Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [64]
Christian Europe responded to the Mongol attacks with a surge of vicious intolerance. Helpless in defeat, and at a loss to explain the sudden emergence of the Mongol hordes, Europe's clerics blamed—of all people—the Jews in their midst. The Mongols, they claimed, were in fact the missing Hebrew tribes from the time of Moses, whom God in vengeance had turned into cruel and irrational beasts. Moreover, these beasts were supported and sponsored by Europe's most influential Jewish leaders, who hoped, along with their Tatar brethren, to take over the world. Ominously, the year 1241 corresponded to the year 5000 in the Jewish calendar—what further proof was needed of “the enormous wickedness of the Jews” and their “hidden treachery and extraordinary deceit”? Preposterous as they were, these theories fueled tragic consequences. In York, Rome, and other major European cities, Christians took out their anger by persecuting their Jewish neighbors, burning their homes and massacring them—practically imitating the Mongols, only in the name of God.
In the thirteenth century, Christian Europe was fragmented and fanatic, consumed with the Crusades, sectarian rivalry, anti-Semitism, and the persecution of infidels. European division and intolerance worked to the Mongols’ advantage. For all their ruth-lessness in battle, the Mongols were not hampered by religious zeal or bigotry. As European princes were torturing and expelling some of their most skilled non-Christian subjects, the Mongols recruited freely and to tremendous profit from conquered populations, blind to ethnicity or religion. From Europe the Mongols acquired new ranks of scribes, translators, architects, and craftsmen, as well as miners from Saxony who knew how to bring forth unsuspected riches from the Mongolian steppe. When, on the eve of their own defeat, Hapsburg soldiers captured a Mongol officer, they were shocked to discover that he was a brilliant multilingual Englishman who, threatened with excommunication by the Roman Catholic Church, had opted to work for the Mongols. The Hapsburg soldiers killed him.30
Late in 1241, Ogodei died suddenly, inebriated as usual. Within a few months, his elder brother—the last of Genghis Khan's sons—died as well. Succession problems loomed once more, and Mongke and Batu quickly led their forces out of Europe in order to return to the steppe, bringing to a close the second wave of Mongol conquest. The Mongol Empire now stretched west nearly to Vienna. But it was to grow much vaster still.
MONGOL WORLD DOMINANCE
Genghis Khan's grandsons were far abler than his sons. Ogodei left no great heirs. Instead, following a series of lurid palace intrigues, the grandsons who emerged victorious were all from the line of Tuli, Genghis Khan's youngest son. Under the leadership of these new khans—Mongke, Hulegu, Arik Boke, and Khubilai—the third and greatest wave of Mongol conquest swept the earth.
Mongke, the eldest, was installed as Great Khan in 1251. Shortly afterward, he charged his brother Hulegu with the conquest of the Middle East and his brother Khubilai with the conquest of southern China. Khubilai, who was not an eager warrior, took his time. Aggressive Hulegu did not; over the next seven years his military triumphs in the Muslim world rivaled those of his grandfather, Genghis Khan.
For all Subodei's hopes, the European campaign had produced only meager booty. Europe in the Middle Ages was primitive, undeveloped, and poor compared to the great Islamic and Chinese civilizations. Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo—Hulegu's main targets—were among the richest cities in the world. Baghdad, in particular, was the commercial, artistic, and cultural heart of Islam. With breathtaking palaces, mosques, and synagogues in every corner, along with teeming bazaars and gambling houses, the city