After Liegnitz, the Mongols were expected to push further west; instead, they turned south. When King Wenceslas heard the news of Liegnitz he headed back towards Bohemia for reinforcements. The Mongols, despite having been badly mauled, chased his army most of the way. But rather than risk another encounter with a large army, the Mongols broke up their force into small raiding parties and set about terrorising the countryside. As they dashed from village to town, causing mayhem and destruction, the Poles could only conclude that they had been completely over-run by a massive host. The Mongols seemed to be everywhere and nowhere with no clear objective. But that was not the case at all; their objective was Hungary.

  GATEWAY TO THE ATLANTIC

  On 10 April, on the banks of the River Sajo, Batu’s army had received word of the battle at Liegnitz. That night, it began its attack. Batu and his brother Shiban moved forward, thinking to cross the river and engage Bela from the front, while Subedei took his contingent north in search of a ford so that they could outflank the Hungarians and attack from behind. Unfortunately, they found no crossing and were delayed while his engineers built a bridge between the villages of Girines and Nady Czeks. Before light, Batu’s force approached a stone bridge that led across the Sajo and straight to Bela’s army on the far side. The bridge was too narrow to let more than a few horsemen across at a time, making it impossible to advance in any strength. It looked as though the Hungarians could hold the bridge indefinitely. Then Batu brought up a battery of seven catapults and began to hurl curious-looking missiles across at the Hungarians, ‘to the accompaniment of thunderous noises and flashes of fire’. The Hungarians drew back from the explosives, allowing the Mongols to cross the bridge in sufficient numbers. Every so often the catapults were brought up closer, sending the Hungarians back further and allowing more Mongols across. It is known in modern artillery tactics as a ‘rolling barrage’.

  Eventually, Batu and his army got themselves on to the opposite side of the river, but they were no longer fighting a typical Mongol encounter. Batu’s force stood at no more than 40,000, while the Hungarians numbered 100,000, and it was beginning to look as though the sheer weight of numbers would eventually take its toll. The Hungarians mounted one mass charge after another against the Mongol lines, but each time they were beaten back by fire bombs and hails of arrows. Nevertheless, for the finest cavalry in Europe it was beginning to look as though victory would be only a matter of time. Subedei’s force was long overdue and Batu’s situation was becoming desperate. The only manoeuvre Batu could employ was to try to turn the Hungarians’ flank; so like a rugby scrum the Mongols wheeled round, forcing the Hungarians to turn with them. In doing so Batu succeeded in turning the Hungarians’ back to Subedei’s approach – when and if it arrived. After two hours of debilitating attacks, Batu suddenly ordered his men to fall back against the river and spread out into a single rank. As the puzzled Hungarians watched, awaiting the next opportunity to charge, the Mongol ranks fanned out into a massive semicircle that appeared to embrace the entire Hungarian army. Behind the Hungarians, Subedei and his army had just arrived on the scene and were doing precisely the same thing. Only when it was too late did the Hungarians realise they were about to be surrounded; but, more to the point, they had suddenly lost the advantage. They were minutes from being encircled by a deadly ring of mounted archers who were about to loose their arrows. It was like the conclusion of a hunt.

  Doggedly, the Hungarians closed ranks, spurred their horses and charged out of the circle, making their way straight for their fortified camp. Worried that his soldiers might not be up to a chase, Batu signalled to call off the attack. But Subedei was made of sterner stuff. He quickly roused the army, led them in hot pursuit and soon had the camp surrounded. When he eventually had his artillery in place, he sent a concentrated barrage of exploding missiles into their tents and wagons until the camp was in ruins. Those left standing were finally cut to pieces by the heavy cavalry.

  A small group of Hungarians succeeded in escaping the attack, and fled in a thin column through a gorge back towards Pest. But they had fallen into another trap. Mongol light cavalry pursued them on either side, cutting them down with lethally accurate archery. The road to Pest was described as having been littered with bodies, ‘like stones in a quarry’. The Hungarian dead were estimated at 60,000. Bela managed to outride his hunters, swim the Sajo and scramble into one of the forests on the other side where he found somewhere to hide. Meanwhile the Mongols reached Pest and put it to the torch. Then they rode along the Danube, making threatening lunges at Buda on the other bank. It had been a long day, and at times an uncertain one; but at the end of 10 April 1241 an army that had travelled nearly 10,000 km (6,000 miles) from the eastern steppes of Asia was now in complete command of the Hungarian plain, and no power between it and the Atlantic Ocean seemed able to stand in their way.

  CHAPTER 5: FROM PRESTER JOHN TO ARMAGEDDON

  CULTURAL STRANGERS

  More than 700 years after the event it is still difficult fully to appreciate the massive geographical scale upon which the Mongols had fought their campaign; how, with such extraordinary precision, they co-ordinated so many separate army corps, developed and maintained long and complicated supply lines, operated communications systems over hundreds of kilometres, and then fought with courage and imagination against an enemy defending its own territory. The Asian armies – Mongol, Chinese and Persian – were unquestionably the masters of the art of war during the medieval period. Europe could barely comprehend what had happened, and was left in thrall as to what would follow.

  Europe’s first military encounter with the Mongols had been no more one-sided than that of the armies of China and Persia during the first half of the thirteenth century. However, the psychological impact was in every sense far more traumatic and long-lasting. Civilisations in both China and Persia had a long history of encounters with nomadic armies, whereas Europe had lived in blissful ignorance of the rest of Asia and nothing had prepared them for the Mongols. Europe in the thirteenth century was completely ignorant of the lands to the east of the Urals. Although there had been trade with the East dating back to the pre-Christian era, this had always been conducted through merchants who plied between the Latin world and China without ever enlightening the one about the other.

  The best-known product from the East was of course silk, which the Romans were convinced had been combed from the leaves of trees. India was a country that was only vaguely known, and even this chiefly because of Alexander’s legendary march into the great subcontinent and the many weird and wonderful tales that had been spun about his exploits there. These tales, probably invented by merchants to enhance the exotic quality of their wares, were taken up by historians and were perpetuated right up until the time of Marco Polo (1256–1323). India, which was then synonymous with most of what we call Asia, became a land occupied by men with the head of a dog (Cynocephali), or a single foot (Monopodes), or whose feet pointed backwards with their heels facing the front (Antipodes). There were creatures with neither neck nor head, but with a face set into the middle of their chest. There were wild hunters who lived on the mere smell of flesh. And there were curious pygmies who were supposed to live a thousand years, Satyrs, Amazons, Brahmans and Gymnosophists, enchanted mountains, unicorns, griffins and ants that dug for gold. It was also the land of rare jewels, pearls, aromatic woods and spices.

  All these fantastic creatures became a feature in medieval art and literature, and their likenesses were carved in perpetuity on the exteriors of Gothic churches. We know them today as gargoyles, but 700 years ago they were imaginative stone likenesses of the inhabitants of the East.

  Europeans were not unique in depicting such fantastic creations; the Chinese had a remarkably similar pantheon of creatures that they believed inhabited the unknown West. These included the creatures with the head of a dog, the single-footed beings and the headless beasts with their faces in their chests. The Chinese also had fanciful notions about the origins of cotton, a commodity they imported from western Asia, and which was supposedly clipped from the fleece of ‘water sheep’.

  The reasons why these curious fantasies survived for so long was the complete lack of cultural exchange between the two hemispheres. The Roman empire had never extended further than the River Euphrates, beyond which were fierce nomadic horsemen, rugged mountains and deserts – a realm the Romans failed to penetrate. It is claimed that the Chinese made a number of attempts to contact the civilisations in the West, though there is a record of only one: Kan Ying, an envoy despatched in ad 97. He reached the Persian Gulf but was warned by his Arab hosts, keen to maintain their privileged position as international go-betweens, that the rest of his voyage would take two years and that most who ventured into those uncharted lands perished. Kan Ying turned back. By the seventh and eighth centuries, with the rise of Islamic power in the Middle East, both land and sea routes had fallen under the control of the Muslims. Islam’s inevitable confrontation with the Christian West led to Europe becoming even more isolated; though trade in silks and spices continued at higher and higher prices through Arab middlemen.

  It was not just ignorance that sustained ideas of a land populated with monsters and fantastic beings; they were also given credence by the writings of early Christian scholars. St Augustine had written about the existence of monsters, declaring their creation to have been an important part of God’s great plan, so that man would not be perplexed by the birth of the malformed or insane. Under the authority of Christian teaching the regions to the east also became associated with certain biblical localities, such as Terrestrial Paradise and the land inhabited by Gog and Magog – the latter being the land beyond Alexander’s Gate (the Derbent Pass in the Caucasus Mountains) where Alexander is said to have imprisoned the two foul giants, Gog and Magog. According to the Book of Revelation, they would be released by Satan to destroy Jerusalem and bring destruction upon the world. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that contemporary chroniclers, reporting the Mongol attacks, laced their accounts with flesh-devouring monsters, and that congregations were told to expect the imminent apocalypse. The tall tales of travelling merchants became part of the Christian view of the real world.

  But there was another Christian fantasy, a far more recent one, that both disarmed and confused European monarchs about the origins and purpose of the invader. This had its origin in the story of the Magi – the three wise men from the East invested with the dignity of kings, as described by St Matthew. This was supported by stories which claimed that St Thomas had journeyed to India, where he had preached the gospel, met the Magi and baptised them. Out of these stories developed the conviction that, somewhere in the vast uncharted Orient, ruled a number of Christian kings. Add to this rich brew the great literary tradition that developed around the heroic exploits in India of Alexander, who had become an important figure in the world of chivalry and courtly love, and you soon have a medieval picture of Asia as a land inhabited by grotesques, and in some part of which there reigned heroic Christian kings who performed romantic deeds.

  THE LEGEND OF PRESTER JOHN

  By the eleventh century, with Europe locked in a war with the Islamic world over the possession of the Holy Land, these centuries-old tales were given some contemporary relevance with the creation of the extraordinary character of Prester John, or John the Presbyter, the legendary Christian king of the Orient who was bound to come to the aid of Christendom in its hour of need. With the Crusades going badly, that hour was at hand. The legend has its origins in a visit to Rome in 1122 by a prelate named John. He claimed to have come from India and was possibly from a Christian community on the Malabar coast, part of a flourishing community of eastern Christians whom the Roman church referred to as Nestorians. Since Rome had severed relations with the Nestorians, and with virtually all the Christian communities east of Constantinople, Europe lost a golden opportunity to develop contacts with Asian civilisations and expand its knowledge of the world. Rome simply had no idea just how much Christianity had flourished in the East.

  In the early sixth century the Nestorians moved from a strong base in Persia into west Turkistan, and from there progressively east to China. At the beginning of the eleventh century there were Christians even among the Mongol tribes, and by the height of the Mongol empire Christianity was expanding throughout Asia.

  Given that contacts between Rome and the eastern Christians had been extremely rare, a visit of a prelate from the East was guaranteed a fascinated audience. Accounts claim that he lectured the Roman cardinals about life in India and the extraordinary miracles that regularly occurred in that kingdom during the great Christian festivals. Historians today believe that the prelate was probably an impostor, yet at the time of his visit the stories he told seemed plausible to medieval scholars because they appeared to confirm St Matthew’s account of the Magi; that is, that there existed an Eastern kingdom ruled by the descendants of the three wise kings who had visited the holy family in Bethlehem.

  Twenty years later, when the memory of the prelate’s visit was still relatively fresh, a bishop in Syria reported the existence of a powerful Eastern king named Prester John who had inflicted a heavy defeat upon the Muslims. He also reported that this monarch, who was descended from the Magi, had decided to come to the aid of the crusaders in Jerusalem, in emulation of his illustrious ancestors, but had been prevented from doing so because of the untimely flooding of the River Tigris. It is now thought that the report was a garbled account of the wars fought against the Muslim rulers of Persia by the Qara Khitai empire in the twelfth century. So here we have a suffusion of the best medieval legends – a wise king with impeccable antecedents who was also heroic and therefore in the best traditions of Alexander. Whatever the claims for Prester John’s ancestry, the mere fact that he was reportedly killing Muslims virtually guaranteed his Christian credentials.

  Then, in 1165, a letter purporting to be from Prester John began circulating in Europe. From here on this character is clearly exploited for political reasons. The letter came in many forms, addressed to many different European notables: the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus, the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and other monarchs. In his letter, Prester John claimed to rule over a vast kingdom that extended from the tower of Babel to where the sun rises. He declared his intention to rescue Jerusalem from the Muslims, defeat the enemies of Christ and visit the Holy Sepulchre. He then went on to catalogue his treasures and the marvels of his kingdom. The letter was, of course, a complete fabrication, though it proved an enormous fillip for the crusading movement – which was probably the author’s intention.

  The figure of Prester John gained further verisimilitude when in 1177 the Pope despatched an envoy to seek him out in the lands east of the tower of Babel. Although the envoy disappeared, the crusading movement had received the necessary boost. However, for thirty years the next three Crusades met with one disaster after another until enthusiasm began to waver again. In 1217, with remarkably good timing, during the preparations for yet another Crusade, fresh news began to circulate about the legendary Prester John and other ‘Christian kings living in the Orient’. The Bishop of Acre, conducting a vigorous propaganda campaign for what would be the Fifth Crusade, had decided to employ the legend in many of his letters to the Latin settlers in the Levant. The Bishop claimed that Prester John and his Oriental colleagues had heard that a new Crusade was imminent and were about to set forth to help sweep the Saracens from the Holy Land.

  Three years later, these claims were given further credence when a somewhat apocryphal document appeared called the ‘Report on King David’; a description of the victorious advance into Persia of ‘King David, Christian King of India, sent by the Lord to crush the heathen and destroy Mahomet’s teaching’. There are many accounts of this letter; some of them equate King David with Prester John himself, while others claim he was his son or grandson. Again, the letter affirmed prophecies that Prester John’s arrival was imminent. It is at this point that Christian propaganda becomes entwined with historical fact, for what undoubtedly provided the basis for this report was Genghis Khan’s breath-taking campaign against the Khwarazm Shah. The Church had taken a harbinger of disaster and transformed it into a prophecy of salvation.

  The irony couldn’t have been more bitter. During the following months, as further reports arrived, the Pope announced repeatedly the victorious progress of ‘King David’ through Persia and predicted the forthcoming liberation of the Holy Land. Even when this failed to occur, it did not diminish faith in the existence of Prester John. In 1223, when Subedei’s army was engaged in the great raid through Georgia and the Russian states, the King of Hungary sent a letter to the Pope claiming that ‘a certain King David or, as he is more usually called, Prester John’ had recently entered Russia with a vast army and slaughtered 200,000 people. This terrible work was explained at first as the great Christian King setting upon the heretical Georgians, followers of the Greek Orthodox Church, with the same vigour as he had attacked the Islamic Persians. So firm was the belief in this character that, even when Queen Rusudan of Georgia sent an accurate account of the Mongol armies, it was dismissed in preference to the semi-fictitious reports of ‘King David’.

  Nevertheless, given the growing contradictions from various sources, there is no doubt that the Christian West was becoming a little alarmed and confused, especially by accounts of the most incredible amount of slaughter. Clearly Prester John was no longer quite the pious Christian so beloved of those early prophets, despite his hatred of the Muslims. As Europe pondered these contradictory reports, the great Novgorod Chronicler recorded a more accurate account of the ‘Great Raid’ through the Russian principalities: ‘They turned back from the River Dnieper and we know not whence they came, nor where they hid themselves again; God knows whence he fetched them against us.’ Their sudden disappearance left a great many questions unanswered, but these preoccupations disappeared as Europe soon became more deeply concerned with its own internal problems.

 

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