Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [63]
To settle on a target, Ogodei convened a khuriltai, where he encountered intense disagreement. Some of the participants wanted to invade India. Others advocated a campaign against the great cities of Baghdad and Damascus. Still others, including Ogodei himself, wanted to take on China's ailing Song Empire, which had staved off Mongol conquest for thirty years. But the most experienced voice was that of the elderly Subodei, one of Genghis Khan's most trusted generals, who had played a key role in every one of the Mongols’ major battlefield victories. Subodei urged the conquest of Europe—a land most of the other Mongols had barely heard of.
Subodei had accidentally come upon Europe twelve years earlier, when he and another general were pursuing the sultan of Khwarizm. After the sultan's death, Subodei received Genghis Khan's permission to explore the unknown lands north of the Caspian Sea. There he discovered and conquered the Christian kingdom of Georgia, which became a Mongol vassal state. Continuing north, Subodei came to what is now Russia and Ukraine, at that time ruled by rivaling dukes and princes, each with his own fiefdom and army. One by one, the Russian city-states fell as Subodei outmaneuvered their forces and slew their rulers. He was on the verge of crossing the Dnieper River into eastern Europe when he was recalled by Genghis Khan. Subodei now asked the khuriltai of 1235 to approve a campaign in the west, where there were vast pasturelands for the Mongol horses and surely great treasures to be had.28
Unable to overcome the difference of opinion within the khuriltai, Ogodei made a decision that would probably have horrified his father. Dividing the Mongol army, Ogodei ordered that Europe and China be attacked simultaneously. The campaign against the Song failed, and Ogodei's favorite son died commanding it; the Mongol conquest of China would have to wait another generation. In Europe, however, Subodei was victorious.
Despite Ogodei's shortcomings, the invasion of Europe in many ways showed the Mongol forces at their most formidable. The main army consisted of 150,000 horsemen, of whom 50,000 were Mongols. Subodei knew and deployed all the ingenious battle tactics that Genghis Khan had perfected over his lifetime. Also in command were two of Genghis Khan's most capable grandsons, Mongke and Batu. Most important, the Mongol army, incorporating the most advanced Islamic and Chinese technology, possessed fearsome weapons unknown in Europe. The Mongols attacked Europe's walled cities not only with catapults and battering rams— familiar to the Europeans—but also with grenades, exploding naphtha, primitive rocket launchers, and smoke bombs spewing chemicals with monstrous smells.
Russia and eastern Europe fell first. The destruction in 1240 of Kiev, the jewel and religious heart of the Slavic world, sent terrified rumors flying across Europe. The Mongols, it was said, were like a cloud of locusts, and their cavalry included fire-spitting dragons (probably a reference to the Mongol incendiaries). As far away as England, Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk, recorded in 1240 that “an immense horde of that detestable race of Satan” had ravaged eastern Europe. “They clothe themselves in the skins of bulls, and are armed with iron lances; they are short in stature and thickset, compact in their bodies, and of great strength; invincible in battle, indefatigable in labour; they wear no armour on the back part of their bodies, but are protected by it in front; they drink the blood which flows from their flocks, and consider it a delicacy.”29
Next, the Mongols poured into Germany, Poland, and Hungary. Their stunning defeat of “the flower” of European knighthood—as many as 100,000 soldiers died—foreshadowed the end of European feudalism. The Mongol assault on Hungary was infamous. According to a contemporaneous account, “The dead fell to the right and to the left; like leaves in winter, the