Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [62]
By 1223, Genghis Khan's conquest of Khwarizm was complete. (The sultan, who fled the empire with Mongol hordes on his heels, is said to have died alone and impoverished on a remote island in the Caspian Sea.) Genghis Khan had once again done the impossible: crossed two thousand miles of glacier and desert, breached impregnable fortifications, crushed an army far larger than his own, and brought one of the greatest, richest, and most glorious civilizations on earth under the thumb of a man who ate yak and slept in a ger.
Now in his midsixties and ruler of the largest empire on earth, Genghis Khan returned to the Mongolian steppe. He died in 1227, surrounded by family and friends, all his generals still loyal to him. Following Mongol custom, he was given a secret burial in a secret location. (Legend has it that eight hundred horsemen were ordered to trample repeatedly over the area in order to remove any trace of Genghis Khan's grave. The horsemen were then killed by another set of soldiers, who were then slain by others, who were in turn slain as well.) According to Edward Gibbon, Genghis Khan “died in the fullness of years and glory, with his last breath, exhorting and instructing his sons to achieve the conquest of the Chinese empire.”26
“THE SORROW OF EUROPE”
Genghis Khan's sons, however, were not up to the job, and their father knew it. In the last years of his life, Genghis Khan had grown increasingly concerned about the preservation of his empire. Although his earliest campaigns were primarily plunder-driven, as an older man he spoke about his desire “to unite the whole world.” “Without the vision of a goal,” he told his sons, “a man cannot manage his own life, much less the lives of others.” Above all, Genghis Khan worried that his sons would fight among themselves, particularly over who would succeed him as Great Khan. His fears proved justified. None of his four sons had his wisdom, shrewdness, or ability to inspire loyalty. The elder two quarreled so bitterly—the second insinuating that the first was a bastard— that in the end, as a compromise, Genghis Khan chose as his heir a third son: the jovial, drink-loving Ogodei.27
Extravagant and almost pathologically generous, Ogodei began spending the moment he took office. At his inauguration, he reportedly threw open the royal treasury and distributed its contents, including loads of pearls and gems, to his new subjects. He ordered the construction of a new capital with a palace and gardens designed by Chinese architects, decorated by Chinese craftsmen, and walled for the first time in steppe history. Karakorum, the name the capital acquired, means “black stones” or “black walls.” For all its loftiness, the new palace was again principally a warehouse and a residence for craftsmen; the royal family continued to favor their gers. One-third of the capital city was set aside for the corps of foreign administrators—scribes and scholars from every conquered nation—who handled communications and essentially ran the empire for the illiterate ruling family. Ogodei also called lavishly for the building of new houses of worship for his diverse subjects, including mosques, churches, and Buddhist and Taoist temples, making simple Karakorum the most religiously pluralist capital in the world.
Ogodei's city was costly to operate, and his habits even more expensive to maintain. The Mongols themselves, still primarily herders and nomads, produced little of value. Tribute, the empire's sole source of income, had started to dwindle under Ogodei's more relaxed rule. Moreover, Ogodei was not a gifted businessman. In order to lure traders to his remote capital, he paid outrageous prices for goods he had no use for—“ivory tusks, pearls, hunting falcons, golden goblets, jeweled belts, willow whip handles, cheetahs”—then gave these goods away. By 1235, almost all the enormous