on
2/23/2002
There are two Khans you need to keep in mind: Chinggis (Ghengis) and Khubilai. Chinggis founded the Mongol Empire; Khubilai rose to command it after a brief internal struggle. The empire, the largest the world has ever known, was extended from Vietnam to the Danube under Chinggis.
Let's take this apart. Dates are unimportant.
Chinggis's empire was so large that it had to be divided among a handful of regional Khans. Imagine ruling the world and giving six people a continent apiece. Your scale isn't too far off.
How did they get all this land? Tactics and organization. Horsemen who'd been able to ride almost as long as they could walk were molded by Chinggis and his generals into forces so tightly regimented and disciplined that they can only be compared to modern armies. Add tactics still being studied by military leaders today, and you'll understand how one man very nearly conquered the known world.
Germany, in central Europe, is the modern day home of the Danube River. Midievil Europe was carved up by feudal leaders during the coming of the Khan, protected by knights versed only in mele combat strategies. Charging into the lines of the Mongols as a mob was suicide; they fell back, they flanked, they surrounded, they presented an "escape," and then they closed it off and picked off every fleeing knight. Europe would have fallen. Western civilization, gestating in the (not really all that dark) Dark Ages, would have been looted, carted away, and forgotten.
...had Chinggis lived one year longer. News of his death spread quickly across the Mongol horse routes, and the general in charge of the Europe campaign, after brushing aside a few counterattacks and waiting out an unusually wet few months, was forced to return to Mongolia while the question of Chinggis's successor was cleared up.
About half of the regional Khans sided with Khubilai, and half with his rival. Khubilai finally managed to force the opposition north until it's troops couldn't reliably get supplies to sustain themselves, but the westward expansion of the empire was forever halted. Khubilai was an admirer of Chinese civilization, and he wanted to finish conquering it.
Now do me a favor. Feel interest, feel excitement, but don't feel anything else. Don't hate the Mongols. Don't love them. They're not what's important here. No one misses the Germanic Mongols, nor do they miss anything, because they never happened. History is littered with weren'ts and what ifs and almosts. Time is littered with weren'ts and what ifs and almosts. Your overriding concern is not how and why you got where you are; it's what you will now do. The past only presents possible guides and shapes. What have we learned from them?
Touch the Toast