"I, Khan, messenger of heaven, have given me the power to rule over the earth, to prosper those who obey me, and to perish those who resist me. And you, King of Hungary, surprised me - I sent you messengers thirty times, and you did not respond to me, neither sent messengers nor replied. I know that you are a rich and powerful king, commanding many soldiers and owning a huge kingdom. Therefore, it is difficult for you to voluntarily surrender to me. However, surrendering to me is your wisest choice! Moreover, I know that you took in my slave Cumans. I command you not to continue to protect them, let alone make enemies of me because of them! It will be easier for them to escape than you because they don't have a house and move around with their tents, and they may be able to get away with it. And you, living in houses, owning castles and cities, how can you escape from the palm of my hand? "
- Letter from the Mongol prince Batu to King Béla IV of Hungary.
From the beginning of the Mongol conquest in 1236 to the summer of 1240, the Mongols had conquered the middle and lower reaches of the Volga, the vast steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas, and the fortresses in the northern Rus states and the Caucasus Mountains. After a winter of bitter fighting in the mountains of the Caucasus [Mongolia's Second Western Expedition: In winter, the right hook fist, from the north to the west of the steppe and then east, to the Caucasus], Badu's eyes once again turned to the west.
Several great wars recorded in European history are about to begin. But what Europeans didn't know at that time was that the climax of the Mongol Western Expedition had actually passed, and the rest of the war, although hard, was just a sweeping battle in Badu.
When we tell the history of medieval Russia, we spend a lot of time on the history of the Vikings and Mongols in Northern Europe. This was because Kievan Rus was born as a result of Viking expansion and collapsed by the Mongol expansion.
Russia in the Middle Ages was not a country that could dominate its own destiny, cities were burned, people were slaughtered, and Russians were helpless. But occasionally there are lucky ones, such as Smolinsk, one of Russia's oldest cities, who was pardoned by the Mongols and not slaughtered. All this is fateful and uncontrollable for Russians, who find it difficult to understand the doom and good fortune that fell on their heads. Looking at the course of the war from Russia's perspective is like a blind man touching an elephant, unable to understand the situation.
The three most important Mongol kings of the Western Expedition were undoubtedly Badu (second son of Shuchi), Guiyou (eldest son of Wokoutai) and Meng Ge (eldest son of Torre). And two of them, Guiyou and Mengge, withdrew from the Western Expedition in the summer of 1240. The number of Mongol troops dropped from 100,000-150,000 at the beginning of the Western Expedition in 1236 to 50,000-60,000. Of the four major Mongol families (Genghis Khan's four sons), only the Shuchi family is still doing its best, because the fiefdom of Shuchi is the most western, and the western expedition is obviously the most beneficial to its family. The departure of Guiyou and Meng Ge may be related to not getting more benefits, or they may have earned enough.
Among the descendants of Genghis Khan, the Mongol kings who participated in the Second Western Expedition
It is nomadic custom for younger sons to inherit family property. When the elder brothers became adults, they shared cattle and sheep from their fathers, and they had to go out to earn a living on their own. The so-called eldest son's western expedition can also be regarded as the descendants of the major families who have no inheritance rights going out to enclose the land and accumulate wealth. Among these eldest sons, two Mongol khans (Guiyou and Mengge) later appeared, but this was not the design of Wokotai, but purely accidental.
Wo Kuotai liked the old three Kuochu the most, but Kuode died accidentally in the border war with the Southern Song Dynasty. The next heir option for Wokoutai is Kuo's son, not Guiyu. It can be seen that Wo Kuotai is really dissatisfied with his eldest son. Guiyu was later elected as the third great khan of Mongolia to her mother's credit. After Guiyu's death, Meng Ge became the fourth great khan of Mongolia with the great assistance of Badu.
The Mongol kings may have had an agreement to share the spoils before their western expedition. Meng Ge was quite prominent in the Western Expedition, and Mongolia had his great merits in obtaining land from the northern shore of the Caspian Sea to the Caucasus. Later, with the help of Batu, Meng Ge became the great khan of the entire Mongol Empire, and Badu was the king of the West. The land that Mongo had laid down in the west was given to Batu, and the population and livestock could be moved to the east. A large number of Kipchaks and Alans from the west appeared on the Chinese battlefield in an organized manner, expanding his eastern territory for Mengko.
Guiyou and Badu have a bad relationship.
In the summer of 1240, the Mongol kings held a congress to celebrate the great success of the Western Expedition and discuss their next steps. However, an accident occurred at the banquet. The secret history of the Mongols records that Guiyu, the eldest son of the Great Khan Wokutai, and Buli, the eldest grandson of Chagatai, clashed with the commander of the Western Expedition, Badu, and Guiyou and Buli left in anger and publicly insulted Badu. Guiyu called Badu an old woman with a beard. The cause of the incident was simply that Badu was the first to drink during the ceremony. It is said that Wo Kuodai was furious when he learned of this and recalled Guiyu.
The feuds between the Chagatai, Wokotai and Shuchi families have a long history. Genghis Khan's eldest wife Erthee was once captured by the Mongol beggars, and after being released, she gave birth to Genghis Khan's eldest son, Shuchi, so Shuchi's identity was embarrassing. "Shuchi" means "guest" in Mongolian. The second old Chagatai and Shuchi are the most discordant. Although the old three-nest Kuotai is milder, it has always been on the side of Chagatai.
The bad relationship between the three brothers carried over to the next generation. After Guiyu became the Great Khan of Mongolia, he raised troops to attack Badu, but died on the way.
The meeting of Mongol kings in the summer of 1240 broke up. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the farce of the wine banquet recorded in the secret history of Mongolia was only an exaggeration carried out by the Tuo Lei family later to smear Guizhi, and Guiyou's departure may only be because continuing the western expedition is not beneficial to him.
The main purpose of the continuation of the war in Batu was to completely destroy Kievan Rus and root out the Kipchak-Cuman tribes who fled to Hungary. The grasslands are vast, and defeated nomadic tribes can always flee to the depths of the grasslands to lie dormant, waiting for the comeback. Temujin was defeated by his Andazamuka, but was able to make a comeback and eventually became Genghis Khan. The ancestral motto of Genghis Khan's family must have the rule that the enemy must be killed completely.
Midjourney's view of the fall of the city of Kiev
In November 1240, the Dnieper froze as scheduled, and the end of Kiev, the ancient capital of Rus, finally came. On November 28, the city of Kiev was besieged. The Mongols set up stone-throwing carts and bombarded the walls day and night. Within days, the walls were collapsed. The Kiev defenders, trying to close the gap, were attacked by a rain of arrows. Mongols poured into the city. The defenders and citizens of Kiev fled to the last stronghold, the Cathedral of the Dormition of Our Lady. The church was the first stone church in Kiev, built in 989-996. Many monarchs of Kievan Rus were buried here. Frightened evacuees climbed to the top of the church, only to cause the entire building to collapse.
On December 6, the city of Kiev fell. The whole city was burned down, and only two thousand of the tens of thousands of inhabitants survived.
Since then, the principality of Rus, west of Kiev, has also fallen or surrendered. Probably because the number of Mongol troops had been greatly reduced, many Rus cities in present-day western Ukraine were not destroyed by Mongol troops. At this point, Kievan Rus, which lasted for more than three hundred years since the founding of the state in 860, was completely conquered by the Mongols.
Ruins of the Dormition Cathedral of Our Lady from 1650
By the beginning of 1241, the Mongol cavalry had already entered Poland and Hungary. In early April, the Polish and Hungarian armies were defeated in two decisive battles, respectively, and the organized resistance was largely over. Over the next year, Mongol armies continued to burn and loot on both sides of the Danube, Central Europe to the Balkans, pursuing the Hungarian king to the Adriatic coast, and following the Cumans to the borders of the Byzantine Empire. With the exception of some stone castles in the hilly areas that withstood Mongol stone throwing attacks, most of the other Hungarian towns were attacked by the Mongols.
When the gates of Europe opened, the Mongol army unexpectedly began to withdraw at the end of March 1242, ending the Mongol Second Western Expedition.
The stone castle on the top of the hill was the only way to fend off Mongol stone throwing machines
There are many speculations in history about the reasons why the Mongols ended their western expeditions, such as the death of the Great Khan of Wokotai, the cold and wet Hungarian plain in the winter of 1241-1242, the strong stone castles in Europe, the heavy losses of the Mongol army in Europe, and so on...
Historians throughout the ages have often debated what was the strategic purpose of the Mongol expedition. Do the Mongols want to hit all the way to the shores of the Atlantic? They don't go to Rome and Paris, there must be a special reason, right?
Actually, there is no need to guess. The route of the Mongol conquest quite plainly indicated what they wanted. During the time of the first and second great khans (Genghis Khan, Wokotai), the wars they fought were first and foremost the conquest of the entire Eurasian steppe, which was their core goal and the place where they prepared to settle. The second target was the nearest neighbors of the steppe (Jin, Western Xia, Khorezm, Volga Bulgaria, the Rus, the Caucasus, and Hungary), which were their backyards, securing the steppe and providing tribute and slaves to the Mongol Empire. Genghis Khan's grandchildren only began to conquer the steppe's second closest neighbor (Southern Song, Arab Empire).
Europe is too far from Mongolia, even from the lower Volga region, where Batu wants to make his home. And medieval Europe was relatively poor. The city of Kiev had a population of about 30,000 to 50,000 when it was conquered by the Mongols, and it was already one of the largest cities in Europe at that time.
The previous part [Mongolia's Second Western Expedition: Fight the right hook in winter, from the north to the west of the steppe and then east, until the Caucasus] mentioned that Magas, the capital of the Alan Kingdom, which was slaughtered by the Mongols in the mountains of the Caucasus, has found a suspected site of Magas in recent years, which covers an area of about 6 square kilometers, which is larger than the large European cities at that time, such as Milan, Venice, and London. And "Magas" is a Persian word meaning "fly". It can be seen that such a national capital that is considered a large city in Europe is not worth mentioning in Central Asia, only flies in the city have attracted great attention from the Persians. While the Mongols conquered countless major cities in Asia, Europe's wealth may not really be worth fighting for.
The wars between Mongolia and the Rus, Poland, and Hungary are now better known because the rise of Europe after the Middle Ages magnified its history in world history.