From one steppe confederation in 1206 to an empire from Korea to Hungary in a single lifetime: the campaigns, the invasion of Europe, and the places where the Mongols were finally stopped.
Stop 01 · 1206
Genghis Khan Unites the Steppe
Temüjin was born on the Mongolian steppe around 1162, the date most historians accept, into a minor clan. Through alliances, war and a rule of rewarding loyalty over birth, he united the Mongol and Turkic tribes. In 1206 an assembly, a kurultai, held at the source of the Onon River, proclaimed him Genghis Khan. He then broke up the old tribes: every man aged fifteen to seventy was enrolled in units of ten, hundred and thousand, and warriors of defeated tribes were scattered among different units so they could not rebel together. His bodyguard grew from about 1,150 men to 10,000. The army could cover huge distances fast, each rider with three or four horses.
YuanEmperorAlbumGenghisPortraitUnknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Temüjin was born on the Mongolian steppe around 1162, the date most historians accept, into a minor clan. Through alliances, war and a rule of rewarding loyalty over birth, he united the Mongol and Turkic tribes. In 1206 an assembly, a kurultai, held at the source of the Onon River, proclaimed him Genghis Khan. He then broke up the old tribes: every man aged fifteen to seventy was enrolled in units of ten, hundred and thousand, and warriors of defeated tribes were scattered among different units so they could not rebel together. His bodyguard grew from about 1,150 men to 10,000. The army could cover huge distances fast, each rider with three or four horses.
Genghis Khan turned first on the Jin dynasty in northern China, invading in May 1211. The campaigns were long, because the Mongols had to learn siege warfare; Genghis set up a corps of engineers that recruited some 500 Jin experts. In 1213 Jebe slipped a force through the heavily defended Juyong Pass, opening the road to the Jin capital, Zhongdu. In 1214 the Jin bought a truce with tribute, including 3,000 horses and a princess, then moved their court about 600 kilometres south to Kaifeng. Genghis treated this as a breach of the peace. In 1215 the Mongols took and sacked Zhongdu, today's Beijing. The Jin held out in the south until 1234.
In 1218 Inalchuq, the governor of Otrar, a city of the Khwarazmian Empire in Central Asia, killed a Mongol trade caravan of about 450 merchants, and the shah, Muhammad II, then killed or humiliated Genghis Khan's envoys. Genghis answered with one of the most destructive campaigns in history. Otrar fell in February 1220 after a five-month siege. Genghis crossed the Kyzylkum Desert to surprise Bukhara, and Samarkand fell a month later. Bukhara, Samarkand, Urgench, Merv and Nishapur fell in 1219–1221, many with most of their people killed. The shah fled and died on an island in the Caspian Sea, while Genghis's son Tolui laid waste to the cities of Khorasan.
BattlesOtrar, 1219–1220 · Bukhara, February 1220 · Samarkand, March 1220 · Urgench (Gurganj), 1221 · Merv, 1221
Chasing the fleeing shah, the generals Jebe and Subutai rode on in one of history's great cavalry raids, about 7,500 kilometres long. They went round the south of the Caspian Sea, through Georgia, where they beat King George IV, and over the Caucasus, onto the steppe north of the Black Sea. They split the Cumans from their Alan allies, and the Cuman khan Köten turned to the Rus' princes for help. On 31 May 1223, at the Kalka River, the Mongols drew a Rus' and Cuman army forward with a feigned retreat and destroyed it. Mstislav of Kiev surrendered on a promise of safe conduct and was killed. Then they rode home. They had seen what lay to the west.
Genghis Khan died in 1227. His son Ögedei sent a huge army west under Batu, Genghis's grandson, with Subutai as his general. It waited for winter, so that it could cross frozen rivers and swamps. In December 1237 it took Ryazan after a five-day siege and burned it; Kolomna and Moscow fell within weeks. On 8 February 1238 Vladimir fell. In 1240 Kyiv fell: after a nine-day siege it was stormed on 6 December, and people sheltering in the Church of the Tithes died when its balcony collapsed. For more than two centuries, the Rus' principalities paid tribute to Batu's successors, the Golden Horde.
BattlesRyazan, December 1237 · Kolomna, January 1238 · Vladimir, February 1238 · Kyiv, December 1240
King Béla IV of Hungary had given refuge to the Cumans and refused Batu's demand to hand them over. In spring 1241 the Mongols struck Central Europe in two prongs. The northern army, under Baidar, Kadan and Orda, burned Kraków on 24 March and on 9 April destroyed a Polish and Moravian army at Legnica; its commander, Duke Henry II the Pious of Silesia, was killed. Two days later the main army under Batu and Subutai annihilated the Hungarian army of King Béla IV at Mohi, on the Sajó River. Much of Hungary was devastated; historians estimate it lost 15 to 25 per cent of its people, some 300,000 to 500,000.
BattlesLegnica, 9 April 1241 · Mohi, 11 April 1241
Through 1241 the Mongols ravaged Hungary. Patrols reached the outskirts of Wiener Neustadt in Austria. Béla fled to Austria, where Duke Frederick II extorted a ransom and three counties from him, then to Zagreb, which Kadan later sacked. In early 1242 a force led by Kadan chased the fleeing King Béla to the Adriatic coast of Dalmatia, near Split and Trogir, where the king sheltered on an island. In March the Mongols failed to take the hilltop fortress of Klis. Kadan then turned south past Dubrovnik and raided as far south as Kotor. This was as far west as the Mongols ever got: the Adriatic Sea and the edge of Austria.
BattlesZagreb, sacked · Klis: the Mongols repulsed, March 1242
In 1242 the Mongols left Europe as suddenly as they had come. News had arrived that Ögedei Khan had died on 11 December 1241, and the princes wanted to be home to choose his successor. Not everyone agrees: the Ilkhanate historian Rashid al-Din says the withdrawal began before the news arrived. Historians also point to Hungary's cold, wet winter and spring, seen in tree rings, which left too little grass for the horses. The armies withdrew through Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria, sacking Tarnovo and leaving Bulgaria paying tribute. Batu settled on the lower Volga and founded the Golden Horde, which dominated the Rus' for 240 years, until 1480.
In the Middle East, Hulagu, a grandson of Genghis Khan sent west by his brother, the Great Khan Möngke, took Baghdad in February 1258, ending the Abbasid Caliphate after 500 years. The caliph, al-Musta'sim, was killed and much of the city destroyed; Hulagu himself put the dead at about 200,000. He moved into Syria and took Aleppo and Damascus. When Möngke died, Hulagu withdrew most of his army, leaving perhaps 10,000 men under Kitbuqa. On 3 September 1260, at Ain Jalut in Palestine, the Mamluks of Egypt under Qutuz and Baibars beat that army and killed Kitbuqa. It was one of the first decisive Mongol defeats, and it ended their advance to the southwest. Egypt was never conquered.
BattlesBaghdad, February 1258 · Ain Jalut, 1260: the Mongols stopped
Kublai Khan, another grandson, founded the Yuan dynasty in 1271 and conquered Song China. After a siege of Xiangyang lasting from 1268 to 1273, his armies reached the Song capital: in February 1276 the court surrendered the child emperor and Hangzhou. The last Song loyalists were crushed at sea off Yamen on 19 March 1279. By 1279 the empire, now four khanates, was the largest contiguous land empire in history. But its reach had limits. Invasion fleets sent against Japan in 1274 and 1281 were wrecked by storms, the 'kamikaze' or divine winds. Armies in Vietnam suffered major defeats in 1285 and 1288, and an expedition to Java in 1293 failed.
BattlesXiangyang, besieged 1268–1273 · Yamen: the last Song fleet destroyed, 1279 · Hakata Bay: invasions of Japan fail, 1274 and 1281