HISTORICAL NOTE
The third son of Genghis was Great Khan for just twelve years, from A.D. 1229 to 1241. At a time when the Mongols were sweeping west into Europe, Ogedai’s death would be one of the crucial turning points of history. Western Europe could not have stood against them. The medieval castles there were no more daunting than walled Chin cities, and in the field, the Mongol style of fast-striking tactical warfare would have been practically unstoppable. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of the West changed when Ogedai’s heart failed.
We know Ogedai was still young and died only fourteen years after his father. We do not know why he built Karakorum—the son of a khan who not only despised cities, but who had spent his entire life demonstrating how weak a defense they actually were. Yet Ogedai built a city as the throne of empire. Contemporary descriptions of it do survive—for example, the words of a Christian friar, William of Rubruk. The silver tree was historical fact, as was its having shamanist temples, Islamic mosques, and at least one Nestorian Christian church.
It is hard to explain why Ogedai would build such a thing at all. One explanation that fits the facts is that he was a little like Cecil Rhodes, a man whose heart pain began when he was as young as sixteen. Before a heart attack finally killed Rhodes at forty-eight, he had built an empire for himself in Africa: a man driven to leave a mark, always knowing that he had little time to do it. Ogedai may well have had the same sense of urgency.
The second question is why he might build a city so influenced by those of the Chin—cities he had often seen burn. There, the influence of Yao Shu can be seen. Though Yao Shu was a real adviser to Ogedai, the character I have rendered is in fact an amalgam of two Chinese Buddhists from the period. I have not yet finished his tale. Worried by the khan’s heavy drinking, Yao Shu showed Ogedai how wine corroded an iron bottle. It is also true that Ogedai agreed to halve the number of wine cups he drank each day, only to have cups made that were twice the size. Buddhist advisers brought a sense of Chinese civilization to the Mongol court, subtly influencing each of the khans. As a result, cities would one day open their gates to Kublai as they never would have to his grandfather.
The Three Games of Men (Naadam) in Mongolia are wrestling, archery, and horse racing. The Naadam festival is indeed much older than the time of Genghis, though in previous centuries it was also a chance for tribes to horse-trade, mix bloodlines, gamble, and be told the future in divinations. The modern Naadam festival has women taking part in archery and the races, though not wrestling, which is still the men’s sole preserve. The description of the archery wall is accurate. Shots are taken from around a hundred paces, and archers compete in groups of ten, the smallest unit of Genghis’s army. Each archer has four arrows, and rather than judge individual shots, they must hit a certain number of targets to succeed. It is interesting that the archery tradition is one of teams, bearing in mind the martial nature of the sport and the vital role it played in the armies of Genghis Khan.
The horse races of the festival, which take place over three days, are all endurance races. In comparison to the West, endurance was the quality that made the khan’s armies mobile, and again it is interesting to see how that has remained the preeminent quality of equine greatness, rather than a burst of speed from a horse bred and built like a greyhound.
I have taken a small liberty with history in including a footrace. There’s no record of it, but it would have been a possibility. I have no doubt other events have come and gone before the current form, just as the modern Olympics used to include a tug-of-war competition from 1900 to 1920, won twice by Britain.
It is sometimes believed that Genghis left a will. If such a document ever existed, it has not survived. If it was an oral will, we do not know if it was given at the point of death or long before. Some versions of history have Genghis dying almost instantly, while others have him lingering for days after a fall or a wound, where he could easily have arranged his own legacy. Either way, it is generally accepted that it was Genghis Khan’s desire to have Chagatai inherit a vast khanate, while Tolui received the Mongol homeland. As the official heir, Ogedai inherited the northern Chin territories and whatever else he could win for himself. I have put that distribution in Ogedai’s hands, in part because it would have been his final choice, no matter what his father intended. If Ogedai had executed Chagatai then, the bloodlines of that part of the world would have been very different, down to the present day.
Instead, Chagatai Khan died just a few months after Ogedai in 1242. The exact manner of his death is unknown, though the incredibly fortuitous timing allowed me to write and indeed suspect that he was killed.
The earliest written formula for gunpowder is Chinese, from around 1044. It was certainly used in siege warfare during the period of Ogedai’s khanate. Handheld cannon of the sort I have described have been found dating back to Kublai Khan’s period. One of the earliest recorded uses was by the Mongols in the Middle East in 1260, but they certainly went back further than that.
They were the cutting edge of military technology for the period, effectively a hugely powerful hand weapon that fired stones or even a metal ball. Iron vessels filled with gunpowder and lit with a fuse would have made effective shrapnel grenades. We do know the Mongols encountered them first against the Chin and Sung—and were quick to adopt such terrifying weapons. In fact, it was the vast territory covered by Mongol armies that led to the proliferation of such weapons across the landmass.
That said, the formula for Chinese gunpowder was poor in saltpeter, so lacked some of the explosive punch we associate with the material. A rush of flame would have been more common, with batches of the mixture varying enormously among makers, regions, and periods.
The extraordinary incident that led to the death of Tolui is from The Secret History of the Mongols. On his only campaign in northern China, Ogedai fell ill and “lost [the use of] mouth and tongue”—a massive stroke, or perhaps grand mal epilepsy.
Mongol shamans and soothsayers made divinations, assuming that the spirits of the Chin were attacking the khan. They asked to be shown the correct sacrifice, and in response, Ogedai spasmed and suffered violent cramps. Using that response, they asked if a kinsman was needed. Ogedai then came round and drank water, asking to be told what had happened.
Prince Tolui did not have to be asked. The man who was father to Kublai and Mongke, both of whom would be khans, willingly gave his life to save his brother.
On the subject of slaughtering horses, I took the opportunity to speak to slaughtermen who had killed many hundreds of elderly horses over the years. In the preparation of kosher or halal meat, the animal needs to remain alive for the heart to pump out the blood. They begin by cutting the throat. One man I spoke to wanted a much faster kill, so he preferred an initial thrust to the heart, then drew the blade across the throat. Between 6 and 10 percent of a horse’s body weight will be blood. It’s a rough estimate, but in a Mongolian pony, that would be around forty pints of blood.
As the Secret History records, Tolui took poison rather than die by the blade, but I changed his ending. The bloody sacrifice of animals was part of the attempt to save Ogedai, and the two events seemed to fit together. His son Mongke was certainly present, though no exchange is recorded between them.
A quick note on the subject of distances: By Ogedai’s time, a network of way stations had been set up wherever Mongol influence extended. Set twenty-five miles apart on major roads, they were well furnished. With regular changes of horses, an urgent message could be taken a hundred miles in a day, if necessary by the same man. The riders wore belts of bells, so the way stations could hear them coming and have water, food, and a fresh mount waiting. A thousand miles in ten days was not only possible, but commonplace. Such lines of communication made the armies of the khans modern in a sense that no other force of the century could manage.
The shaman Mohrol is fictional, though of course the khan would have had diviners and shamans. In Mongolia it remains the
case that an extra finger will mean a child is “chosen” to be a shaman. They do not hunt or fish and are supported by the tribes to be magic- and medicine-workers as well as keepers of history and tradition. They are men of power still.
The ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan did exist. One was around 114 feet high, the other 165 feet. They were dynamited by the Islamic Taliban in 2001. There are still legends of a third, “sleeping Buddha” in the hills there.
Tsubodai’s campaign against the West lasted from around 1232 to 1241. Over that time, he encountered Russians, Bulgars, and Hungarian Magyars, took Buda and Pest, attacked Poland and modern-day Serbia, and sent scouts as far as northern Italy. In just one winter, over a period of two months, his tumans took twelve walled Russian cities. They had learned the use of catapults, ballistae, even a form of wall-smashing trebuchet in their wars against northern China. Russia had nothing capable of stopping the war machine of the Mongols.
It is true that Tsubodai preferred to campaign in winter and used the frozen rivers as a network of roads through the cities. Like Genghis before him, he and his generals were ruthless with fallen enemies, slaughtering vast populations. His one worry seems to have been the wide battlefront making it easy to flank or encircle his tumans. Time and again, he sent tumans out in sweeps into Poland, Hungary, or Bulgaria to clear the way of possible enemies.
The legendary French Knights Templar said at the time that there was no army between Tsubodai and France that could stop him. Yet even the death of Ogedai might not have halted Tsubodai had he not had the princes of the nation with him. Batu, Jochi’s son, was there, as was Guyuk, Ogedai’s son. Ogedai’s grandson Kaidu was also present. It was he who raided into Poland with Baidur and fought the extraordinary battle of Liegnitz, preventing the Polish armies from flanking the main attack against Hungary. I have not used Kaidu as a character here, for fear of the “Russian novel problem,” where every page brings new characters until the reader loses track. I did include Mongke in the campaign—he was there for most of it, including Kiev. Kublai was not present as one of the princes. He remained in Karakorum, studying Buddhism and establishing the Chinese influence that would dominate his adult life.
Jebe too was absent for that campaign, though I have kept him as a minor character. The Secret History does not tell his ending, unfortunately. As with Kachiun and Khasar, a once great leader simply slipped from the pages of history and was lost. Early death was common in those days, of course, and they almost certainly met their end through disease or injury, a death so ordinary as to be ignored by chroniclers.
Temuge did make a final, rash attempt to become khan after the death of Ogedai. It was unsuccessful and he was executed.
Interestingly, Sorhatani was given her husband’s rights and titles on his death. In that one decision, she instantly became the most powerful woman in the khanate—and in the world at that time. Three of her four sons would become khan through her influence and training. She supported Ogedai as khan and was consulted by him as the empire grew and became established. The one time she refused his wishes was when he offered to marry her to his son, Guyuk. She turned the offer down, preferring to concentrate her considerable energies on her sons. History confirms her wisdom in that matter.
When Tsubodai’s tumans entered Hungary over the Carpathian Mountains, he faced the armies of the Hungarian king Bela IV. That monarch had accepted 200,000 Cuman refugees from Russia. (The Cumans were a Turkic people similar to the Mongols in many ways.) In exchange for their conversion to Christianity, they were given a brief sanctuary. Their leader Köten was baptized and his daughter married King Bela’s son to seal the agreement. In exchange, King Bela was able to field an army of nomadic horsemen in addition to his own forces. He also expected help from the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, who was king of what is now Germany, Italy, Sicily, Cyprus, and Jerusalem, or perhaps Pope Gregory IX. However, they were locked in their own struggle for power, with the Pope excommunicating Frederick II and even declaring him the Antichrist. As a result, the king of Hungary was left to resist the Mongol invasion almost without support. He did have forces from Archduke Frederick of Austria, but they withdrew after the death of Köten in a riot. The Cumans also left.
It is true that King Bela sent bloody swords throughout his kingdom to raise the people. There is a record of Batu’s missive to the king, demanding that the Russian Cumans and their leader Köten be handed over. Batu’s message was stark and simple: “Word has come to me that you have taken the Cumans, our servants, under your protection. Cease harboring them, or you will make of me an enemy because of them. They, who have no houses and dwell in tents, will find it easy to escape. But you who dwell in houses within towns—how can you escape me?”
It is interesting to note that the demand was sent in Batu’s name. As a senior prince and son to Jochi, the firstborn of Genghis, he was in nominal command of the Golden Horde, as they were known. Yet it was Tsubodai who led them strategically and tactically. It was a complex relationship and it came to a head when news of Ogedai’s death finally reached them.
Budapest is around four and a half thousand miles west of Karakorum in the same landmass. Tsubodai’s extraordinary campaign took the Mongol tumans right across Kazakhstan, into Russia to Moscow and Kiev, and on into Romania, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Eastern Prussia, and Croatia. They were knocking on the door of Austria when Ogedai died. It was in fact the French king Louis IX who fixed a confusing name for the Mongols in European minds. As he prepared his armies to march, he told his wife that his soldiers would send the Tartars to hell, or the Tartars would send them to heaven. He deliberately punned on the Latin word for hell, Tartarus, and the erroneous name “Tartar” stuck for centuries as a result.
I have omitted a detailed description of the battle of Liegnitz, which took place as the climax of Baidur’s sweep through Poland. It is the nature of such a sweep that there are many battles, against varied opponents, but there is a limit to how many can be squeezed into a novel, even one about the Mongols. In history, Liegnitz is one of the few really well-known Mongol battles—omitting it is the equivalent of writing about Nelson without mentioning the Nile. For the sake of the plot flow, however, I think it was the right decision. At Liegnitz, Baidur used the feigned retreat, but he added the innovation of tar barrels that sent white smoke across the battlefield. This simple device prevented one half of a Polish army seeing what was happening to the other half. It could easily have been the climax of this book, but the other well-known battle is Sajó River and that was Tsubodai’s triumph.
Tsubodai’s final recorded battle combined not only a night attack and flanking maneuver, not only the masterful use of terrain in the way he made the river work for him, but also the now ancient trick of leaving a path for the enemy to escape, only to fall on him as he does. Tsubodai led three tumans across a ford to the south of the encamped Hungarian armies, sending Batu against the left flank at dawn, while the rest galloped farther to hit the Hungarian rear. King Bela was forced to take refuge in his night camp, while the Mongols caused chaos with firecrackers, burning tar in barrels, and shooting random arrows. They had gone from the prey to the hunter and made the most of it.
In the midst of the chaos, King Bela’s men saw a ridge of ground running west that lay out of sight of the Mongols. He tested the escape route by sending out a small number, watching as they rode to safety. As the day wore on, the king tried to send his entire army from the camp. In their panic, they lost formation and were strung out over miles. It was at that point that Tsubodai’s men attacked the column. He had scouted the ground. He knew the ridge and had deliberately left the route open to trap them. Depending on the source, the Mongol tumans slaughtered somewhere between forty thousand and sixty-five thousand of the Hungarian army, ending it as an entity for a generation or more. King Bela escaped the slaughter and fled to Austria. When the Mongols left, he went on to rebuild Hungary from ruins. He is still honored as one of Hungary’s great kings, despite h
is disastrous encounter with Tsubodai.
In many ways, it was a fitting end to Tsubodai’s military career, though of course he did not see it like that. Hungary was in ruins when the news came of Ogedai’s death and everything changed.
The brilliant tactical maneuvers of Liegnitz and the Sajó River were rendered void by the Mongol withdrawal. They are rarely taught outside military schools, in part because they did not lead on to conquest. Politics intruded on Tsubodai’s ambitions. If it had not, all history would have changed. There are not many moments in history when the death of a single man changed the entire world. Ogedai’s death was one such moment. If he had lived, there would have been no Elizabethan age, no British Empire, no Renaissance, perhaps no Industrial Revolution. In such circumstances, this book could very well have been written in Mongolian or Chinese.
BOOKS BY CONN IGGULDEN
EMPEROR: THE GATES of ROME
In the decadent city of Rome, two boys dream of glory in the mightiest empire the world has ever known. As Marcus proves his might during a bloody campaign in Greece, Gaius faces the deadly infighting of the Roman Senate. Now a bitter conflict that sets Roman against Roman will put their friendship to the ultimate test.
EMPEROR: THE DEATH OF KINGS
Julius Caesar’s soldiers are after a band of pirates who kidnapped Caesar for ransom. As Caesar exacts his revenge and builds a legend far from Rome, his friend Gaius Brutus is fighting battles of another sort. Once Brutus and Caesar were as close as brothers. Now, they will be united again to fight a cataclysmic battle for Rome itself.
EMPEROR: THE FIELD OF SWORDS
The time has come for Caesar to enter the political battleground of Rome. Strengthened by the love of an older woman, and by the sword of his loyal friend Marcus, Caesar forges his legend. Meanwhile, his political adversaries in Rome grow ever more powerful, leaving Caesar to face the greatest threat to him yet—a man who wants Rome for himself.
The Khan Series 5-Book Bundle Page 169