The Devil's Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe

 In memory of Curtis Jones, student of strategy and history

The Devil's Horsemen:  The Mongol Invasion of Europe by James Chambers

NY:  Atheneum, 1985

ISBN 0-689-70693-6

(page 6)  “The greatest pleasure,” he [Chingis Khan] had said, “is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”

(24-25)  And by the time the feasting and the entertainments had ended a secret treaty had been signed between Venice and the Mongol Empire.  The traveling Venetian merchants would make detailed reports of the economic and military movements in the countries that they visited and spread such propaganda as the Mongols required, and in return wherever the Mongols rode all the other trading stations would be destroyed and Venice would be left with a monopoly.

(34)  There were many Christians in the east who followed the teachings of Nestorius, a former patriarch of Constantinople who had set out for the east in the fifth century, after being deposed by the Council of Ephesus for refusing to recognize the Virgin Mary as the “Mother of God” and preaching that Christ was merely a man who had been endued with the Holy Spirit.

(36)  The Nestorian Christians who rode with Chingis Khan were Kerait Mongols.

(45)  His was the first great empire to know religious freedom and when the first western visitors reached Karakorum they were amused to find a city where churches, mosques, and temples stood side by side.

… and as a gesture to “consumer protection,” the death penalty was prescribed for merchants who allowed themselves to go bankrupt for the third time.

(60)  Apart from achieving its obvious purpose, the great hunt, which was controlled throughout by messengers and signals, must also have given the Mongol soldiers practical experience of the strategic principle that was to be such an essential basis of their supremacy, and which Napoleon later described as the first necessity of war, “unity of command.”

(65-66)  Napoleon said that the strength of an army, like the quantity of motion in mechanics, is estimated by the mass multiplied by the velocity, and on the basis of this formula alone the Mongol army that set out to conquer Europe, moving at more than twice the speed of its enemies, was the match for an army at least twice its size.  Yet the numerical odds against which the Mongols had been victorious were very often more than two to one and many of the principles developed and affirmed by theorists and strategists of later ages were already known to the Mongol “nation in arms” simply as military common sense.  At the end of the eighteenth century Clausewitz argued that the key to victory in all but a limited war was the destruction of an enemy’s army on the battlefield, while his most distinguished opponent, Jomini, a general on Napoleon’s staff, maintained that the key to victory was the progressive domination of the enemy’s territory;  with their usual thoroughness the Mongols believed and put into practice both theories.

(85)   The first western country to be affected by the Russian campaign was England.  Every year ships from the countries around the Baltic used to sail to Yarmouth to buy the rich herring catch, but in 1238 the people of Novgorod and its dependencies, who were preparing for the return of the Mongols and repelling the lesser incursions by opportunists in the west, kept their ships at home, while the ships from Sweden, Gotland and the Livonian coast were being used to transport the invading armies of Earl Birger and the Livonian Knights.  Consequently no ships came to England that year.  There was a glut on the herring market, merchants went bankrupt and even deep inland fdifty pickled herrings could be bought for a shilling.

…  Not only Frederick, but also King Louis IX of France and King Henry III of England received Moslem ambassadors, of whom the most notorious were the representatives of the sinister “Old Man of the Mountains” who commanded the Ismaili “Order of the Assassins."

(86-87)  In a conservative, reactionary and superstitious age, Frederick II stood out as a progressive and enlightened despot.  The grandson of Frederick Barbarossa and King Roger II of Sicily, he had been brought up in Palermo as a proud Sicilian.  He spoke Latin, Greek, Italian, French, and Arabic;  he had a passion for scientific experiment;  he had studied astronomy;  and he was also an accomplished falconer and an erudite ornithologist.  Since his scholarship had led him to look upon his European contemporaries with arrogant contempt and reject their backward traditions, his reason and his curiosity had led him to reach out towards the superior world of Islam and regard its princes as his only cultural and intellectual equals.  His Moslem mercenaries and his harem so scandalized the prudish and newly ascetic Christian clergy, against whose attempts to extend their temporal power he was an implacable enemy, that they gave him the nickname “Stupor Mundi."

(96)  … in the last resort Mongols could always retreat faster than any European army could advance.

(105)  In Germany it was said that the Tartars were the lost tribes of Israel and that Jews were smuggling arms to them, using barrels which they pretended were filled with poisoned wine, with the result that at several border posts Jewish merchants were indiscriminately slaughtered.

(110)  Among eight Mongol prisoners captured in Austria durring this reconaissance there was an Englishman.  He had once been a Templar, but after being banished from England for an unknown crime, he had travelled through the Middle East and entered the Mongol service as an interpreter.  It was said that he spoke seven languages.

(111)  Venetian merchants had provided the Mongols’ intelligence service with most of its information about the distribution of the European armies and the political allegiances of their princes, and Subedei would have been unlikely to allow an army to threaten so valuable an ally.

(116)  John of Plano Carpini was to travel through Russia and deliver his letter [from the Pope] in person to the “King of the Tartars.”

Friar John was the most experienced and distinguished of the ambassadors.  Aged about sixty, he had been born in Plano Carpini, a town near Perugia now known as Magione, and had been one of Saint Francis’s first disciples.  He was a jovial monk whose loyalty and solicitude for his brethren had earned him their love and respect and whose charm and judgement had won him the friendship of the Bohemian and Silesian royal families.  He was so heavily built and overweight that while he had been provincial vicar of Saxony he had found it easier to forsake the dignity of a horse to travel through the countryside on the back of a donkey.

(139)  Sergius maintained that the khan favoured the Christians and was contemplating baptism, but the friars could see for themselves that the worthy successor to Chingis Khan was careful to appear impartial, sharing his patronage equally among the religions of his subjects and diplomatically attending all their important ceremonies.  His mother Sorkaktani, who had died soon after his election, had been a Christian all her life, but she had set him a judicious example by founding a richly endowed Moslem college in Bukhara.

…  Archaeological research has revealed that it [Karakorum] covered an area of about one and a half square miles with suburbs beyond its four gates and Friar William [of Rubruck] was probably underestimating its size.  It contained twelve Buddhist, Taoist and Shamanist temples, two Moslem mosques, one Nestorian Christian church and palaces for members of the imperial family and court officials.

NB:  William of Rubruck wrote an account of his visit to the Khan

(149)  Just as the death of Ogedei had saved Christendom, the death of Mangku saved Islam.

(155)  The battle of Ain Jalut has been recorded as one of the most decisive and significant battles in the history of the world.  It was not a conclusive victory in itself and it was no dishonor to Georgian, Armenian and Mongol arms that the soldiers fought so well against such odds, but it destroyed the myth of the Mongols’ invincibility, it broke the momentum of their conquests and it marked the day when Islam was returned towards triumph from the brink of oblivion.  From that time onwards, while confusion and discord divided their enemies, the Mamluks flourished, the final methodical expulsion of the crusaders from Palestine began and Christian influence in Asia was eclipsed.