The Elite

by Ranulph Fiennes

  In 1220, as the Mongol army began its conquest of Afghanistan and Khorassan, Subotai had learnt of a land beyond the Caspian Sea where ‘narrow faced men with light hair and blue eyes’ dwelled. This gave him an idea. He proposed to Genghis that he, and another great Mongol warrior known as Jebe, along with their force of 20,000 men, be permitted to embark upon a long reconnaissance ride around these unknown lands, in order to provide intelligence for future conquests. Everywhere they travelled they would draw maps, take a census of the area, make surveys of the crops and yields, and even compile notes on the climate, to see if the area was worth conquering. They would also learn of the political and military situations, ascertaining how soldiers in these regions fought, while also working out who was a friend or foe, or who could be pitted one against the other.

  Genghis approved of the idea, but ordered Subotai to return to Mongolia within three years so that these new conquests could then begin. As such, in February 1221, Subotai and his troop of Mongol cavalrymen commenced a quite remarkable reconnaissance mission that has no equal.

  Journeying into the unknown you might say is a speciality of mine, so I can somewhat understand how Subotai might have felt. Hundreds of miles from home, and unable to call for support, you have to ensure you are well prepared. Training for the terrain and conditions ahead is a prerequisite, as is preparing all the equipment you are likely to need. Raising the money for such journeys can also take time, as such expeditions are not cheap. For this reason, it took us seven years of training and preparation before my team and I were ready to embark on reaching both poles in 1979.

  In 1992, when myself and Mike Stroud broke the record for the longest totally self-supported polar sledge journey ever made, so concerned were we at having everything we required, and like Subotai not being able to call for help, that our sledges weighed 485lbs. It was the equivalent of pulling a bathtub, with three average-sized adults in it, all through the snow and ice. I can only imagine how Subotai managed to handle the logistics of training and preparing 20,000 men for such a journey into what for them was the unknown. Ensuring every man, and horse, had sufficient calories for such a trek would have been a huge challenge. For the unsupported Antarctica journey, Mike and I ate over 5,200 calories a day and that still wasn’t enough to sustain us. When Captain Scott and his men famously perished on their own attempt to reach the South Pole, they found 4,500 calories to be insufficient for such an endeavour and slowly starved to death. So concerned was I about this that, in the 1980s, I spoke to NASA about how they fed their astronauts in space. At the time, they were trying to invent lightweight food packs that contained a high number of calories. Unfortunately, on any of my subsequent expeditions, we were never able to get a daily ration of 5,000 calories weighing any less than those used by Captain Scott in 1910. But Subotai and his men would soon have more pressing matters to deal with.

  After marching around the southern end of the Caspian Sea, along the banks of the Kura River and towards Tbilisi, they found the Georgian king, George the Brilliant, and 70,000 of his mounted knights waiting for them. This was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission, so Subotai had no intention of doing battle and losing valued men. However, when the Georgian army charged forward, he had no choice but to engage.

  In any event, doing battle was a treat for these Mongol warriors. On horseback, they unleashed a barrage of deadly arrows, forcing the Georgians back, before they escaped into the night. While Subotai would not seek to engage the Georgians any further, he had seen first-hand how George the Brilliant’s forces lined up, and the weapons they possessed. He stored the information away, as should they meet again, Subotai would be ready for them.

  Yet Subotai was certainly not looking for further conflicts. If they had to fight pitched battles all the way across Georgia, his soldiers would be in no condition to make the passage across the Caucasus, Europe’s highest and most difficult mountain range. This was not to say that the Mongols would not carry out raids on any soft targets they encountered along the way. After all, such conquests were in their DNA, while they also required a steady supply of horses and food, not to mention acquiring any easily available riches.

  In Azerbaijan, they did just that: when Subotai’s men captured the town of Maragha, after slaughtering the population they made off with as much booty as they were able to carry. Continuing on this looting spree towards Russia some towns merely opened their doors and gave Subotai whatever he requested, knowing full well the fate that would befall them if they did not comply. While the Mongols rightly developed a reputation for brutality, the mere fear they instilled saw many surrender without any need to do battle.

  Subotai deliberately used such psychology to his advantage. While he might massacre one town, he knew that word of their savage brutality would soon travel to the surrounding areas. The next city would therefore be more likely to surrender without resistance, thus avoiding unnecessary Mongol casualties. The morality of this approach to warfare is no doubt open to discussion, but there can be no disputing that it was very effective. The Mongols’ policy was pretty simple. Any city that surrendered without fighting would be spared. Those who caused the Mongol army to suffer casualties could expect no mercy.

  In late autumn of 1221, when winter was already beginning in the foothills of the Caucasus, Subotai and the Mongol army advanced westward into Georgia, only to find King George once more waiting for them at the foothills of the Dagestan range. But, having seen the Georgian forces previously descend headlong into battle, Subotai was ready for them. This time, he ordered his cavalry to feign retreat and invited the Georgians into the foothills. Just as he had planned, the Georgians accepted the invitation and before they knew it they were totally outflanked. What followed was a massacre. The Georgian army – one of the finest in Christendom – was routed to such an extent that it ceased to exist, leaving Georgia completely without defence. For years afterwards, with no army to protect it, Georgia was continually ravaged by brigands and bandits.

  With the Georgians vanquished, Subotai now had another issue to confront – crossing the deadly Caucasus mountains. Upon reaching the town of Derbend, Subotai stocked up on provisions and also accepted an offer from Rashid, the shah of Shirvan, to provide them with guides. But Rashid had no intention of allowing the Mongols to cross his lands.

  Setting off in terrible conditions, the guides followed their master’s instructions to take the Mongols over the worst possible route. Meanwhile, the shah sent his messengers the shortest way through the mountains to sound the alarm on the western steppes – the Mongols were coming!

  The crossing of the Caucasus was disastrous. In blizzard conditions, the Mongols had to abandon their mangonels (catapults useful for breaking sieges), as well as much of their baggage, while hundreds of Mongol soldiers froze to death. During my expedition to Norway’s Fabergstolsbre Glacier in 1970, we lost a sledge, which contained all of our skis and a couple of tents, when it slid out of control down a crevasse. We were lucky we did not lose more. My partners, Roger Chapman and Patrick Booth, were tied to it, and, if they had not slashed through the harness with a sawtooth sheath knife, they would have no doubt been killed. In such situations, you have no option but to thank your lucky stars it wasn’t much worse and persevere onwards. From then on, the five of us on the team had to share a two-men tent, which at least made things warm and cosy in subzero temperatures.

  Although, I must confess, I did wince at the thousands of pounds of gear we lost. Of course, if anything did go seriously wrong during my expeditions, I often had my wife Ginny on the other end of the radio, to send for help or supplies, which was always a tremendous comfort. Even if I did not particularly need help it was still wonderful to hear her voice, a luxury Subotai would not have had, being entirely cut off from his loved ones. However, on one occasion I could not even rely on Ginny for help. In 1982, during our Transglobe Expedition, Ginny’s camp erupted in flames, which destroyed our precious stores. She could do nothing but watch as eight 45
-gallon drums of stored gasoline exploded, soon followed by our rocket flares and ammunition. Newspaper and TV reports all over the world covered the story with headlines such as ‘POLAR EXPEDITION IN FLAMES’ and ‘CONFLAGRATION AT POLAR BASE’.

  There have been two particularly frightening situations where I have, however, had to call for help and be airlifted out. The first occurred when I attempted to become the first man to cross Antarctica solo and unsupported. After twenty-five days, and making excellent progress, I was stopped dead by kidney stones. While I attempted to ride out the most vicious pain I have ever experienced, I soon had no choice but to call for help, or risk doing permanent damage to my kidneys. The second occurred when I attempted to become the first man to reach the South Pole solo and unsupported. Unfortunately, a slab of ice moved, which opened up the sea beneath it, and took my sledge with it. Inside was seventy days’ worth of food and thirty of fuel. To continue the expedition, I would need to rescue it, but to do so I had to quickly put my exposed left hand into the freezing water. While I managed to save the sledge, my fingers were riven by frostbite, and no attempt to warm them up would bring them back to life. Calling for assistance, I was soon airlifted out by skiplane. Sadly, the fingers were dead and beyond repair. Never one for patience, I eventually sawed off the dead ends myself in my shed, rather than wait for an operation.

  With no luxury such as a plane to rescue them, the surviving Mongols finally forced their way through the pass, emerging exhausted and broken by the treacherous journey. However, there was to be no respite. Blocking their way from the narrow mountain pass was an army of 50,000 Cuman forces, and other assorted tribes.

  For one of the few times in his long military career, Subotai found himself trapped. He knew he could not retreat back over the mountains, for a Muslim army raised by Rashid Shah would no doubt be waiting at the other end. With no means of retreat, and the narrow terrain depriving him of the ability to manoeuvre, Subotai ordered his exhausted army into a frontal attack, but they were soon repelled. With the situation looking desperate, Subotai realised he needed an urgent change of tack. Thankfully, he was a master at such things.

  Sending emissaries to the Cuman tribe, he offered them bribes of gold and horses, while pointing out that the Cumans and Mongols were brothers of the steppes who had no reason to be at war with each other. The Cuman contingent took the bait. Riding away into the night, they left the remaining tribal contingents at the mercy of the Mongols, who promptly trounced them. But Mongol scouts also didn’t intend to let the Cumans escape.

  When the Cumans divided their army into two contingents, each going its separate way, Subotai and Jebe closed fast after the main body, caught up with it, and killed every last man. The treasure, and the valuable horses, which they had given as a bribe, were also recovered. With their enemies destroyed, the road to Russia now lay open.

  As Subotai’s forces made their way to Russia, they encountered merchants from Venice. Subotai immediately recognised them as a valuable source of intelligence about the west, and invited them into his camp. Lavishly entertaining them, he learnt all he could and had his men draw maps based on what the Venetians said lay beyond. As a result, provisional maps of Hungary, Poland, Silesia and Bohemia were designed and in time would all prove to be crucial. By the time the Venetians left, they had also signed a secret treaty with the Mongols in which they would send back detailed reports of the economic strength and military movements in the countries they visited. In return, the Mongols promised to destroy all other trading stations in the lands in which they rode, leaving Venice with a monopoly wherever Subotai’s men went.

  During the autumn and early winter of 1222, Mongol scouts and reconnaissance parties moved over the Don and Dnieper Rivers. Conducting forays into the Crimea they gathered information and reported on troop movements for future conquests. However, the Cuman forces that had survived the Mongol slaughter now warned the Russian princes of their impending march.

  On hearing this, the prince of Galicia, Mstislav the Daring, rallied the other princes to assemble their armies and meet the Mongol threat before it was upon their lands. Soon these forces numbered over 80,000 men.

  Subotai learnt from his scouts of this advance and realised he had to move quickly to the east if he was not to be caught in the Russian multi-pronged advance. Once more Subotai attempted to use diplomacy to avoid conflict. He sent ambassadors to inform the Russians that they had nothing to fear from the Mongols, and, in any event, they were marching east, away from Russia. Unsurprisingly, the Russian princes failed to fall for this ruse, and continued marching onwards.

  As Subotai’s main forces moved east, he left a rearguard of 1,000 men to report on enemy movements, as well as to delay the Russians’ approach. However, as the vanguard of the Russian army caught up with the Mongol rearguard, the sheer number of their forces soon overwhelmed them.

  For nine days, the Russian army pursued the Mongols as they retreated north of the Sea of Azov. Yet, without any single commander, and riddled by indiscipline, the Russian contingents became strung out behind one another, over a distance of 50 miles. Meanwhile, the Mongols were riding over terrain they had previously reconnoitered; and Subotai used this knowledge to his advantage.

  On 31 May 1223, the Mongols halted on the west bank of the Kalka River and formed for battle. As the Russian vanguard, under Mstislav, rode into the valley they were confronted by the Mongol army in battle formation. Without waiting for the rest of their contingent to catch up, the vanguard flew into action. This was just what Subotai was waiting for. With black smoke wafting across the battlefield from Mongol fire pits, the heavy cavalry suddenly appeared through the smoke and charged. The shock was tremendous. As some Russian forces retreated, others were slain, with the Mongols rampaging through their ranks. Chasing them for over 150 miles, they stormed the prince of Kiev’s fortified camp, killing another 10,000 men, before sentencing the prince to death by suffocating him inside a box. At the end of the battle, a Mongol army of 18,000 men had slain over 40,000 Russians, including six princes and seventy nobles.

  With their mission accomplished, and the three years coming to a close, Subotai, Jebe and their men made their way back to meet Genghis Khan on the banks of the Syr Darya River. But, before he departed, Subotai left behind scores of spies and secret messengers to provide regular reports on all that went on in Russia and eastern Europe. This information was to be passed to the Mongol intelligence service, who compiled dossiers on the various European countries and the political and religious rivalries that divided them. Subotai’s reconnaissance into Russia was the longest cavalry ride in history, covering over 5,500 miles in just three years. The information he gained was to prove invaluable to the ceaseless growth of the Mongol Empire.

  When Genghis Khan passed away in 1227, his son Ogedei succeeded him and aimed to continue with his father’s plan to conquer Russia and Europe, with Subotai leading the way. Although his forces were stretched in campaigns in China, Korea and the Caucasus and the Black Sea, Ogedei provided over 150,000 men to Subotai for his mission, a number based on an estimate provided by intelligence officers. With all the information his spies had gathered over the years, Subotai finally set out in 1236 to conquer Russia and beyond.

  Knowing that the key to conquering Russia was to attack each principality quickly, and in isolation, to prevent the formation of any coalition forces, the whole country was soon to fall to the Mongols in terrifying and bloody fashion. Nowhere was safe as fortresses were overwhelmed and turned into slaughterhouses. J. J. Saunders has written of this:

  Some were impaled, or had nails or splinters of wood driven under their finger nails. Priests were roasted alive, and nuns and maidens ravished in churches in front of their relatives.

  The slaughter and destruction in Kiev was said to be so great that, when a traveller passed by the ruins of the city six years later, he described it as having only a few hundred huts, with the ground still littered with ‘countless skulls and bones of d
ead men’. By the end of 1240, Russia was all but conquered and its forces destroyed.

  With this, Subotai and his men now moved into Europe, utilising the invaluable information they had gained from the Venetians on their reconnaissance mission, knowing full well that many European countries’ military forces were away fighting in the Crusades.

  After a series of sweeping Mongol victories, the Hungarian king, Bela IV, desperately tried to block the Carpathian passes using felled trees, ditches, traps and other natural obstacles, in order to slow Subotai’s forces while he tried to build his own. Despite these efforts, the Mongols still managed an astonishing pace of 60 miles a day, all while facing several feet of snow and obstructions blocking their path.

  The combination of the winter invasion, the sheer speed of the Mongol advance, and Subotai’s method of dividing his army into different divisions, saw the Mongols decimate the Polish and Hungarian armies in a series of battles. The Europeans not only had very limited intelligence on the invading Mongols, they were also no match for their firepower, mobility, training, command and endurance. This was emphatically seen at the Battle of Sajo River, where Mongol forces killed over 70,000 Hungarian soldiers – the entire royal army!

  With the destruction of the Hungarian army, the Mongols controlled all of eastern Europe from the Dnieper to the Oder, and from the Baltic Sea to the Danube River. In four months, they had overwhelmed Christian armies totalling five times their own strength. By early 1242, Subotai even began discussing plans to invade the Holy Roman Empire itself. However, these plans were shattered when news arrived of the death of Ogedei Khan.

  At this, the Mongol forces now had to make their way back home to take part in the election of a new khan. They were never to return to Europe.