The Mongol Empire extended ultimately from Korea in Asia to the borders of Hungary in Europe, and within its vast area of military conquest was the whole of China under a brief period of Mongol domination known as the Yuan Dynasty. But to grasp the significance of the extraordinary growth of this nomadic people, it is necessary to look at Genghis Khan (1167-1227), whose genius for leadership and power united the independent tribes under one leader, making the Mongol Empire possible. (Morton,p. 115) Genghis Khan was born under the name Temuchin, meaning timber or iron, which his cradle was made of.
Temuchin born in 1167 in Onan River Valley of Mongolia. He grew up on the steppe lands of Mongolia, learning to hunt and ride a horse at a young age. His father was killed on the way back from arranging the marriage of Temuchin to Borte. Temuchin was only 8 years old at the time, when his father was poisoned by a group of Tatars, getting revenge for a costly raid against them earlier. Temuchin\’s fathers death, which happened in 1175 or 1176, lead to his family\’s loss of support with relatives isolating Temuchins family. His mother and her four sons, and a few retainers were abandoned to fend for themselves.
They lost their herds of animals and the economic support of their kinsmen, forcing them to fish, eat roots and mice to survive. Temuchin and his brothers grew to early adulthood in extreme poverty. It was during this time that Temuchin showed his ruthlessness by killing his half-brother Begter over not sharing a fish that had been caught. When Temuchin claimed his wife-to-be Borte, who had been promised to him years earlier, he gained a wife of great intelligence and character, as a major asset in his rise to power. It also re-established ties to an old ally ending several rough years of isolation for his family.
Temuchin\’s benefactor was Toghrul, leader of the Kereits, who made him his heir. Temuchin and Toghrul, launched a joint attack on the Tatars in 1196. In the spring of 1196 the combined forces of Mongols and Jurchens of the Chin Dynasty of China administered a major defeat to the Tatar tribes. Victory gave Temuchin the opportunity to plunder the booty of his enemies, taking weapons, horses and food to increase his power and prestige. In 1197 his tribe defeated the Jurkin, who had reneged on their pledge to join the attack on the Tatars.
He executed their leaders, and made dependents of the survivors. He taught all the lesson of loyalty to him and to honor promises made to him, but in extermination the Jurkin ruling class, Temuchin had rid himself of the only Mongolian noble line senior to his own. Temuchin had continued military successes, that led to a final showdown with the Tatars in 1201-2. On the eve of the campaign Temuchin instructs his army that their duty was to kill Tatars, not to acquire booty. If one was caught looting before the fighting ended, they would suffer harsh punishment of a painful death.
The attack came in the fall of 1202, resulting in a brutal defeat of the Tatars, with the survivors being rounded up, and mercilessly put to the sword. Women and children were the only ones spared by the brutal military of Temuchin. (Franke,pp. 335-40) By fighting, diplomacy, and determination, Temuchin gained power and wealth, until finally in 1206 a great gathering of all the Mongol tribes granted him the title of Genghis Khan, meaning Universal Ruler, uniting all the Mongols, with all swearing loyalty to him. (Morton,p. 16)
The Mongol ideology was used to legitimized the overeignty of Genghis Khans linage and justified their expansionist policies. Sovereign power was conferred on an earthly ruler by Eternal Heaven, the sky god and chief deity of the steppe nomads. Genghis Khan was seen as Heavens chosen instrument, which guaranteed the success of his military and political ventures. The good fortune that accompanied his rise to power was seen as a manifestation of heavens favor. The belief that Genghis Khan and his successors was that Heaven gave a mandate to bring all the world under the Mongols dominion.
Because the Mongolians saw heir expansion into other nations as divinely sanctioned, anyone refusing to submit without question or hesitation was thwarting the will of Heaven and deserved only the harshest punishment, which was death. (Franke,pp. 347-8) Genghis Khan organized his armies on the decimal system, with 95 units of a thousand, as the basic structure unit of his army. He created a personal body guard of 10 units to insure his personal safety and as an officers training school for the sons of clan chiefs and to create a pool of young leaders loyal to him. His personal bodyguard was given high ranks and a larger share of plunder.
The weapon of choice for the Mongol soldier was the double curved compound bow that could kill at 200 yards. The military had an advance communication network using smoke signals, colored flags and messengers. Every soldier had three to eight spare horses on the battlefield. The Mongol military had a commander over each unit that was able to coordinate effective movement of major formations on battlefields. The maneuverability of the military was achieved by peacetime exercises, such as vast hunting expeditions in units with strict orders to follow. Each unit of 1,000 included soldiers on active duty with their families and dependents.
It was not only a military formation, but also an organ of local government. The decimal system let Genghis Khan undermine tribal authority and loyalty and to replace it with military discipline and unity. Old enemies, such as the Tatars and Naiman were broken up as tribal groups and assigned to composite units of one thousand or made dependents in other units made up of other peoples. Allys were allowed to have units of their own ethnically homogenous tribes due to their past loyalty. (Franke,p. 346) Genghis Khan followed a fixed plan of invasion of a hostile country.
The general council along with Genghis Khan would put forth the plan of the campaign, selecting routes to take, and the divisions of the units choosen for service. They sent out people to spy on their enemys and informers were questioned. The enemy nation was entered from several points, with each division moving toward a fixed objective. They ravaged smaller towns and observed the larger fortified towns and supplys were gathered by the military. They typically tried to surprise their enemy with a rapid march of a day and a night. If unsuccessful they may withdraw, appearing to retreat for several days until their opponent was off guard.
Then they may entend their line of soldiers, until the enemy was surrounded and destroyed or forced to retreat. The Chinese said that he led his armies like a god. The manner in which he moved large bodies of men over vast distances without an apparent effort, the judgment he showed in the conduct of several wars in countries far apart, his strategy in unknown regions, always on the alert, the sieges he brought to a successful termination, his brilliant victories, a succession victories all combined, make up the the picture of the amazing military career of Genghis Khan. (Lamb,pp. 210-12)
Genghis Khan had strict discipline over his military and people. He used his personal magnetism and fearless leadership as the foundation of his power, but he secured his authority by the Yasa, or Code of Laws. The laws were followed during his lifetime, such as all booty was to be held collectively, and it was a capital offense for any one leaving the battlefield during a military campaign. The legal pronouncements of the Yasa of Genghis Khan was mainly concerned with military discipline.
The punishment for disobedience was severe and the military units were held collectively responsible for behaviors of individuals within he decimal units. Franke,p. 346) Genghis Khan\’s code of laws first principle was that there is only one God, creator of heaven and earth, who alone gives life and death, riches and poverty as pleases him- and has absolute power over all, which shows the influence of his mother, a Nestorian christian. The other laws forbidden chieftains of nations and clans subject to the Mongols from holding honorary titles. Men guilty of theft of a horse or a steer or a thing of equal value will be cut in half. He outlawed slavery, and required every man to join the army. He punished adultery by death.
Spies, false witnesses, and sorcerers are condemned to death. Officers and chieftains who fail in their duty, or do not come when summoned by the Khan are to be killed thus insuring control of the military. (Lamb,pp. 201-3) Genghis Khan\’s military fought the Jin dynasty of north China for several years, conquering Peking in 1215. By 1221 he had conquered central asia, including Turkestan and north China. Genghis Khan was persuaded not to destroy the Chinese peasants and their agriculture, but instead to reap the benefits of taxing them and using the products of their mines nd their industry. Morton,117)
Genghis Khan performed during the years 1219-1225, the amazing military feat of subjecting the countries from Tibet to the Caspian sea, with no more than 100,000 men- and from the Dnieper to the China sea with no more than 250,000, in all. And of this number not more than half were Mongols. The armies of Genghis Khan were made up of 50,000 Turkoman allies at the end of the campaigns; In China the ancestors of the present day Koreans and Manchus were fighting under the control of the Mongol empire to help defeat China. (Lamb,p. 208)
Genghis Khan died in august 1227 on the Tangut military campaign in north China apparently from complications arising from injuries that he had suffered in a a riding accident in the fall of 1225. Once the Tangut was defeated, the body of Genghis Khan was taken back to Mongolia and buried on Burkhan Khaldun. By 1221, Genghis Khan and the Mongols had laid the foundations of the Mongol empire and arranged before his death in 1227 for it to be divided among the four sons of his chief wife and their descendents, including his grandson Kublia Khan who conquered the rest of China to establish the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368).
Morton,117) Genghis Khan had charged his successors with the task of conquering the world, setting the example for them to follow. It was Genghis Khan that said \”The joy of man lies in treading down the enemy, tearing him up by the root, taking from him everything he has… in making one\’s bed upon the belly and navel of his wives. \” Throughout central Asia millions died at the hand of the Mongols. Seventy thousand of the captured at Nissa, were butchered where they stood screaming in their bonds. At Merv the brutal Mongol invaders, with steel, fire and water, killed over a illion people.
At Nishapur, Genghsis Khan\’s daughter who\’s husband was killed outside the walls of the Persians city watched unmovingly as every living creature, down to the infants, were butchered under the Persian sun, carving the heart out of Persia and its wealth taken off for Mongol use. In a battle above the plains of Shan-si, the Mongols destroyed a Chinesse army said to have numbered half a million men. Even after gaining great wealth, the Mongols couldn\’t stop. They had taken the wealth of China, the cunning craftsmanship of Islam, and opened to them the evenues of enormous territories.
But they knew that if they stopped, then they would fall apart. If they stopped conquest and settled down, then they would grow fat, and become lazy, making it easy for their enemies to defeat them and their empire would collapse. (Brent,pp. 107-10) In conquering central Asia and part of Europe, the Mongols had hurled two continents together, with the alterations they caused to the distribution of cultures, peoples, and religions in the lands to which their power stretched was crucial in the development of the whole world.
But for all the difference the Mongols made to the development of a variety of civilizations, they never established their own. Genghis Khan had set out to dominate the world; for all his understanding, even his wisdom, he never realized that it is not by warfare that one dominates vast populations, but by ideas, and beliefs, such as Arabs used their faith to make their conquests permanent. The Mongols brought nothing, could offer nothing. They could destroy, or they could take.
They took on the ideas and cultural priorities of the people they defeated- in Persia the Persian, and in China the Chinese. The formidable impartiality of their law, upon which the peace they imposed was based, hardly survived its founder, Genghis, and certainly not his grandsons. The Mongols could only force people to accept their presence, but could never win their respect. They contributed to the sum of human cruelty, they murdered, plundered, and destroyed on a vast scale; then they vanished.
What they hoped to achieve they did not achieve; and what they did achieve was by accident or in the name of some other authority, such as Buddhism or Islam. They were barbarians, come slashing out of their own darkness to smash the light of civilization; And they were the last of their type, with gunpowder making war a matter of technology, needing complex economies, and developed industries to carry on warfare. (Brent,p. 240-50) One hopes that the world will never see such inhumanity again.