historians for the better part of a century, and is the one you’ll most likely find in
a general history book. Ögedei’s death on December 11 was followed by the Mongols suddenly
starting to withdraw eastward at the end of March, suggesting there was a connection between the two
events. John of Plano Carpini, a papal ambassador who journeyed in 1246 to the horde of Ögedei’s son
and successor, Güyük, in Mongolia heard that the Mongols had planned to campaign in Europe for 30
years, but the great khan was fatally poisoned, so they had to retreat. Ominously, the new khan
planned to resume the war against Europe soon. For historians, the timeline and well-known
testimony of Carpini long sufficed to explain the withdrawal. Problems with this explanation
appeared when scholars of different Eurasian languages began to compare notes. A report
[SP3] on the campaign written originally in Mongolian stated that the Mongol forces
in Europe didn’t know Ögedei was dead when they started to withdraw eastward. And
could a messenger have reached Hungary from Mongolia in less than four months in the dead
of winter? Medieval travellers like Carpini described much longer travel timeframes. Would
messengers even be dispatched right away from Mongolia by Batu’s rivals to alert him that
the throne was vacant? Most problematically, Batu never returned to Mongolia to elect a new
khan. Later, he even made excuses not to go, suspecting a trap by his rival, Güyük.
Thus, new theories were offered in the twentieth century including “the ecological
theory.” Originally proposed by Hungarian historian Denis Sinor in the 1970s, the theory was
that it was simply impossible for the Mongols to conquer Europe or permanently occupy Hungary,
the last piece of the Eurasian steppe belt, because it simply did not offer enough pasturage
for the Mongol horses. Based on American horse-breeding statistics, and the assumption that
each Mongol warrior needed at least three horses, Sinor claimed that the largest Mongol army that
the Great Hungarian Plain could support would be 68,000 men. Decades later, he revised it to
83,000 men with five horses each. Problematically, however, real numbers of livestock recorded
on Hungary’s pastures in the Early Modern Age suggest that it could actually support millions of
animals. Moreover, King Bela IV wrote that Hungary had proven dangerously suitable for sustaining the
Mongols’ herds during the year-long occupation. A more recent “environmental hypothesis[SP4]
” used climate data to show that 1242 had an unusually wet and cold spring. Perhaps the Mongols
had trouble advancing in the mud and feeding their animals, withdrawing because of the weather.
Moreover, medieval sources document a serious famine in Hungary in 1242. The problem with this
explanation is that the Mongols conquered much tougher and varied environments than continental
Europe. It’s hard to imagine a spell of cold, rain, and muddy roads would have deterred nomads
from Mongolia who had traversed the deserts of Inner Asia, and who were simultaneously finding
ways to conquer the forest zone of Russia and the humid hills of southern China. Also, famine is
only documented among the Hungarian commoners who were unable to plant or harvest crops during
the invasion, but never among the Mongols in 1242. Yet, when the Mongols did experience famine
and exposure in the Carpathian Mountains during a much later invasion in 1285, any chroniclers
who wrote about that invasion noted it. Turning to the “gradual conquest theory,” it
is supported by the fact that the Mongols often invaded states repeatedly before they conquered
them, like the Jin Dynasty of northern China, or Armenia. Also, the Mongols’ campaign in Europe
was highly successful in terms of battlefield victories, like at Legnica in Poland and Muhi
in Hungary, and then they left voluntarily. So, it is tempting to infer that they were
not planning to conquer Europe in 1242. They may have just wanted to soften it up for
a later conquest, or they considered the task complete after they successfully drove the Cuman
refugees out of Hungary. Perhaps, the campaign was just to secure the western borders of their main
target – the Cuman nomads of the Pontic Steppe. Yet, documents composed in Mongol courts named
Hungary, too, as a main target for conquest. And we know that the Mongols repeatedly demanded
submission from Hungary and other European powers both before the invasion and after the withdrawal.
The khan directly threatened the pope to surrender or die in an ultimatum of 1246, signing the letter
with his official seal. It is surprising, too, that so many Chinggisid princes took part
if it was just a raid with limited goals, and then set up a local government and tax
administration in Hungary as was documented by one of their prisoners there. The creation of such
administrations usually meant permanent conquest. Regarding the final explanation, the “military
weakness theory,” there are good reasons for modern historians to dismiss it. It was popular
with nationalistic writers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who would insist
that it was their own nations which threw back the Mongols. Many myths, created about great
victories that never happened, were used to inflame national feeling. Austrians were sure
it was their duke who struck fear in Batu, Poles were sure it was their dukes, and
Russian and Hungarian authors suggested their ancestors’ sacrifices stemmed the
Mongol advance and shielded Western Europe. Claims that the Mongols fled from Europe in defeat
are the wishful thinking of later authors. In fact, they won the major clashes and sacked
important cities. Yet, we shouldn’t overlook evidence that they faced major military challenges
in the campaign. Carpini mentioned a special graveyard in Mongolia for those that died in
Hungary because so many perished there. Official Mongol texts like the biographies of Subutai
confirm European claims that Batu’s forces were close to retreat during the battle with Hungarians
at Muhi in 1241. A Templar knight’s letter tells of the bodies of Mongols who later died from
wounds suffered at the Battle of Legnica littering the roads from Poland to Hungary. Writings across
Asia and even Coptic Egypt echoed rumours that the Mongols had suffered setbacks in Europe. Batu
had numerous unconquered enemies still to face in 1242, and his forces had difficulties taking
strategically situated stone castles. Worse, they failed to capture Bela IV because he
took to a warship. Batu may have concluded a continued advance would stretch his forces too
far. Years after the withdrawal, a European friar visiting Mongolia heard that the khan’s shamans
forbade a return to Hungary because of bad omens. The fact that history enthusiasts are still
arguing today about the reasons for the sudden Mongol withdrawal in 1242 is something that would
have given Batu great satisfaction. The Mongols strove at being very secretive with their military
plans, not revealing anything to outsiders who could inform the enemy. If we still cannot
be certain of why they left Europe, then this stands as a testament to the effectiveness of the
leaders that conducted the Great Western Campaign. The four major theories cannot be reconciled
into a single tidy explanation, but they all reflect historical reality – at least in some
sense. If the death of Ögedei Khan did not cause the Mongols’ withdrawal, it at least prevented
them from returning to Europe for a long time, owing to the conflict between Batu and his cousin,
Güyük. If the environment of Europe did not make a Mongol conquest impossible, its forests, fortified
hilltops, and coastlines meant major challenges. If the Mongols did not start their campaign in
1241 with limited goals, altering their campaign objectives according to the strategic realities
they encountered in the field was not uncommon of them. And although the victories claimed by
nineteenth-century nationalist poets are only fantasies, Batu’s army experienced heavy losses
nevertheless. Significant limitations in terms of manpower, artillery, and ships probably made a
quick and easy conquest of Europe impossible. We hope this video has helped satisfy our audiences’
curiosity on one of medieval history’s greatest mysteries. For more videos like this, make sure
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