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    Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190–1400
    Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190–1400
    Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190–1400
    Ebook119 pages2 hours

    Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190–1400

    By Stephen Turnbull

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    About this ebook

    The history of the Mongol conquests is a catalogue of superlatives. No army in the world has ever conquered so much territory, and few armies have provoked such terror as the Mongol hordes. So vast was the extent of the Mongol Empire that the samurai of Japan and the Teutonic Knights of Prussia had each fought the same enemy while being unaware of each other's existence. This book provides a concise yet thorough account of the Mongol conquests, including the rise of Genghis Khan and the unification of the tribes with up to date information on campaign logistics, tactics and horse breeding.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJun 6, 2014
    ISBN9781472810212
    Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190–1400
    Author

    Stephen Turnbull

    Stephen Turnbull is widely recognised as the world's leading English language authority on the samurai of Japan. He took his first degree at Cambridge and has two MAs (in Theology and Military History) and a PhD from Leeds University. He is now retired and pursues an active literary career, having now published 85 books. His expertise has helped with numerous projects including films, television and the award-winning strategy game Shogun Total War.

    Read more from Stephen Turnbull

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      Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190–1400 - Stephen Turnbull

      Background to war

      The rise of the Mongols

      The Mongols entered history as just one among a number of nomad tribes on the steppes of central Asia. As Juvaini puts it:

      Before the appearance of Genghis Khan they had no chief or ruler. Each tribe or two tribes lived separately; they were not united with one another, and there was constant fighting and hostility between them. Some of them regarded robbery and violence, immorality and debauchery as deeds of manliness and excellence. The Khan of Khitai used to demand and seize goods from them. Their clothing was of the skins of dogs and mice, and their food was the flesh of those animals and other dead things. Their wine was mare’s milk.

      The rise of the Mongols and the beginnings of the Mongol conquests arose out of a dramatic shift from such disunity to unity, and it was achieved through the personality and military skills of one man. In all probability he was born in 1167. He was given the name of Temuchin.

      The nomad world he entered was a fierce and unforgiving one of rivalry and survival skills. Like all Mongol children, Temuchin learned to ride with great skill and to handle a bow and arrows. After an eventful younger life his thoughts turned towards the opportunity of defeating his rivals and taking control of the unified Mongol tribes. Many years of warfare followed, the decisive victory being Temuchin’s defeat of the Naimans. In 1206 a grand assembly was called at the source of the Onon river. A white standard symbolising the protective spirit of the Mongols was raised. Its nine points represented the newly unified Mongol tribes. The gathering then proclaimed Temuchin as Genghis Khan (‘Universal Ruler’).

      The Xixia campaign 1205–10

      When Temuchin accepted the title of Genghis Khan in 1206, his strategic needs changed – from unifying fiercely independent nomads to impressing them by demonstrating his power against the agriculture-based civilisations that bordered their lands. The first of these enemies lay nearby in China and, at that time, China was split under a number of different rulers whose distrust of one another made the prospect of their conquest look that much easier.

      The two major power blocs in China at the beginning of the 13th century were the rival dynasties of the Jin and the Song. The Jin Empire lay to the north of the Yangtze river with its northern capital at Zhongdu, the site of present-day Beijing, while its southern capital was Kaifeng. The Jin were Jurchens, the same tribal peoples from Manchuria who would re-emerge centuries later as the Qing dynasty of China. During the 12th century the Jin had fought a long war against the Song dynasty, and in 1126 they had captured Kaifeng from the Song. From this time on, Song hegemony was confined to the area south of the Yangtze river, so that the dynasty became known as Southern Song. For a while they continued to fight back against the Jin and conducted operations from their new capital of Hangzhou from 1135 onwards.

      In the north-west of China, however, there was another state called Xixia. They were Tangut people, and Genghis Khan appreciated that the Xixia had to be his first objective because they could threaten his flank when he moved against the Jin. After a few exploratory raids in 1205 and 1206 Genghis Khan launched a major initiative in 1209 with the aim of completely destroying them. The operation began with a march of about 650 miles (1,000km), more than 200 miles (300km) of which was through the sandy wastes of the Gobi desert, and the Mongol army successfully stormed the Xixia fortress of Wolohai. The road ahead to the Xixia capital of Yinchuan lay over a high mountain range, and here the Xixia hit back. The result was a stalemate, but when further Tangut reinforcements arrived the Mongols deployed the tactic of a false withdrawal, a ruse that was to become a Mongol speciality, and succeeded in luring their opponents out of their fortified camp. A fierce battle ensued, during which the Xixia commander Weiming was captured.

      Up to this point the traditional Mongol techniques of mobile cavalry tactics and a rapid assault on a fortified place had sufficed for victory to be gained, but the Xixia capital of Yinchuan had been prepared for a siege. The hitherto remorseless Mongol advance came to an abrupt halt in front of its walls and the complex system of irrigation canals around it that were fed from the Yellow river. For the first time in their history, the Mongols were confronted with the prospect of having to conduct a long siege against a fortified town. Their response to the challenge was a positive one and at Yinchuan we see an early example of the extraordinary skill the Mongols were to demonstrate throughout their campaigns of being able to learn and to adapt.

      Seeing that the autumnal rains had swollen the Yellow river, Genghis Khan ordered the construction of a huge dyke. The river soon began to flood the city. Unfortunately for the Mongols, when the walls of Yinchuan were about to collapse in January 1210, the dyke burst. Whether or not it was the Xixia who caused the breach is not known, but the effect was to release a catastrophic flood against the Mongol siege lines. Nevertheless, the military might that the Mongols had already demonstrated persuaded the Xixia ruler to submit. So he surrendered to Genghis Khan, flood or no flood. When he presented a lavish tribute to his conqueror, Genghis Khan withdrew, satisfied at the successful conclusion to his first operation against a sedentary civilised state.

      The Kara-Khitai campaign

      One of Genghis Khan’s largest and most important military operations was directed against Islamic central Asia, and began with a useful but comparatively minor curtain-raiser – the conquest of the Kara-Khitai.

      Following Genghis Khan’s unification of the tribes, one of his enemies, Kuchlug of the Naimans, had escaped and taken refuge with the Gurkhan (ruler) of the Kara-Khitai, whose daughter he married. His father-in-law allowed him to gather Naiman tribesmen around him to form an army that would pose a threat to the security of the Mongol Empire, so in 1218 a Mongol corps of 20,000 men under Jebe appeared before Kashgar. The local population saw the Mongols as liberators from Kuchlug, so rebellion broke out, and Kuchlug was captured and killed. The Kara-Khitai lands were integrated into Mongol suzerainty.

      Warring sides

      The Mongol army

      The army with which Genghis Khan had achieved supreme power among his own people was shortly to be unleashed upon their neighbours. The lighter Mongol cavalrymen wore sheepskin coats over their ordinary clothes, but recent research, including some very valuable archaeological finds, has demonstrated that a Mongol army would have consisted of a large number of heavy cavalrymen in addition to light cavalrymen. The armour that these horsemen wore was made in the common Asiatic style of lamellar armour, whereby small scales of iron or leather were pierced with holes and sewn together with leather thongs to make a composite armour plate. Alternatively, a heavy coat could be reinforced using metal plates. A coat was worn under the suit of armour, and heavy leather boots were worn on the feet. The helmet, which was made from a number of larger iron pieces, was roughly in the shape of a rounded cone, and had the added protective feature of a neck guard of iron plates. The Mongol heavy cavalry rode horses that also enjoyed the protection of lamellar armour. Bows, swords and maces were the main offensive weapons.

      The organisation of the Mongol army

      Mongol society, both civil and military (between which there was little distinction) was characterised by firm discipline. After visiting the Mongols in 1246, Giovanni di Piano Carpini wrote:

      The Tartars – that is, the Mongols – are the most obedient people in the world in regard to their leaders, more so even than our own clergy to their superiors. They hold them in the greatest reverence and never tell them a lie.

      At the apex of the Mongol social structure was the ruling Khan of the family of Genghis Khan, and the grazing lands allocated to Genghis Khan’s four sons became the basis for the future khanates. This was the aristocracy of the steppes, a feudal structure found also in the army. A bond of personal loyalty linked the captains of tens (arban) with the captain of hundreds (jaghun), thousands (mingghan) and ten thousands (tumen), a simple decimal system that aided both delegation and communication. There was also an elite bodyguard for the

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