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The Devil's Horsemen The Devil’s Horsemen THE MONGOL INVASION OF EUROPE James Chambers BOOK CLUB ASSOCIATES This edition published 1979 by Book Club Associates by arrangement with Weidenfeld and Nicolson Copyright © 1979 by James Chambers All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Morrison & Gibb Ltd, London and Edinburgh Contents LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS yii LIST OF MAPS ix PREFACE xi 1 The First Move West i 2 Reconnaissance in Force 19 3 Aftermath 23 4 Interlude 5 The Mongol War Machine 51 6 The Carving of the Mongol Yoke 70 7 The Invasion of Europe Begins 85 8 The Fury o f the Tartars 96 9 The First Ambassadors 114 10 The Tartar Crusaders 137 11 The End of an Era 156 GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE MONGOL IMPERIAL FAMILY 170 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY GLOSSARY 179 INDEX 181 Illustrations between pages 144 and 145 Portrait of Chingis Khan (Imperial Portrait Gallery, Peking) Chingis Khan riding into battle (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) The Frashi Pavilion at Karakorum (The Warburg Institute) The bier of Chingis Khan (The Warburg Institute) Walls of the Erdeni Tsu monastery (John Massey Stewart) A yurt in the summer pastures of Inner Mongolia (Camera Press) Cameo of Frederick 11, Holy Roman Emperor (Museo Provinciale Campano, Capua) Wooden statue of Louis ix of France (The Mansell Collection) Mongol army in pursuit of King Bela of Hungary (Illumination from the manuscript of The Chronicle of Marcus Kalti, s xiv) Chingis Khan’s army defeats his rivals for the khanate (The Mansell Collection) Modern Mongol on horseback (Fitzroy Maclean) Mongol archer on horseback (Victoria & Albert Museum) Archer of Kubilai Khan’s reign (The Mansell Collection) Mongol paitze (token of bearer’s commission) (John Freeman Photographers/Trustees British Museum) Hulegu feasting before his invasion of Iran (The Warburg Institute) Siege of Baghdad (The Mansell Collection) Maps 1 Eastern Europe and Northern Asia before the Mongol Invasion xiv 2 Russia at the time of the Mongol Invasion 68 3 Eastern Europe at the time of the Mongol Invasion 84 4 The Middle East 136 Preface S everal books have been written in English about the Mongol conquests, the subsequent empires which the Mongols ruled, the travellers who visited them and even the diplomatic relations between their khans and the papacy. But nothing has been written about the Mongol invasion of Europe. In this book I have rashly endeavoured to fill that gap. But I did not set out to write a detailed account of every event that took place in Europe during the invasion. I have simply attempted to tell the story of an extraordinary campaign, outline its causes and far-reaching con­ sequences and place it in its historical perspective. The contemporary sources were written in more than ten lan­ guages and it is unlikely that anyone could read them all in their original. Fortunately, however, most of the Middle Eastern and Oriental sources have been translated into at least one European language by eminent scholars who have added their own notes and commentaries. These translations are listed in the Bibliography and their notes and commentaries were often my guides when the Latin sources were contradictory and the bias of modern Central European historians was obvious. I must also acknowledge that I could not have found my way through the maze of contemporary sources without the further guidance of the leading histories of the Mongol period, particularly the works of G. Vernadsky, B. Spuler, I. de Rachewiltz and J.J. Saunders, and above all the notes and articles of P. Pelliot. There are now many ways of spelling Mongol names. In the past Europeans based their transliteration on Arabic. Thus, for ex­ ample, since there is no ‘ch’ in Arabic, Chingis Khan was spelt Jingis Khan and then Genghis Khan. But today it is more common to present the names in a form that is closer to their Oriental pro­ nunciation and this I have attempted to do. However, I have also Xll PREFACE tried to spell them in a way which will be easy to read and where the Oriental form is very different from the older European spelling, I have only adapted the older form to bring it closer to the Oriental without making it unrecognizable. Finally I would like to thank Sheila Murphy for her encourage­ ment, Christopher Falkus for his infectious enthusiasm and confidence, my editor, Christine Sandeman, for her patience and judgement, and my wife Josephine for her tolerance. London i g j 8 James Chambers To Josephine Eastern Europe and Northern Asia before the Mongol Invasion 0 400 800 miles L _____ I Scale 1:35m. 1 The First Move West In the late winter of 1220, Ali ad-Din boarded the only remaining fishing boat in the village of Astara on the shores of the Caspian Sea and sailed out towards the island of Abeskum. As he passed through the village dressed in rags, he and his handful of followers appeared to be nothing more than another group of refugees, but a few months before Ali ad-Din had been Muhammad Ali Shah, Emperor of Khwarizm, Transoxiana and Khurasan. His rich empire had stretched from the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea to the river Indus and the Hindu Kush, yet in those few months he had lost it all; and as the boat pulled away the shore behind became thick with mounted archers charging hopelessly into the water, their arrows falling short in its wake. When he came to the throne of Khwarizm in 1200 as Muhammad II, Ali ad-Din also inherited the enormous army with which he had already begun the easy conquest of Khurasan. His empire had been founded by Khutbeddin Muhammad, a Turkish mercenary who had governed the area on behalf of the Seljuks and acquired enough wealth and power to declare independence. Although the indigenous population was Persian, Muhammad n ’s courtiers and soldiers were the Turkish descendants of Khutbeddin’s mercenaries, and the fierce corps of horsemen who formed his bodyguard were Kanglis, a tribe of Kipchaks or eastern Cumans from the steppes beyond the Aral Sea, imported by his mother Turkan Khatun, who was the daughter of their chief. Against such soldiers as these the peaceful Persian people of Khurasan could offer no more than token resistance. Although he was ambitious, Muhammad was irresolute and un­ imaginative. He bolstered his lack of security with the strength of his army and camouflaged his lack of confidence with vanity. The easy conquest of his ill-defended neighbours offered him the 2 THE DEVIL'S HORSEMEN opportunity not only to indulge an army that was too large to justify in time of peace, but also to increase his own wealth and enhance his reputation. Continuing the campaign that he had begun under his father, he led his army through the rich, irrigated farm lands that had once been desert, secured the ancient cities and annexed the whole of Khurasan to his empire. The operation took not much longer than the time required foi* his army to cover the distance, but it brought him the prestige that he longed for. While he proclaimed himself to the world as ‘the chosen prince of Allah’ and his sycophantic courtiers nicknamed him the second Alexander, his neighbours, fearful of his army and his ambition, began to offer him tribute and allegiance. To the east of Muhammad's empire lay the empire of Transoxiana and to the north-east of that, the powerful Buddhist empire of Kara Khitai, which bordered the eastern steppes and screened the kingdoms of Islam from the new empire of the nomad Mongols. When Muhammad, ‘the chosen prince of Allah’, refused to pay any further tribute to the infidel rulers of Kara Khitai, Osman, Emperor of Transoxiana, transferred his own allegiance from Kara Khitai to Khwarizm. Both Osman and Muhammad believed that internal struggles would prevent the Buddhist army from protecting its interests, but when Kara Khitai was invaded from the east by the Mongols, Muhammad saw the chance that even his caution could not resist While Kara Khitai fell to the Mongols the Khwarizmian army marched almost unopposed into Transoxiana. By opportunism, and without ever really testing his army in the field, Muhammad had made himself one of the most powerful rulers in Islam and with the revenues of Transoxiana in his coffers he was unquestionably the richest. Lying between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, rivers which were known in the west as the Oxus and the Jaxartes, desolated in the north by the impenetrable desert of Kizil Kum and only made fertile in the south by extensive irrigation, Transoxiana was not rich in natural resources, but across its heart ran the overland trade routes of the world. At the eastern end of the road on the Syr Darya stood the commercial centre of Khojend, in the west near the Amu Darya the mosques, universities and carpet warehouses of Bukhara and between them the city that Muhammad II had chosen for his new capital, Samarkand. Huge suburbs shaded by poplar trees and decorated with THE FIRST MOVE WEST 3 fountains and canals surrounded a city so rich that even within its walls every house had a garden. In the factories the citizens wove silk, cotton and silver lame, the Persian craftsmen worked saddles, harnesses and decorated copper and the workshops of the Chinese quarter produced the rag paper that was used throughout the Middle East.
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