A small party would be ordered to deploy themselves at various points in an arc. The quarry would be herded or drawn towards the most advantageous ground by a series of carefully orchestrated strikes. Sometimes the quarry might even be goaded into attacking one or two horsemen, who would gallop away, drawing the quarry after them into a trap. The use of the feint became a standard tactic of the Mongols and was employed successfully again and again. Once the quarry was in the intended place, the waiting circle of horsemen would move in for the kill.

  Another approach was to string an entire division of the army along what might be described as a starting line, sometimes 130 km (80 miles) long. On a signal the entire complement, fully armed as if for battle, would ride forward at a walk towards a finish line hundreds of kilometres away. This was usually situated at a point in the shadow of a hill, where the proceedings could be watched by the khan and his entourage. Over the following days the massed cavalry would march forward, sweeping or herding before them all the game they encountered along the way. Something approaching this sport is still practised today in Mongolia during Naadam festivals – modern-day tourneys where traditional Mongol skills such as archery, a particularly moribund form of wrestling and horse-riding are celebrated. The horse race takes place over 30 km (20 miles) or more, often involving as many as 500 riders who begin the race at a leisurely walk, only gradually spurring their horses towards a gallop as they approach the finish.

  During the hunt, as the riders approached the finish line the flanks would begin to ride ahead of the centre, and so slowly describe a massive arc. Still further on, the flanks would turn and ride towards each other, thus trapping all the game that had been herded over the hundreds of kilometres of countryside. During the march it was forbidden to kill anything, but it was even more of a disgrace if a rider let some beast escape the net. Throughout the exercise officers rode behind their men, shouting orders and directing their movements.

  The Mongols also employed an extremely effective and reliable system of signals, through flags, torches and riders who carried messages over great distances. This eventually provided them with one of the greatest advantages they ever took into the field: reliable and effective communications. It enabled all the Mongol units to remain in constant contact with each other and, through their remarkable corps of couriers, under the control of a single commander.

  At the end of this elaborate piece of hunting choreography, the men were given the chance to show off their individual fighting skills. Once the flanks had met and the circle tightened, the khan would ride down from his vantage point into the circle and take his pick of the game. This was doubtless a somewhat daunting exercise, as the khan’s own skills would be on public show before the entire company. When he had finished and returned to the hill, it was the turn of the soldiers. Now it was the opportunity for each individual, in front of his officers, to show off his skill with sword, bow and arrows or lance. Many wrestled the beasts by hand and tried to kill them with nothing more than a dagger, and it was not uncommon for some soldiers to be torn to pieces by frenzied packs of wolves. Eventually, the elderly and the youngest in the party would beg the khan for the lives of the animals still left in the ring, and once that was granted the great hunt was formally finished.

  With exercises like this the Mongols developed a regime that enabled them to train and maintain an extremely professional army – something of a novelty for the thirteenth century. Alongside the skills of riding, shooting and swordsmanship, each Mongol warrior learned the importance of discipline, co-ordination and obedience. Although their tactics in the field were no different from those of any other nomadic tribe, their strategies became masterpieces of originality and daring. The pursuit of the quarry became the pursuit of the enemy; and soon commanders began developing strategies that were to leave their enemies nonplussed. What was being forged, under Genghis Khan’s direction, was a modern cavalry that would have no equal anywhere in the world.

  FOREIGN EXPANSION

  It was not for some three years after the quriltai of 1206 that Genghis Khan began any campaigns abroad. The political situation on his borders presented no threats; the various sedentary empires were stable and largely uninterested in the internal politics of the Turkic Mongol tribes. China at that time was divided into three separate kingdoms. South of Mongolia, in what would be the most western extremities of modern China, was the Hsi-Hsia, easily the weakest of the three; its people were largely Tibetan Buddhists. To the east of Mongolia, northern China was under the domination of the Jurchen, the semi-nomadic people from Manchuria who, like the dynasty before them, had conquered and established their own dynasty, the Chin. South of the Chin was the real heart of China, governed by a pure Chinese dynasty, the Sung, that traced its heritage back hundreds of years. To the west of Mongolia lay the empire of the Qara Khitai and the Uighurs, and beyond them the vast lands of the Khwarazm Shah, the northern Persian empire.

  In many traditional accounts it is assumed that, once all internal resistance had been thoroughly put down, Genghis turned his attention to building his empire. It is also assumed that the first and most likely conquest would be China, as this had always been the country into which nomadic horsemen had ventured when seeking to extend their influence. But this explanation only holds good for the semi-nomadic horsemen who had periodically ridden out of Manchuria. These people had always shown an interest in exploiting and governing an agricultural nation like China. Having established themselves as the legitimate rulers, they were particularly adept at handling the illiterate bands of horsemen that occasionally came thundering out of Mongolia to raid Chinese towns and settlements. The Chinese referred to the Mongols as the ‘uncooked’. These raw horsemen had never shown any interest in conquest before; terror and extortion were their ambitions – not government. The conquest of China was the last thing the Mongols set out to do. China had always been, and particularly to the horsemen from the eastern steppe, simply a rich quarry to be plundered at will – and it was exactly so under Genghis Khan. China was a raid that turned into an occupation.

  The first expansion of the Mongols’ influence came when the Uighurs abandoned their relationship with the Qara Khitai in 1209 and offered their submission to Genghis Khan. They were welcomed as a ‘fifth son’. As such, the Uighurs’ state remained autonomous throughout Genghis’s life; later it became the most valued client state in the empire. It became the preferred policy, wherever possible, to seek out alliances with local rulers who, in return for their acknowledgement of the Mongols’ supremacy, would be granted a kind of vassal-like autonomy. A similar arrangement was extracted from the Tanguts, the rulers of Hsi-Hsia; however, the latter had to be encouraged to accept Mongol terms. Genghis had launched a raid into Hsi-Hsia in 1207, and then again in 1209. The first of these was a typical raid intended to gather booty with which to finance the new nation, but the second was a far more serious affair and found the Mongols placing the Tangut capital under siege. The experience was a salutary one for the Mongols, just as it had been for all previous nomadic empires when they encountered enemies that preferred to fight from behind large fortifications. The Mongols had no immediate answer to these tactics, but nevertheless were able to force the Tangut king to accept their terms. In addition, Genghis also extracted a promise that the king would send troops to aid the Mongols, should they ever be requested. Finally, the Tangut king gave his daughter in marriage to Genghis, thus cementing the relationship. In return he was not required to renounce his sovereignty.

  THE INVASION OF CHINA

  But the Tanguts and Uighurs were relatively small kingdoms, and Genghis really made no impression on the international stage until the campaigns against the Chin, which began in 1211. They started with the time-honoured practice of extorting money and other concessions out of the wealthy Chinese. What went wrong, however, was that the Chin decided to respond to the Mongol initiative with military force. To begin with the Chin had constructed a chain of intimidating fortified cities to protect the empire from invasions from the north; they also maintained a large and powerful body of cavalry plus an equally large army of foot soldiers, which they had every intention of using if provoked. Genghis marched into Chin territory with a sizeable force, which divided into smaller units and rode in all directions, systematically laying waste small towns and villages that they found in their path. They intended to avoid the larger, fortified cities and were happy to continue in this fashion until they eventually encountered a vast Chin force at Huan-erh-tsui. Instead of beating a hasty retreat, Genghis decided to attack. In their first serious engagement with a large foreign army, the Mongol cavalry proved devastating. They completely outmanoeuvred the Chin, virtually destroying a force of some 70,000 within a matter of hours. Nine years later, a Taoist monk on his way to visit Genghis travelled through this area and reported that the battlefield was still littered with human bones. Jochi, Genghis’s eldest son, went on to the very gates of the Chin capital, Chung-tu, near the site of modern Beijing, but since he had no knowledge or experience of siege warfare he withdrew. Although the Mongols had also gained control of the key passes into China and a number of small fortifications in the Chin defensive perimeter, they had no use for these; so in February of the following year the invaders rode back to southern Mongolia. They had failed to extort much out of the campaign, and the Chin quickly reoccupied those towns that had been destroyed by the Mongol raiders.

  The Mongols returned to their homelands having learned one important lesson: even though they had routed a huge Chin army, they would never extract a submission from the Chin emperor so long as he and his government remained safe inside their large fortified cities. It had never occurred to the Mongols to stay and occupy the lands they had conquered, so the campaign achieved almost nothing – either by their standards or by those of any other conqueror. However, once back in Mongolia Genghis sought to strengthen his hand before conducting any further raids. He effected an alliance with the Khitans, a small neighbouring kingdom who had been ousted from northern China by the Jurchen less than a century before. They were not particularly powerful, but because their territory lay north-east of the Chin the new alliance would make the Chin feel almost surrounded. Genghis then launched another campaign, with the Khitans, across the Chin’s northern frontier. On this occasion the Mongols were more successful at capturing fortified towns, but the campaign was brought to an abrupt end when Genghis was wounded by a stray arrow. The Mongols decided to take as much booty as they could and depart.

  In the autumn of 1213, the Mongols returned for the third time. They marched in three large columns, with Genghis in command of the largest while his sons Jochi, Chaghadai and the youngest, Tolui, shared command of the others. When they reached the outskirts of the Chin capital, Chung-tu, they again realised it was far too formidable, so they turned south and marched across the North China plain towards the Yellow River. In the process they crossed the fertile plain north of the Yellow River, seeing for the first time some of the vast area of land that lay under cultivation, and, of course, the huge numbers of peasants who worked it. Throughout 1213 they rode back and forth across Chin territory and in the process slaughtered countless thousands of the population. They also gathered the most prodigious amounts of booty: massive quantities of silk, gold and silver, plus hundreds of young boys and girls who were marched back as slaves. However, as the campaign dragged on the Mongols became victims of an outbreak of the plague that periodically swept through these lands. When the three columns reunited to lay siege to Chung-tu, Genghis’s force had come to resemble a much-reduced host of rag-tag ruffians rather than a conquering army. He had neither the skill nor the men to take Chung-tu, nor was he inclined to stay and try to starve the city into submission. However, internal disputes within the Chin court brought things to a conclusion when the Chin emperor suddenly indicated that he wanted to make peace. Genghis responded by asking what the Chin might offer in return for the siege being called off. When the negotiations had been concluded, the Mongols departed with even more silk and gold, together with another 500 children to be added to those already headed for slavery. Once again, the Mongols turned and rode back towards their homeland: ‘Our soldiers laden [with] satin and goods as many as they could carry, tied their burdens with silk and went away.’

  Genghis also accepted a marriage with a Chin princess, assuming, as his shabby army departed China, that the Chin now took him to be the pre-eminent sovereign in the region and that this situation would not be challenged. From a Mongol perspective the campaign was a great success, and Genghis’s status was much enhanced by the enormous quantities of booty to be shared out. But from the Chin perspective the outcome could also be seen as a success, for once again they had survived simply by paying off the invaders. Once the Mongols were gone, the Chinese would return to their lands and continue where they had left off. As ever, the Mongols had shown not the slightest interest in permanently occupying or supplanting Chin control of northern China.

  In the meantime, the Chin emperor, thinking that Chung-tu was a little too close to the northern passes that led to Mongolia, decided to move his court to the city of K’ai-feng, south of the Yellow River. According to a Chinese account, having assumed that the Chin had accepted his supremacy, Genghis interpreted this as a breakdown in trust. ‘The Chin emperor made a peace agreement with me, but now he has moved his capital to the south; evidently he mistrusts my word and has used the peace to deceive me!’ It seems likely that, had the Chin still been prepared to appease the Mongols, they might have escaped destruction. In the autumn of 1214, the Mongols returned to the siege of Chung-tu, this time with a much larger army that included Chinese and Khitans as well as Mongols. This time the city was invested by a force prepared to stay for as long as it took. The inhabitants, distraught that their emperor had deserted them and terrified of the retribution they expected at the hands of the Mongols, remained behind their walls and suffered appalling deprivations. As the months passed, they even turned to cannibalism, and the longer they held out the greater Mongol retribution would be. In the spring of 1215, as there seemed to be little progress, Genghis left the campaign to one of his generals and returned to the northern frontier. So he was not present when finally, in the early summer, the Chin commanders abandoned the city and the Mongols entered unopposed.

  Once the Mongols were inside the city walls, the inhabitants’ worst fears were realised. Chung-tu had been one of the largest cities in northern China, and it was utterly laid to waste. News of the destruction must have sent a shiver of dread through all the courts in the region. For the first time the Mongols were seen not merely as a significant military force, but as a force capable of appalling levels of destruction. Squadrons of Mongol horsemen rode the streets firing incendiary arrows into the wooden houses, while others put thousands of the civilian population to the sword. Entire districts were reduced to ash, and a visiting ambassador from the Khwarazm Shah, the leader of the great Islamic empire in western Asia, reported that, after all the slaughter and the fires, the streets were greasy with human fat and littered with carcasses.

  There was, however, some method in this madness. Genghis preferred to secure submission from his neighbours without resort to warfare, so the military successes were clearly meant to send a signal to others. In 1218 the Koreans, no doubt heavily influenced by reports of the fate of Chung-tu, made their submissions to the Mongol court along with substantial payments; and so they avoided destruction. The annihilation of the former Chin capital was both an act of appalling retribution and a warning to others, for the singular fact appreciated by all Mongol commanders was the enormous discrepancy between the size of the Mongol nation and that of other nations that lay on its borders. Slaughter on a grand scale, or the threat of it, was the only way to get their own way. Those that accepted Mongol terms, like the Uighurs, Tanguts, Khitans and Koreans, could expect clemency; those that did not or – worse – who reneged on their agreements could expect no mercy.

  With the fall of Chung-tu large numbers of Chinese, Khitan and Chin troops surrendered, along with the administrators and officials responsible for the government of the northern part of the Chin empire. Under their influence, the Mongols took their first hesitant steps towards assuming responsibility for the administration of a conquered land. It was a role for which they had little enthusiasm, but it was being forced upon them. Even so, the Chin were unconquered and remained so for nearly twenty years.

  THE PUNISHMENT OF GOD

  But by now Genghis had already lost interest in the campaign in China, and had become absorbed in matters further west. Reports of the fall of Chung-tu had inspired the Khwarazm Shah to open a dialogue. Khwarazm Shah ‘Ala’ al-Din Muhammad II had inherited an empire founded by a Turkish mercenary, Qutbeddin Muhammad, in what is today Uzbekistan. ‘Ala’ al-Din also took over a massive army largely made up of Turkish mercenaries from the tribes west of the Aral Sea, and with this force he had expanded his empire south into the Persian territory of Khurasan. In reality it had been little more than an easy annexation, given the size and reputation of his army, yet it was enough for him to declare afterwards that he was ‘the chosen prince of Allah’. Indeed, so impressed were his own sycophantic courtiers that they proclaimed him the second Alexander. To the north-east of Khurasan lay the empire of Transoxiana with its grand cities of Bukhara and Samarqand, and beyond that the powerful Buddhist empire of the Qara Khitai, which stood between the Muslim world and the expanding empire of the Mongols.

  Following the neighbouring Uighurs’ submission to Genghis Khan in 1209, the territory of Qara Khitai seemed far less powerful, especially as it was currently being ruled by a survivor of the war between the Mongols and the Naimans, the hated and despotic Kuchlug. ‘Ala’ al-Din chose this moment to march into Transoxiana, which he finally conquered in 1210. These lands lie between the rivers Oxus and Jaxartes and are on the whole fairly barren. But it was across these lands that the caravans of both the East and the Middle East had crossed for centuries, and they had brought extraordinary wealth to the cities that produced or traded in carpets, silk, woven cotton and silver lame. The greatest of these was Samarqand, which the Khwarazm Shah had made his capital. By some accounts it was a magnificent city of some 500,000 inhabitants, a community of craftsmen, merchants, Chinese artisans, leather workers, goldsmiths and silversmiths. In the fields beyond the city walls aubergines and melons were grown, to be packed in snow inside lead-lined boxes for export. The streets were lined with shady trees, cooled by fountains and decorated with gardens, and under the Khwarazm Shah Samarqand became one of the most magnificent cities in Asia.

 

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