‘His chariots shall be as a whirlwind! his horses are swifter than eagles. Woe unto us; for we are spoiled.’ JEREMIAH IV, 13
In the year 1167, twenty years before Saladin reconquered Jerusalem for Islam, a boy was born far away on the banks of the river Onon in north-eastern Asia to a Mongol chieftain named Yesugai and his wife Hoelun. The child was called Temujin, but he is better known in history by his later name of Jenghiz-Khan. The Mongols were a group of tribes living on the upper Amur river, and perpetually at war with their eastern neighbours, the Tartars. Yesugai's grandfather Qabul-Khan had welded them together into a loose confederacy; but after his death his kingdom had disintegrated, and the Chin Emperor of Northern China had established his suzerainty over the whole district. Yesugai inherited only a small portion of the old confederacy, but he increased his power and his reputation by defeating and conquering some of the Tartar tribes and by interfering in the affairs of the most civilized of his immediate neighbours, the Khan of the Keraits.
The Keraits, who were a semi-nomadic people of Turkish origin, inhabited the country round the Orkhon river in modern Outer Mongolia. Early in the eleventh century their ruler had been converted to Nestorian Christianity, together with most of his subjects; and the conversion brought the Keraits into touch with the Uighur Turks, amongst whom were many Nestorians. The Uighurs had developed a settled culture in their home in the Tarim valley and the Turfan depression and had evolved an alphabet for the Turkish language, based on Syriac letters. In earlier times Manichaeism had been their dominant religion. Now the Manichaeans tended under Chinese influence to become Buddhist. The power of the Uighur was waning, but their civilization had spread over the Keraits and over the Naiman Turks whose country lay between.
About the year 1170 the Kerait Khan Qurjakuz, son of Merghus-Khan, died, and his son Toghrul had some difficulty in securing the inheritance against the opposition of his brothers and uncles. In the course of his fratricidal wars he secured the help of Yesugai, who became his sworn brother. This friendship gave Yesugai a superior position amongst the Mongol chieftains; but before he could establish himself as the chief Mongol Khan he died, poisoned by some Tartar nomads, whose evening meal he was sharing. His eldest son, Temujin, was then nine years old.
Map 3. The Mongol Empire.
The energy of Yesugai’s widow, Hoelun, preserved for the young chieftain some authority over his father’s tribes. But Temujin’s childhood was stormy. He showed himself to be a leader while still a boy, and he was ruthless towards his rivals, even amongst his own family. In the course of the wars by which he won a hegemony over the Mongols, he was for a while a captive in the hands of the Tayichiut tribe, and his wife Borke, whom he married when he was seventeen, was held prisoner for some months by the Merkit Turks of Lake Baikal; the legitimacy of her eldest son, Juji, who was born during this captivity, was always therefore suspect. Temujin’s growing successes were largely due to his alliance with the Kerait Khan, Toghrul, whom he affected to regard as a father and who helped him in his wars against the Merkits. About the year 1194 Temujin was elected king or khan of all the Mongols, and took the name of Jenghiz, the Strong. Soon afterwards, the Chin Emperor recognized Jenghiz as chief prince of the Mongols and secured his alliance against the Tartars, who had been threatening China. A swift war resulted in the subjection of the Tartars to Jenghiz’s rule. When Toghrul-Khan was driven from the Kerait throne in 1197, it was Jenghiz who restored him. In 1199 Jenghiz combined forces with Toghrul-Khan to defeat the Naiman Turks; but it was not long before he grew jealous of the power of the Keraits. Toghrul was now the chief potentate in the Eastern Steppes. He had the title of Wang-Khan, or Ong-Khan, which filtered through to western Asia in the more familiar and euphonious form of Johannes, thus making him a candidate for the role of Prester John. But he was a bloodthirsty and treacherous man, singularly lacking in Christian virtues; nor was he ever able to bring help to his fellow-Christians. In 1203 he quarrelled with Jenghiz. Their first battle, at Khalakhaljit Elet, was indecisive; but a few weeks later the Kerait army was exterminated at Jejer Undur, in the heart of the Kerait land. Toghrul was killed as he fled for refuge. The members of his family that survived submitted to Jenghiz, who annexed the whole country.
1206: Organization of Jenghiz-Khan’s Empire
The Naiman were the next nation to be subdued, in 1204, at a great battle at Chakirmaut where the whole fate of Jenghiz’s power was at stake. Wars during the next two years established Jenghiz as supreme over all the tribes between the Tarim basin, the river Amur and the Great Wall of China. In 1206 a Kuriltay, or assembly, of all his subject-tribes held on the banks of the river Onon confirmed his kingly title; and he proclaimed that his people should be known collectively as the Mongols.
Jenghiz-Khan’s Empire was basically a conglomeration of clans. He made no attempt to interfere with the old organization of the tribes as clans under hereditary chieftains. He merely superimposed his own family, the Altin Uruk or Golden Clan, and set up a central government controlled by his own household and familiars, and he placed under the free clans large numbers of slaves taken from the tribes that had resisted him and been conquered. Serfs in thousands were given to his relations and friends. At the Kuriltay of 1206 his mother Hoelun and his brother Temughe Otichin were each given ten thousand families as chattels and his young sons five or six thousand each. Tribes and even cities that submitted to him peaceably were left without interference, so long as they respected his overriding laws and paid to his tax-collectors the heavy tribute that he demanded. To bind his countries together he promulgated a code of laws, the Yasa, which was to supersede the customary laws of the Steppes. The Yasa, which was issued in instalments throughout his reign, laid down specifically the rights and privileges of the clan-chieftains, the conditions of military and other services due to the Khan, the principles of taxation, as well as of criminal, civil and commercial law. Supreme autocrat though he was, Jenghiz intended that he and his successors should be bound by the law.
As soon as the administration of his empire was arranged, Jenghiz set about its expansion. He had now a large army, to whose organization he had also given careful attention. Every tribesman between the ages of fourteen and sixty was by Mongol and Turkish tradition liable to military service; and the great annual winter hunting expeditions, necessary for providing meat for the army and the Court, served as manoeuvres to keep the soldiers in training. By temperament the tribesmen were used to give to their leaders an unquestioning obedience; and the leaders, from bitter experience, knew that they must now obey the Khan. His subjects had also, like all nomadic tribes, a yearning to move beyond the horizon, and a fear lest their pasture-lands and forests should be exhausted. The Khan offered them new countries and great booty and hordes of slaves. It was an army of cavalry, archers and lancers mounted on swift ponies, men and beasts accustomed from birth to hard living and to making long journeys across deserts with very little food and drink. Such a combination of speed of movement, discipline and vast numbers had never before been known.
1218: Mohammed-Shah the Khwarismian
The three great states that now bordered the Mongols were the Chin Empire on the east, with its capital at Pekin; then the Tangut kingdom of Hsia Hsi, along the upper reaches of the Yellow River, where a dynasty of Tibetan origin ruled over a mixed sedentary population of Mongols, Turks and Chinese; and, to the southwest, the kingdom of the Kara Khitai, Buddhist nomads from Manchuria who had been displaced by the Chin Emperors early in the twelfth century and had fought their way westward, to found an empire at the expense of the Uighurs of the Tarim basin and the Moslem Turks of Yarkand and Khotan. Their monarch, the Gur-Khan, was already a formidable factor in eastern Moslem politics; and the Uighurs of Turfan were his clients. The weakest of the three was Hsia Hsi, which, therefore, Jenghiz attacked the first. By 1212 its King had accepted his suzerainty. Invasions of the Chin Empire followed. A series of tremendous battles put the whole countryside as far as the Yellow Sea and Shantung into his power; but the Mongols were unused to attack fortified places, and the great walled cities held out against him. It was only when a Chin engineer, Liu Po-Lin, entered Jenghiz’s service that his armies began to learn the art of siege warfare. But by 1226 the Chin Emperor was reduced to vassalage. Already by 1221 the Chin province of Manchuria had been annexed, and Korea had acknowledged Mongol suzerainty. When the last Chin Emperor died in 1223, his remaining provinces were incorporated into the Mongol Empire.
Meanwhile, Jenghiz had extended his power south-westward. At this time the Khwarismian Empire of Mohammed-Shah was at its height. Mohammed was master of all Asia from Kurdistan and the Persian Gulf to the Aral Sea, the Pamirs and the Indus. The Gur-Khan of the Kara Khitai found him a disquieting neighbour and sought to embarrass him by inciting his vassals in Transoxiana against him. The resultant wars seriously weakened the Kara Khitai; and while Mohammed-Shah annexed their southern territory, the throne of the Gur-Khan was usurped by a Naiman refugee prince, Kuchluk. Kuchluk, a Nestorian by birth, had become a Buddhist on his marriage to a Kara Khitai princess; but unlike the Gur-Khans, he was intolerant towards his Christian and Moslem subjects. His unpopularity gave Jenghiz his chance to intervene. When a Mongol army swept down into the Turfan basin, it was welcomed as a force of liberators. The Uighurs gladly submitted to Mongol rule; and Kuchluk was restricted to a small principality in the Tarim valley.
This expansion brought Jenghiz into direct connection with the territory of the Khwarismians. Mohammed-Shah was not the man to tolerate a rival as ambitious as himself. Embassies were exchanged between the two potentates; but Mohammed was affronted when Jenghiz demanded that, as Khan of the Turco-Mongol nations, he should be regarded as suzerain by the Khwarismian prince. In 1218 a great caravan of Moslem merchants travelled from Mongolia, and with them were a hundred Mongols, sent on a special mission to the Khwarismian court. When the caravan reached Otrur, on the Jaxartes river, in Mohammed’s dominions, the local governor massacred the travellers and stole their goods, half of which were sent to the Shah. It was a provocation that Jenghiz could not ignore. Seeing that war was about to break out, Kuchluk made a bid to revive the Kara Khitai kingdom. In a brilliant campaign the Mongol general Jebe pursued Kuchluk and his army through the length of his dominions and finally slew him in a valley high in the Pamirs.
1221: Defeat of the Khwarismians
With Kuchluk gone, Jenghiz was ready to set out against the Khwarismians. It was a formidable undertaking. Mohammed-Shah was said to be able to put half a million men into the field; and Jenghiz would be operating a thousand miles from his home. In the late summer of 1219 the Mongol army of two hundred thousand men left its camp by the river Irtysh. The Khan’s vassal kings, such as the prince of the Uighurs, joined him on his westward march. Mohammed-Shah, uncertain where the Mongols would strike, divided his troops between the line of the Jaxartes and the passes of Ferghana, with his main body waiting by the great Transoxianan cities of Bokhara and Samarkand. The Mongol army made straight for the middle Jaxartes, and crossed the river by Otrur. Part of the army was left to besiege the town, a slow task, for the Mongols were still unpractised at siege warfare; part moved down the river to attack the Khwarismian army on its banks; part moved up the river to cut off the army in Ferghana; and Jenghiz and his main troops marched straight on Bokhara. He arrived there in February 1220. Almost at once the civilians opened the gates of the city to him. The Turks in the citadel resisted for a few days, then were slaughtered to a man, together with the Moslem imams who had encouraged them to fight on. From Bokhara Jenghiz moved to Samarkand, while Mohammed-Shah, unable to trust his troops, retired to his capital at Urgenj, on the Oxus, near Khiva. At Samarkand, where Jenghiz was joined by his sons, who had captured Otrur, the Turkish garrison at once surrendered, hoping to be enlisted into the conqueror’s army. But he distrusted such unreliable soldiers and put them all to death. A few civilians tried to organize resistance, but in vain. They too were slain. Jenghiz next sent his sons to lay siege to Urgenj. There the defence was more formidable; and quarrels between the Khan’s sons delayed its capture for a few months. Meanwhile Mohammed-Shah fled to Khorassan, pursued by an army under Jenghiz’s most trusted generals, Subotai and Jebe. He escaped from his pursuers, only to die, broken and deserted, in December 1220, in a little island in the Caspian Sea.
A better fight was put up by Mohammed’s son, Jelal ad-Din, who joined the Khwarismian army in Ferghana, and retreated into Afghanistan. At Parvan, just north of the Hindu Kush, he severely defeated the Mongol army sent to suppress him. Jenghiz himself had moved across the Oxus, past Balkh, which submitted to him and was spared, to Bamian, in the central Hindu Kush. The fortress held out against him and in the course of the siege his favourite grandson, Mutugen, was slain. When therefore the city was taken by assault, not a living creature was left alive in it. Meanwhile his son Tului and his son-in-law Toghutshar campaigned further to the west, capturing Merv, out of whose male population only four hundred trained artisans were spared, and Nishapur, where Toghutshar was killed, and which suffered exactly a similar fate. Toghutshar’s widow presided in person over the massacre. The artisans from both cities were sent to Mongolia. In the autumn of 1221 Jenghiz advanced through Afghanistan to attack Jelal ad-Din and caught up with him on the banks of the Indus. In a desperate battle on 24 November the Khwarismian army was destroyed. Jelal ad-Din himself fled across the river and took refuge with the King of Delhi. His children fell into the victor’s hands and were massacred.
The Coming of the Mongols
Jenghiz spent about a year in Afghanistan. The huge city of Herat, which had at first submitted quietly to the Mongols, had revolted after Jelal ad-Din’s victory at Parvan. A Mongol army besieged it for several months. On its capture, in June 1222, its whole population, amounting to hundreds of thousands, was put to death. The slaughter lasted for a week. The ruined cities and wasted lands were provided with Mongol administrators, supported by enough troops to keep the cowed inhabitants in order. Jenghiz then returned to Transoxiana, which was less desolate. There he installed a Khwarismian governor, Mas’ud Yalawach, with Mongol advisers to watch and control him. Mas’ud’s father, Mahmud Yalawach, was sent eastward to govern Pekin, an honorific method of further ensuring Mas’ud’s loyalty. Jenghiz recrossed the Jaxartes in the spring of 1223 and journeyed slowly back across the steppes, reaching the Irtysh in the summer of 1224 and his home on the Tula river next spring.
The fantastic conquests of Jenghiz-Khan did not pass unnoticed by the Christians in Syria. It was known that he was attacking the greatest Moslem power in Central Asia; and the Nestorians, with their churches spreading all across Asia, could testify that he was not ill-disposed towards the Christians. The Khan himself was a Shamanist, but he liked to consult Christian and Moslem priests, with a preference for the former. His sons were married to Christian princesses, Keraits, who had considerable influence at his court. It might well be that he would serve as an ally for Christendom.
1222: The Mongols reach the Caucasus
These hopes were somewhat shaken in the course of 1221. The army sent by Jenghiz under Subotai and Jebe to capture Mohammed-Shah failed in its immediate purpose. The Shah eluded them and doubled back to the Caspian. But the Mongol generals moved on to the west. In the summer of 1220 they captured and pillaged Reiy, near the modern Teheran, but spared most of the inhabitants. Next, Qum was taken and its inhabitants all massacred. A similar fate befell Kasvin and Zenjan, but Hamadan submitted in time and escaped after paying an exorbitant ransom. The Emir of Azerbaijan bought off an attack on Tabriz; and the Mongols passed by, in February 1221, to attack Georgia. King George IV, son of Queen Thamar, led out the Georgian chivalry to oppose their advance, and was routed at Khunani, just south of Tiflis. It was a disaster from which the Georgian army never quite recovered. But the conquerors turned back southward. Hamadan had revolted and must be punished; and on their way to sack and destroy the city they only paused to pillage Maragha, in Azerbaijan. They spent the remainder of the year in north-west Persia. Early in 1222 they turned north again, and after ravaging the eastern Georgian provinces and defeating the troops sent to restrain them, they passed on along the Caspian coast, through the Caspian Gates, towards the territory of the Kipchaks, between the Volga and the Don. The Kipchaks hastily allied themselves with the tribes of the northern Caucasus, the Alans and the Lesghians; but when Subotai and Jebe offered them a share of the booty, they did not intervene while the Mongols crushed the Caucasians. Inevitably, the Mongols next turned on them. They hoped to save themselves by bribing the Russians to come to their help; but on 31 May 1222, a great Russian army, led by the Princes of Kiev, Galich, Chernigov and Smolensk, was destroyed on the banks of the Kalka river, near the Sea of Azov. The Mongol generals did not follow up their victory. They entered the Crimea and pillaged the Genoese trading station at Soldaia, then swept away to the east, only pausing to destroy an army of the Kama Bulgars and ravage their country. They rejoined Jenghiz-Khan by the river Jaxartes, early in 1223.
The Western victims of this vast raid hopefully regarded it as an isolated phenomenon, a ghastly cataclysm that would not recur. But Jenghiz was delighted with his generals. They had not only done some valuable reconnoitring and had discovered that there was no army in western Asia that could stand up to them; but also they had so terrified the nations there by their ruthlessness that when the time should come for serious invasion, no one would dare to oppose them.
When Jenghiz-Khan died in 1227, his dominions stretched from Korea to Persia and from the Indian Ocean to the frozen plains of Siberia. No other man has ever created so vast an empire. It is impossible to explain his success by some theory that the Mongols had any economic urge for expansion; it can only be said that they were a suitable instrument for an expansionist leader. Jenghiz was the architect of his destiny. But he himself remains mysterious. In appearance, we are told, he was tall and vigorous, with eyes like a cat’s. It is certain that his physical endurance was great. It is certain too, that his personality profoundly impressed everyone who had dealings with him. His skill as an organizer was superb; and he knew how to choose men and how to handle them. He had a genuine respect for learning, and was always ready to spare a scholar’s life; but unfortunately few of his victims were given time to prove their scholarship. He adopted the Uighur alphabet for the Mongols and founded Mongol literature. In religious matters he was tolerant and ready to give aid to any sect that did not oppose him politically. He insisted on a just and orderly government. The roads were cleared of brigands; a postal service was introduced; and under his patronage commerce flourished and great caravans would pass in safety every year across the breadth of Asia. But he was completely ruthless. He had no regard for human life and no sympathy for human suffering. Millions of innocent townsfolk perished in the course of his wars; millions of innocent peasants saw their fields and orchards destroyed. His Empire was founded on human misery.
1227: Succession of Ogodai
The death of the great conqueror gave the outside world a respite. Nearly two years passed before the succession to his empire was settled. By Mongol custom, the eldest son and his descendants had the right to succeed to the empire, but the youngest had the right to retain the homelands and the duty to call the assembly that would confirm the succession. Jenghiz had broken with custom and had named his third son, Ogodai, as heir to the supreme power, passing over his eldest son, Juji whose legitimacy was questioned and whose military and administrative record was unsatisfactory. His second son, Jagatai, was a brilliant soldier, but too hot-tempered and impulsive to make a good ruler. Ogodai, though less spectacularly gifted, had, so Jenghiz thought, the patience and tact to handle his brothers and vassals. The youngest, Tului, was perhaps the ablest of the brothers but was handicapped by his self-indulgent habits. As the prince responsible for summoning the Kuriltay, Tului was the pivotal figure in deciding the succession; and he persuaded the chieftains of the clan to carry out Jenghiz’s wishes. Ogodai became supreme Khan, and great appanages were allotted to his relatives. Jenghiz’s brothers took over the eastern provinces, round the Amur river and in Manchuria. Tului kept the ‘hearth-lands’ by the Onon. Ogodai’s personal patrimony was the old Kerait and Naiman territory. Jagatai inherited the former Uighur and Kara Khitai kingdoms. Juji had already died, but his sons, Batu, Orda, Berke and Shiban, were given the western provinces, as far as the Volga. But, while the princes were allowed autocratic rights over their subjects, they had to obey the imperial law of the Mongols and accept the decisions of the supreme Khan’s government, which Ogodai set up at Karakorum. The unity of the Mongol Empire was unimpaired.
When Jenghiz-Khan and his armies returned to Mongolia, Jelal ad-Din the Khwarismian left his exile in India and collected round him the considerable remains of his father’s armies. He was welcomed in Persia as a liberator from the Mongols. By 1225 he was master of the Persian plateau and Azerbaijan, and by 1226 he was overlord of Baghdad. His kingdom, by threatening the Ayubites, was a useful factor in the policy of the Franks of Syria; but the Christians further north found him a worse neighbour even than the Mongols. In 1225 he invaded Georgia. The Georgian sovereign, George IV’s sister Russudan, an unmarried but not a virgin Queen, sent an army to meet him. But the flower of Georgian chivalry had fallen four years before at Khunani. Her troops were easily defeated at Garnhi, on her southern frontier. While the Queen fled herself to Kutais, Jelal ad-Din occupied and sacked her capital of Tiflis, and annexed the whole valley of the Kur river. An attempt by the Georgians to recover their lost provinces in 1228 ended in disaster. The Georgian kingdom was reduced to its lands by the Black Sea. It was no longer of value as the north-east outpost of Christendom, nor as a power that could challenge the Moslem hold on Asia Minor.
It was not long before the Mongols returned to the west. A Chin revolt had first to be suppressed in northern China. But early in 1231 a huge Mongol army under the general Chormaqan appeared in Persia. The memory of the previous Mongol invasion served him well. As he marched from Khorassan to Azerbaijan, there was no resistance. Jelal ad-Din fled before him, to die obscurely in Kurdistan. His Khwarismian soldiers followed him in his flight, and regrouped themselves in the Jezireh, out of reach, for the moment, of the Mongol hordes. Thence they hired themselves out to the quarrelling Ayubites, till their final destruction near Homs in 1246. Chormaqan annexed all northern Persia and Azerbaijan to the Mongol Empire, and governed the province, from 1231 to 1241, from a camp in Mughan, near the Caspian Sea. In 1236 he invaded Georgia. Queen Russudan had reoccupied Tiflis after the fall of Jelal ad-Din; but she fled once more to Kutais, and the Mongols took over eastern Georgia. The Georgians, once the atrocities of the conquest were over, much preferred them to the Khwarismians because of the efficiency of their administration. In 1243 the Queen herself became their vassal on the understanding that the whole Georgian kingdom was to be given to her son to rule under Mongol suzerainty.
Mongol Invasion of Europe
The Christians further to the north were less well satisfied. In the spring of 1236 a huge Mongol army assembled north of the Aral Sea, under the command of Batu, son of Juji, whose appanage included those steppes. With Batu were his brothers and four of his cousins, Guyuk and Qadan, sons of Ogodai, Baidar, son of Jagatai, and Mongka, son of Tului. The aged general Subotai was sent as chief of staff. After suppressing the Turkish tribes by the Volga, the Mongol army marched into Russian territory in the autumn of 1237. Riazan was taken by assault on 21 December, and its prince and all its citizens massacred. Kolomna fell a few days later; and early in the new year the Mongols attacked the great city of Vladimir. It held out for only six days, and its fall, on 8 February 1238, was marked by another wholesale massacre. Suzdal was sacked about the same time, and there followed the capture and destruction of the secondary cities of central Russia, Moscow, Yuriev, Galich, Pereslav, Rostov and Yaroslavl. On 4 March the Grand Prince Yuri of Vladimir, was defeated and killed on the banks of the river Sitti. Tver and Torzhok fell soon after the battle, and the conquerors advanced over the Valdai hills towards Novgorod. Fortunately for that city, the spring rains flooded the marshes all around. Batu retired, to spend the rest of the year stamping out the last resistance of the Kipchaks, while his cousin Mongka conquered the Alans and the north Caucasian tribes, then made a raid of reconnaissance as far as Kiev.
In the autumn of 1240 Batu led the main Mongol army into the Ukraine. Chernigov and Pereislavl were sacked and Kiev, after a valiant defence, was taken by assault on 6 December. Many of its greatest treasures were destroyed, and most of its population slain, though the commander of the garrison, Dmitri, was spared because of his courage, which Batu admired. From Kiev a branch of the army, under Baidar, son of Jagatai, moved northwards into Poland, sacking Sandomir and Cracow. The Polish King summoned the Teutonic Knights settled on the Baltic coast to his aid; but their joint armies, under Duke Henry of Silesia, were routed after a fierce battle at Wahlstadt, near Liegnitz, on 9 April 1241. But Baidar did not venture to penetrate further westward. He devastated Silesia, then turned south, through Moravia into Hungary.
Batu and Subotai had meanwhile crossed into Galicia, driving before them a horde of terrified fugitives from every nation of the steppes. In February 1241, they passed over the Carpathians into the Hungarian plain. King Bela led his army out to meet them and was disastrously defeated on 11 April by the bridge of Mohi, on the river Sajo. The Mongols poured over Hungary, into Croatia and as far as the shores of the Adriatic. Batu remained himself for some months in Hungary, which he seems to have wished to annex to the Mongol Empire. But early in 1242 messengers arrived with the news that the Great Khan Ogodai had died at Karakorum on 11 December 1241.
1242: The Mongols in Asia Minor
Batu could not afford to be away from Mongolia while the succession was decided. During the Russian campaign he had quarrelled bitterly with his cousins, Guyuk, son of Ogodai, and Buri, grandson of Jagatai. Both had retired angrily home. Ogodai supported Batu against his own son, whom he sent disgraced into exile. But Guyuk, as the Khan’s eldest son, was still powerful. Ogodai named as his successor his grandson, Shiremon, whose father, Kuchu, had been killed fighting against the Chinese. Shiremon was, however, young and untried. Ogodai’s widow, the Khatun Toragina, born a Naiman princess, took over the regency, determined that Guyuk should have the throne. She summoned a Kuriltay, but, though her authority was recognized till a new Great Khan should be appointed, five years passed before she could induce the princes of the blood and the clan-chieftains to accept Guyuk. During these years she administered the government. She was energetic but avaricious. Though a Christian by birth, she chose as her favourite a Moslem, Abd ar-Rahman, whom gossip accused of having hurried Ogodai’s death. His corruption and greed made him universally disliked; but no one had sufficient power to upset the regency.
Till the succession was certain, Batu was unprepared to indulge in western adventures. He maintained garrisons in Russia, but central Europe was given a respite. It was only in western Asia, where the Regent sent as governor an able and active general, called Baichu, that the Mongol advance continued.
Late in 1242, Baichu invaded the lands of the Seldjuk Sultan, Kaikhosrau, who was at that moment in the Jezireh seeking to annex lands left masterless after Jelal ad-Din’s collapse. Erzerum fell to the Mongols in the early spring. On 26 June 1243, the Sultan’s army was routed at Sadagh, near Erzinjan; and Baichu advanced to Caesarea-Mazacha. Kaikhosrau then made his submission and accepted Mongol suzerainty. His neighbour, King Hethoum the Armenian, hastened to follow his example.
It might have been expected that the princes of Western Christendom would have planned concerted action against so terrible a menace. Already in 1232, when Chormaqan had destroyed the Khwarismian power in Persia, the Assassin Order, whose headquarters at Alamut, in the Persian mountains, was threatened, had sent envoys to Europe to warn the Christians and to ask for help. In 1241, when it seemed that central Europe was doomed, Pope Gregory IX urged a great alliance for its rescue. But the Emperor Frederick, now busily engaged in conquering the Papal States in Italy, refused to be deflected. He ordered his son Conrad, as ruler of Germany, to mobilize the German army, and he appealed for assistance from the Kings of France and England. When, next year, the Mongols retired into Russia, Western Christendom returned to its illusions. The legend of Prester John spread an almost apocalyptic belief that salvation was coming from the East, which left too strong a mark. No one paused to reflect that if Wang-Khan the Kerait had really been the mysterious Johannes, his destroyer was unlikely to fulfil the same role. Everyone preferred to remember that the Mongols had fought against the Moslems and that Christian princesses had married into the Imperial family. The Great Khan of the Mongols might not be a Christian himself; he might not actually be Prester John; but it was hopefully assumed that he would be eager to champion Christian ideology against the forces of Islam. The presence in the Eastern background of so mighty a potential ally made the moment seem ripe for a new Crusade; and a willing Crusader was at hand.
Plate I. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and his sons, Henry VI, King of the Romans and Frederick, Duke of Swabia.
Plate II. Constantinople from the Asiatic coast. The sea of Marmara is on the left, the Bosphorus on the right, and the Golden Horn in the centre. The land-walls of the city can be seen stretching from the Marmora to the Golden Horn in the background.
Plate III. View of Tyre, 1839. The sandy spit joining the city to the mainland was much narrower in medieval times.
Plate IV. Sidon. The Castle of the Sea is on the right, and the castle repaired by Saint Louis on the left.
Plate V. The Ilkhan Hulagu.
Plate VI. Krak des Chevaliers.
Plate VII. The Choir of the Church of the Holt Sepulchre in 1681. This is one of the few drawings that show the Church as it was before the fire of 1808.
Plate VIII. The Cathedral of Tortosa.
Plate IX. Mosaic panel of Christ in Glory, from the vault of the Latin chapel of Calvary. The mosaic seems to have been made by Byzantine artists employed by the Latin authorities.
Plate X. The Church of St Andrew at Acre in 1681.
Plate XI. The Temptation. From Queen Melisende’s Psalter.
Plate XII. The Transfiguration. From Queen Melisende’s Psalter.
Plate XIII. Virgin and Child enthroned. From Queen Melisende’s Psalter showing Latin work.
Plate XIV. Plan of Acre by Marino Sanudo.
Plate XV. Mameluk Emirs about the end of the thirteenth century. Metal work from the so-called Font of St Louis. The second figure from the right is probably the Emir Salar, Viceroy of Egypt in 1299. The emir’s costumes were strictly ordained by Sultan Qalawun.