The Mongol empire

At the end of the twelfth century, an extraordinary leader was gradually uniting the tribes of Mongolia into a single entity, displaying complete ruthlessness and remarkable skill, including military prowess of the highest order. The man who would be known as Genghis Khan first created a Mongol federation, of which he was acclaimed the Khan in 1206, then turned his attentions to his neighbours. At the outset, the Mongols had few apparent advantages over their more settled enemies. Their nomadic and pastoralist existence meant that Mongol people were physically very tough and capable of great feats of endurance, and it also meant that every adult male could be mobilised as a warrior, thus giving a Mongol chief access to a vastly greater proportion of fighting men than either an urban or peasant society, off-setting the much lower density of population that could be sustained by the steppes. They were also very mobile, and capable of travelling immense distances. However, in compensation, Mongol armies should have been helpless in front of stone walls defended by crossbows and catapults, there not being much call for siege warfare in the steppes. It is testimony to the genius of Genghis Khan that not only were his armies invincible in open battle, but very quickly he learnt how to conquer walled towns.

In rapid succession, the political structures of central Asia, then the Muslim states in Transoxiana and Khurasan to their south, and in between, the Jurchen state of northern China, fell under Genghis’ sway. The great Khan's sons then continued the expansion, the heartlands of Islam being overrun as far as Syria and Egypt, the Russian principalities annihilated and turned into Mongol tributaries, and central Europe itself given a taste of Mongol military power. Genghis’ grandson Kubilai completed the conquest of China, establishing a new dynasty, and in the second half of the thirteenth century an empire the size of which the world has never seen before or since had been brought into being. The achievement was remarkable, but it was brought about over the corpses of an untold number of people: anyone brave enough to stand up to the Mongols’ demand for their unconditional surrender became (by Genghis’ definition) a rebel, and the massacres carried out by the victors were utterly merciless.