At the beginning of the thirteenth century, temujin, the leader of the Mongol beggar tribe, unified the Mongol tribes and was elected Genghis Khan, and since then the Mongol Empire has embarked on a vast expansion, the most famous of which is the three western expeditions.
If you don't die, you won't die
The first western expedition also began with the Western Liao regime, which was rebuilt by dashilinya (Yelü Dashi) after entering the thirteenth century and tended to flourish, so the emperor Yelü Zhilugu began to gradually expand, harsh conquest, and used troops for many years, and at the same time, the Islamized Khwarazm, who had been under his rule, was moving towards unification and attempting independence under the leadership of The Mahama Sultan, but the combat effectiveness was not enough to be repeatedly defeated, and it was not until 1210 that the Tang army was defeated in the Yingluosi region. The situation in the Western Liao took a sharp turn for the worse and other vassal states took the opportunity to defect, and Yelü Zhilugu was also usurped by the leader of the Naiman clan who had been attached to him, and soon died in anger.
The decline of the Western Liao is nothing less than a major benefit to its eastern neighbor Mongolia, in 1218 Genghis Khan sent the famous general Zhebei West Expedition, in fact, the original Qu Chulu defected to the Western Liao because his own territory was robbed by the Mongols and thus left a psychological shadow, at this time saw the psychological shadow come back, where there is still half a point of fighting spirit, immediately slipped, but unfortunately Qu Chulu was not an athlete after all, because he did not run fast enough and was arrested and killed, and the Western Liao was completely cold.
But this was only the prelude to the Mongol Expedition to the West, or rather Tetsubetsu was only to clear the way for Genghis Khan's own conquest, whose real purpose was Khwarazm, who, just three years earlier, had granted Mahamad's request for friendly trade and sent a caravan of about 500 men as a mission, which had just arrived in the border city of Khwarazm (northwest of present-day Chimkent, Kazakhstan), where the local governor had framed the caravan as a spy, confiscated the goods, and killed hundreds of merchants for coveting money. At that time, Genghis Khan was concentrating on fighting against Jin, so he sent only three envoys to negotiate, but Mahamad, who knew nothing about power, not only did not admit it, but instead killed the envoy and shaved the beard of the two deputy envoys and escorted him out of the country.
Temujin probably didn't like to be kicked in the nose the most in his life, so when Tetsubetsu swept away the Western Liao, he sent Muhua Li to lead the gold affairs and personally led a large army to the west.
The other side of the rapid rise of Khwarazm is that two major internal contradictions have not been properly handled - one is that the ethnic composition in the country is complex, and conflicts between various ethnic groups occur from time to time; the other is that the royal power and the religious power are not harmonious, and there are differences between the Development of Islamization Forces and secular regimes. As a result, the Mongol Iron Horse began to infighting in Khwarazm, genghis Khan asked Tebetsu to lead the army to the upper reaches of the Amu Darya River, pretending to cut off its logistics from the south, and when Mahabharata was deceived, he sent the main force to pursue Genghis Khan and launched a large-scale attack on the powder idea, and the eldest son Shuchi, the second son Chagatai, the third son Kuotai, and the fourth son Torre drove straight in like wolves into the flock. In March 1220, after conquering the capital of Khwarazm, Samarkand, Mahama fled west and died of illness at the end of the year, when his son Zalandin gathered up the remnants of his army and tried to counterattack, but in the end he could not defeat the Mongol army, and fled to India after a defeat.
In the following two years, the Mongols quelled the rebellion in various parts of Khwarazm, and the first western expedition ended.
The sword refers to Europe
The second western expedition took place after the fall of the Jin Dynasty, the previous western expedition to Mongolia had been attacked by the Russian principalities, and now that the Jin Kingdom was destroyed, the successor Great Khan's Nest Kuotai decided that it was time to arrange this group of little brothers.
In 1235, Shuchi's eldest son, Erda, second son Batu, Chagatai's eldest son Baidar, Wokoutai's eldest son Guiyu, and Torre's eldest son Möngke all went out to conquer the royal army, and officers of all levels in the ten thousand households and below were also sent to accompany their sons, known in history as the "Firstborn Son's Western Expedition".
In the spring of 1237, the expeditionary force occupied the area between the Volga and Ural rivers, and the Russian principalities were ridiculously at odds with each other, and in the face of strong enemies, they still "swept the snow in front of each door", so that when the Mongol cavalry advanced at high speed, they encountered little decent resistance. By February of the following year, more than a dozen cities such as Vladimir, Rostov, and Tver had been captured, and the troops of Möngke and Guiyu had opened up the North-South Communication Line of the Caucasus, allowing the Mongolian army to go west, and in December attacked the Crimean Peninsula, and then entered the territory of present-day Ukraine.
In 1240, the Mongol army besieged the Grand Duke Mikhail of Kiev and fled to Poland, and soon the Duchy of Galic also fled. The following year the Mongol army began to attack Poland and Hungary in two ways, in March the Northern Route Army attacked Poland, captured its capital Krakow, killed Silesia, Grand Duke Henry II vowed to resist and then died on the battlefield, in April the Southern Route Army defeated Hungary and captured its capital Pest, in June the two armies met and marched into the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other places, until the beginning of 1242, the news of the death of Wokoutai reached the front, and the Mongols who had killed all four sides turned around and returned to the east, leaving the Europeans with a lingering feeling.
Kill to the fullest
The reason for the Third Expedition to the West has something to do with the legendary "Old Man in the Mountains".
There is a magical branch of Shia Islam called the Nizariyah school, which is very strange but its common name is more famous - the Assasin school, the original Imam Hassan Sabah built the Alamut Fort (Eagle's Nest) on the peaks on the south coast of the Sautha and established a political power centered on it, consolidated and developed by missionary, assassination, plunder, and because of this extreme mode of existence, by the thirteenth century they attacked the Mongol caravan without hesitation.
It is clear that the grave grass of the last country that did so was already several meters high, and in 1253 Torre's son Möngke succeeded him as Great Khan, and he sent his younger brother Hulagu to lead an army of 100,000. When the army arrived in Samarkand in 1255 and in the spring of the following year crossed the Amu Darya River to invade the country known in Chinese literature as Murai, the Assasins were doomed from the moment the Iron Hoof entered the country. In the winter his country surrendered.
Since they had all come, how to enjoy only laying down such a small country, Hulagu set his sights on the Abbasid Dynasty not far away. In September 1257 Hulagu marched in three directions toward Baghdad, besieging it in January of the following year, and the Caliph Muss personally led his subjects to surrender, and the Abbasid dynasty collapsed. Probably addicted to the matter of fighting, Hulagu continued to lead his army westward, in January 1260 he occupied the city of Aleppo, in April he captured Damascus, until the news of Möngke's death came, he was a famous general Timid did not spend 20,000 troops to continue to attack all parts of Syria, he returned to the east, until the main force was withdrawn, the Islamic forces were rekindled, in September the Egyptian Mamluk Dynasty 50,000 troops and the Mongols launched a fierce battle south of Damascus, the cowardly Mongol army finally tasted defeat. The Mamluk dynasty took the opportunity to occupy Damascus and included Syria, and the three Mongol expeditions to the west came to an end.
Past and present lives of the four great khanates
The Mongol Empire's three western expeditions in the nearly half-century from 1217 to 1258 stretched its territory from the Sea of Japan in the east, to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, across Siberia in the north, and to the Persian Gulf in the south, but after Kublai Khan and Ali Buge competed for the throne, the Mongol Empire actually began to disintegrate, and in addition to the Yuan Dynasty that ruled the Central Plains, there were four other Mongol regimes, namely the Golden Horde (also known as the Chincha Khanate), the Chagatai Khanate, the Wokoutai Khanate, and the Ilkhanate.
In 1225, Genghis Khan divided the conquered land into three "Ullus" (specifically referring to the fiefdoms of the Mongol khans and kings) to his three sons, so that they divided the accounts and established the country, the eldest son Shu chi had the conquered Huarazimo and Kangliguo homeland, after his death the fief was inherited by his son Batu, in 1242 Batu was the eldest son of the commander-in-chief After the end of the Western Expedition, Batu returned to Shidonggui, on the way he heard that the concubine of Wokoutai wanted to support the eldest son Guiyu as the Great Khan, although the talent, fame and achievements of batu, who were also the grandsons of Genghis Khan, were better than Guiyu. Coupled with the fact that the two had always been at odds with each other, Batu claimed that he was ill and did not attend the Kuritai Congress, and he led his troops to move to Sale (around present-day Aktobe, Kazakhstan) and assigned the land occupied in the Western Expedition to his own to establish the Khanate of Chincha.
Because the roof of The Batu was golden, it was also known as the Golden Horde, which was dwarfed by the Chagatai Khanate, which was enfeoffed by Genghis Khan to occupy the homeland of the Western Liao and the Uighurs (Gaochang Uighurs), and the Wokoutai Khanate, which was located in the former homeland of the Barbarians.
This pattern soon changed, in 1260 Kublai Khan and Ali Buge competed for the Khanate, the Chagatai Khanate and the Wokoutai Khanate chose to support the latter, just after the third western expedition to return to Persia Hulagu supported the former, Kublai Khan in response to this only support, he canonized Hulagu as the Ilkhan, the Persian territory west of the Amu Darya River up to the Border of Egypt under his rule, for the Ilkhanate.
In the following four years, although the Mongol Empire only had two people on the surface competing for the throne, there was constant friction between the two major factions in private, such as the army left by Hulagu in Syria above, which was attacked by the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt and caused the general to die timidly, Hulagu was eager to retaliate against the Chincha Khanate for allying with the Mamluk dynasty to restrict the Ilkhanate, and even in 1262, the Chincha Khanate's mostly Azerbaijani region suddenly attacked the Ilkhanate, which lasted for two years, although the Chincha Khanate ended in defeat. But it also laid the foundation for the future conflict between the two Mongol khanates.
By 1264, Ali Buge was defeated and surrendered, and the overall situation of the division of the Golden Family after experiencing mutual attacks had been decided, and the four khanates began to govern independently, and if everyone could live up to their favors, it was a pity that the turmoil was always like a clear sky and a storm, because Genghis Khan once said, ''As long as there is a milking offspring in Wokoutai, they are all inherited more than others', and after the Khan's position was transferred to Torre, the descendants of Wokoutai have always been disobedient. Kublai Khan, who was well versed in the internal situation, sent Bala, a descendant of Chagatai, back to the Khanate to fight for the throne, hoping to cause civil unrest and concentrate on attacking the Southern Song Dynasty.
But who would have thought that The return of The Eight Ras would soon be reconciled with The Grandson haidu of Wokoutai, and they and the Chincha Khanate would ally on the Taras River, openly accusing Kublai Khan of having been Sinicized, declaring that he would use troops against him to restore his nomadic nature, and that the good warriors would cause people but not people, so Kublai Khan actually gathered his forces to defeat Haidu at Beiqiu Bali (located in present-day Jimsar, Xinjiang).
In the twelfth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1274 AD), a large army was sent to the west, on the way, a general named Tuotuomu'er defected due to unfair distribution of supplies, and the commander sent Meng Ge's son Lost Lieji to go to conquest, but who ever thought that Lost Lieji was betrayed by TuTuMu'er' strategy, and even captured the commander and handed it over to Haidu, and the two sides cooperated to send troops to Mobei and raid the various departments and plunder the ancestral family's imperial tent. In the twenty-fourth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1286 AD), Haidu took advantage of the main force of the Yuan army to go out and sent troops to attack Hala and Lin, but when Kublai Khan led the army back, he slipped away again, which shows that his so-called "restoring nomadic nature" became a pure formal slogan, but did not obtain any substantial results through this tactic, and did not take this opportunity to accumulate the strength to confront the Yuan army, and after Kublai Khan's death a few years later, Haidu himself could finally dominate the world, and he gathered all his forces to attack the Yuan again. However, as a result, he was beaten by Yuan Chengzong's nephew Haishan, and he himself was seriously injured and died on the way back to the division.
With his death, the Wokoutai Khanate also began to fight for the Khanate and eventually fell apart. In 1309, Haidu's son Chaba'er and his subordinate tribes returned to the Yuan Dynasty, and the Wokoutai Khanate collapsed.
Conclusion: Smoke and dust under the iron hooves of Mongolia
Looking back at the above-mentioned western expeditions, the foreign expansion of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century can be called a miracle in human military history, but when we return to the battlefield, we can often find that behind this kind of ""exhilarating", mongolia first slaughtered the city, and then gathered the enemy's enemy forces or organized its young and strong troops to use as a forward or siege, and if it encountered opponents who were difficult to conquer, they often used mobile warfare to mobilize their main forces, and then penetrated their fronts with high mobility, so that the Mongol army would not fall into the situation of battle losses or logistical shortages in the eyes. There are many factors such as horse breed, equipment, system, and climate.
Later generations often admire the Mongol achievements or talk about the sword soldiers like "on the spot", for which we draw your attention to a very simple but heavy common sense, and the current people can talk and analyze the war here, in large part, thanks to the fact that our ancestors luckily did not kill the Mongol soldiers.
If the above-mentioned turmoil is a problem within Mongolia, the end of other khanates is more complicated, the areas conquered by the Mongol military are already ethnically diverse, religious problems are prominent, and the Mongols have not been good at solving the problem of inheritance, so these contradictions together will lead to civil unrest.
In 1321, the Chagatai Khanate was divided into two parts, east and west, and in 1262, the local power faction of the Western Chagatai Khanate, Emile Timur, rebelled against the upper Mongol nobles, and gradually seized the power of the khanate, and even supported the puppet Khan, and three years later he calmed down the domestic turmoil and killed the puppets, calling himself the Timurid Empire.
Similar to the Chagatai Khanate, the Ilkhanate was divided into four independent regimes in 1335, which were annexed by the Timurid Empire by the end of the 14th century.
At the end of the 14th century, the Golden Horde also gradually declined, and the original military conquest of Khwarazm, Crimea, Bulgar, etc. gradually split off, coupled with frequent attacks during the expansion of the Timurid Empire, until the 15th century finally went to the old road of disintegration, it was divided into the Siberian Khanate, Kazan Khanate, Crimean Khanate and other regimes, and in 1502 even the last remaining land was annexed by the Crimean Khanate.
A century and a half later, these khanates were incorporated into the territory of Tsarist Russia, the Mongols gained an unprecedented territory through strong conquest, fighting the world on horseback but not on horseback, and during the rule of the four khanates, they failed to shape a long-term effective community in terms of system, nation, economy and culture, and this turbulent material foundation eventually made the superstructure gradually move towards its inevitable end.