rites and legal institutions they know not… They all feed on the meat of the animals which they kill… and they dress in their hides and furs. The strongest among them grab the fattest pieces; the old men, on the other hand, eat and drink what is left. They respect only the bravest; old age and feebleness are held in contempt.
While excellent fighters and warlike, the Mongols generally directed their efforts to fratricidal strife among the many tribes, their rivalries skillfully fanned by the Chinese. Only an extraordinary leader managed to unite the Mongols and suddenly transform them into a power of world significance. Temuchin, born probably in 1155 or 1162 and a son of a tribal chief, finally in 1206 after many years of desperate struggle became the head of all the Mongols with the title of Jenghiz Khan. One of the decisively important figures in history, Jenghiz Khan remains something of an enigma. It has been suggested that he was inspired by an urge to avenge the treasonable poisoning of his father and the subsequent humiliation of his family. With time, Jenghiz Khan apparently came to believe in his sweeping divine mission to re-establish justice on earth, and as in the case of some other great leaders, he seems to have had an unshakable conviction in the righteousness of his cause. The new Mongol ruler joined to this determination and sense of mission a remarkable intelligence and outstanding military, diplomatic, and administrative ability.
After uniting the Mongols, Jenghiz Khan subdued other neighboring tribes, and then in 1211 invaded the independent Chin empire in northern China, piercing the Great Wall. What followed has been described as the conquest, in five years, of one hundred million people by one hundred thousand soldiers. The western campaigns of Jenghiz Khan and his generals proved to be still more notable. In spite of bitter resistance, the Mongols smashed the Moslem states of Central Asia and reached the Caucasus. It was through Caucasian passes that they staged a raid into southern Russia to defeat the Russians and the Polovtsy on the river Kalka in 1223. Jenghiz Khan died in 1227. Before his death he had made provisions for succession, dividing the empire among four sons, although its substantial unity was to be preserved by the leadership of one of them with the title of "great khan," a position which fell to the third son, Ugedey. Jenghiz Khan's successors continued his sweeping conquests and spread Mongol rule to Turkestan, Armenia, Georgia, and other parts of the Caucasus, the state of the Volga Bulgars, Russia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Korea, and all of China. At the time of Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty in China who ruled as Great Khan from 1259 to 1294, Mongol dominion stretched from Poland and the Balkans to the Pacific and from the Arctic Ocean to Turkey, the Persian Gulf, and the southern borders of China. Moreover, the Mongols had penetrated deep into Central Europe, defeating the Poles, the Germans, and the Hungarians in the process.
The remarkable success of Mongol armies can no longer be ascribed, as in the past, to overwhelming numbers. It stemmed rather from the effective strategy of the Mongols, their excellence as highly mobile cavalry, their endurance, and their disciplined and co-ordinated manner of fighting assisted by an organization which in certain ways resembled a modern general staff. These assets acquired particular importance because the military forces of the invaded countries, especially in Europe, were frequently cumbersome, undisciplined and unco-ordinated. Espionage, terrorism, and superior siege equipment, borrowed from China and other lands, have also been cited as factors contributing to the amazing spread of Mongol rule. The Mongols held occupied territories with the aid of such devices as newly built roads, a courier system, and a crude census for purposes of taxation.
Batu, a grandson of Jenghiz Khan and a nephew of Ugedey, who succeeded his father Juchi to the greater part of Juchi's empire, directed the Mongol invasion of Europe. He had some 150,000 or 200,000 troops at his disposal and the veteran Subudey to serve as his chief general. The Mongols crossed the Urals in 1236 to attack first the Volga Bulgars. After that, in 1237, they struck at the Russian eastern principality of Riazan, coming unexpectedly from the north. In the Mongol strategy, the conquest of Russia served to secure their flank for a further major invasion of Europe. The Russian princes proved to be disunited and totally unprepared. Characteristically, many of them stayed to protect their own appanages rather than come to the aid of invaded principalities or make any joint effort. Following the defeat of a Russian army, the town of Riazan was besieged and captured after five days of bitter fighting and its entire population massacred. Next, in the winter of 1237/38, the Mongols attacked the Suzdal territory with its capital of Vladimir, the seat of the grand prince. The sequence of desperate fighting and massacre recurred on a larger scale and at many towns, the grand prince himself and his army perishing in the decisive battle near the river Sit. Thus, in a matter of several months, the Mongols succeeded in conquering the strongest section of the country. Furthermore, they attained their objectives by means of a winter campaign, the Mongol cavalry moving with great speed on frozen rivers - the only successful winter invasion of Russia in history. But a spring thaw that made the terrain virtually impassable forced the Mongols to abandon their advance on Novgorod and retreat to the southern steppe. They spent the next year and a half in preparation for a great campaign as well as in devastating and conquering some additional Russian territories, notably that of Chernigov.
The Mongol assault of 1240, continued in 1241 and the first part of 1242, aimed at more than Russia. In fact, it had been preceded by an order to the king of Hungary to submit to the Mongol rule. The Mongols began by invading the Kievan area proper. Overcoming the stubborn defenders, they took Kiev by storm, exterminated the population, and leveled the city. The
same fate befell other towns of the area, whose inhabitants either died or became slaves. After Kiev, the Mongols swept through the southwestern principalities of Galicia and Volynia, laying everything waste. Poland and Hungary came next. One Mongol army defeated the Poles and the Germans, the most important battle taking place at Liegnitz in Silesia in 1241, while another army smashed the Hungarians. Undeterred by the Carpathian mountains, the Mongols occupied the Hungarian plain; their advance guard reached the Adriatic. Whereas campaigning in central Europe presented certain problems to the Mongols, particularly the need to reduce fortresses, many historians believe that only the death of Great Khan Ugedey saved a number of European countries. Concerned with internal Mongol politics, his nephew Batu decided to retrench; and in the spring of 1242 he withdrew his armies to the southern steppe, subjugating Bulgaria, Moldavia, and Wallachia on the way back. Although the Mongols thus retreated to the east, all of Russia, including the northwestern part which escaped direct conquest, remained under their sway.
Batu established his headquarters in the lower Volga area in what became the town of Old Sarai and the capital of the domain known as the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde constituted first a part of the Mongol empire and later, as the central ties weakened, an independent state. A department in Old Sarai, headed by a daruga, handled Russian affairs. Mongol dominion over Russia meant that the Russian rulers recognized the Mongol overlordship, that the Mongols, initially the great khan in Mongolia and subsequently the potentate of the Golden Horde, invested the Russian grand prince with his office, and that to be so invested the Russian prince had to journey to the Mongol headquarters and pay humble obeisance to his suzerain. Further, it meant that the Mongols collected tribute from the Russians, at first by means of their own agents and afterwards through the intermediacy of Russian princes. Also, the Russians occasionally had to send military detachments for the Mongol army. We know of several such levies and of Russians serving in the Mongol forces as far away from their homeland as China.