Original subtitles

Chinggis Khan is dead, mortally injured

while on campaign in foreign lands.

A rather symbolic end for such a conqueror

that he dies whilst conquering.

In his lifetime, the leader of the Mongolian empire

remained undefeated by his enemies.

Chinggis Khan had done something no one else

had done before.

He crushed the mighty Khwarazmian empire

and invaded the lands of the Tangut

and the Jin his most powerful neighbors.

DR MAY The world irrevocably changed with his actions.

It could not go back to the way it was before Chinggis Khan.

As his armies battled the Tangut,

he drew his final breath

and now the Mongolian forces must continue to fight

without their leader.

It's an empire in the making.

It's an unfinished project.

This is a really big deal as to who might succeed

to the throne.

A race for succession begins to find

the true heir to Chinggis Khan and continue

the Mongolian Empire's relentless expansion.

-Chinggis Khan dies in 1227, August, 18,

while on campaign and he's shot.

There was then this problem of what to do next.

You're in the middle of a campaign,

you can't just stop and immediately put a new ruler in

Chinggis Khan's death is kept a secret.

The Mongol army continues to fight their enemy,

the Tanguts unaware, their legendary leader has passed

away, only a select few know of his demise,

ensuring the Mongol soldiers continue their campaign.

After Chinggis Khan died,

the Mongols really led a really harsh conquest

of Tangut territories.

There have been a lot of killings,

and it's one of the darker page of the Mongol conquest.

And this is a very violent moment

After a punishing, battle,

the Mongols finally overwhelm the Tangut,

with no hope of victory, the Tangut Emperor surrenders.

The Emperor was summoned, and he gave a huge slew

of gifts to Chinggis the door of the tent being closed

at the time, and it suggests a weird episode, namely,

that Genghis Khan was actually there,

dead receiving these gifts, but dead,

unknown to the Emperor.

They make him bow before the tent of Chinggis Khan.

His body is there, but he's not there anymore.

The ruler of the Tangut surrenders to a corpse

and doesn't know it, and they eventually execute him.

With the Tangut Emperor dead,

the Mongol forces swiftly move to eradicate

all traces of his empire.

The Mongols make an effort to kill off the royalty.

They realize that as long as you have the Tangut royalty

who view this kingdom as theirs, they'll never be 100%

comfortable being subjects of the Mongol Empire.

This great Tangut culture was destroyed

and not much was left.

This swallowed by the Mongol Empire

and become something else.

The death of Chinggis Khan is finally revealed

after the Mongols have secured their victory over the Tangut.

After Chinggis Khan's death,

his body is taken.

In a solemn cavalcade all the way back to central Mongolia.

He would have been taken as fast as possible

back to his homeland in northern Mongolia,

probably carried simply in a small cart

which could move extremely fast.

The body itself was taken right up

and eventually back to the area around his birth.

The idea that the Mongols have is that

he was buried on the mountain that was sacred

to him from childhood, Burkhan Khaldun.

The person who was in charge of carrying

the corpse to be buried home,

he recalled that Chinggis Khan, when he was on his way

to conquer the Tangut, actually stopped

at that particular place, uttered a few words saying

that for an old man like me, it is a place for burial.

The burial of Chinggis Khan has come in for a good

deal of obfuscation.

He clearly wanted to be secret.

His retainers wanted it to be kept secret.

It could not, therefore be a vast mausoleum of treasure.

He was probably buried simply in a secret grave.

I've been up Burkhan Khaldun, and it's all stone,

and the idea of digging a grave in it is hard to imagine.

For over eight centuries,

the final resting place of Chinggis Khan has remained

one of history's greatest secrets, with legends claiming

he took extraordinary measures to ensure his burial site

would never be found.

Some particular division of soldiers

were placed there to try and guard it,

to make sure that it stayed secret and on route,

it said that anybody who crossed the path

of the caravan was killed.

Perhaps this was part of a way of maintaining complete

secrecy about the event.

Some accounts mentioned that not only were the people

who dug the tomb killed to maintain secrecy,

but even the guards were killed and so on.

The horses were trampled over the land

where he was buried, and trees came up afterwards,

and soon no one knew where it was.

Obviously, there's a lot of archeological interest.

It would be the archeological find of a century

to find that tomb, but we still haven't located

the resting place of Chinggis Khan.

After more than 800 years,

nobody knows where his tomb is located,

but however curious I am,

I don't want his tomb being found.

My belief is that if Genghis wanted it

to remain secret, it's going to remain secret forever.

Genghis Khan's reign is over,

but his vast empire still has the potential to flourish

if entrusted to the right successor.

It's an empire in the making.

It's an unfinished project.

They haven't completely defeated the Jin in the east.

In the West, Chinggis' armies have swept through

the Khwarazmian Empire and defeated their rivals,

but not really been able to consolidate that rule.

So we still have this enormous territory,

which is partly under Mongol control

but hasn't been properly consolidated.

And this is a huge territory, potentially,

if it can be made into a real empire.

That task has been passed on to Ogodei because he'd be

already been favored and selected by Chinggis Khan.

Just because Chinggis Khan selected Ogodei to be

his successor did not make it automatic.

Now, after he died, the Mongols finished

their campaign against Xi Xia,

and I think it also gave them a moment to sort of

reflect on the life of Chinggis Khan.

There was a stipulation about the validity of the heir,

whether Ogodei was really the right person for it

The Mongol system is not one of primogeniture,

where you automatically take the eldest son.

According to the Mongol tradition,

usually the home or ger was inherited by the youngest son.

Ogodei was, he was the middle son.

So the question is, why someone in the middle,

it should be either youngest son or eldest son.

Even if Chinggis Khan wanted to decide,

this is not up to him.

Although Chinggis Khan intended Ogodei

to be his heir.

An assembly, or kurultai, is held to determine

the rightful successor, the prize, the greatest empire

in the world.

The Mongols began organizing the Kurultai

to select the next ruler, whether it should be one

of his sons or maybe his brother.

Transition from one brother to another was not uncommon

amongst steppe empires.

-Men and women found great Mongol

aristocracy will decide together

who's going to get the throne.

This time of transfer of power can take two years,

three years, four years.

It needed discussion. It needed negotiation a lot.

Ogodei's claim to succession remains fragile.

There are other contenders for the throne

Now by this time, Chinggis Khan has three sons

from his first wife still alive.

His eldest son, Jochi, died in 1225, so a few years before.

So there's only Ogodei, Chaghadai and Tolui left.

The most trained and beloved son was Tolui,

the youngest son.

He participated in Chinggis Khans every battle,

every moment of his decision making, Tolui was next to him.

Tolui was a fabulous general.

He may have actually been a better ruler in the sense

of military leadership.

-I think that maybe he was preparing Tolui,

according to the Mongol tradition,

the youngest son to inherit the throne of father.

It seems that Chinggis Khan

didn't favor Chaghadai.

Chaghadai in particular, seemed quite a quarrelsome

and difficult character.

-He sort of saw things in very much black and white,

and was very rigid in his belief system.

In my opinion, the weakest link was Ogodei

For whatever reason, Chinggis seems

to have selected Ogodei Khan as an easy going, pleasant,

charming character.

He wasn't the most militarily successful of the sons.

He didn't seem to be particularly strong willed.

Nobody expected him to be

Chinggis Kahn's successor.

I don't know if you could say he was an

administrative genius.

However, he did have a few qualities about him

that made him different.

He was the guy who could get along with everybody.

He had a generous spirit.

He was not a master of any particular skill,

so he appreciated those who could be in that category,

and he is probably the one who really propagated the idea

that the Mongols are the ones who are meant

to rule the world.

For two years, the negotiations go on.

Presumably, there were a lot of deals being struck,

and accommodations and agreements had to be reached

before eventually one of those three sons

succeeded to the throne.

The Empire needs a steady hand to serve

as regent while succession is debated

Chinggis Khan's youngest son Tolui takes charge.

Tolui oversees the ceremonies and convenes

the Kurultai and the other meetings and so on.

He may have thought that, okay,

I'm probably gonna be the next ruler.

After a two year interregnum in which Tolui

was the regent overseeing the assembly and other processes.

The choice was apparently Ogodei Khan,

because he'd already been favored and selected

by Chinggis Khan earlier on.

It was probably already a done deal

that Ogodei was going to be the next Khan.

Chinggis Khan, in many ways, his words became sacred.

In 1229, a Ogodei is finally raised as Khan

and the emperor, the successor to Chinggis Khan.

He becomes known as Ogodei Khan.

Tolui has to agree at this stage he can do nothing

but now pledge his loyalty to the new Khan,

and appears to be a kind of good servant,

a good assistant to the new ruler.

We don't have a clear vision of Tolui's mind.

We don't see him ranting of it should have been mine.

I'm the ruler. I should be the ruler.

He doesn't have a fit.

He just says, well, okay, that's the way it goes.

But there are hints that there is some regret,

and I do think this issue was not forgotten

by his sons or his wife.

For now, internal dissent has been set aside,

and the newly crowned Ogodei Khan can claim his throne.

Under his guidance, the Mongolian empire will conquer

lands even Chinggis Khan could not have imagined.

Ogodei Khan assumes control of the Mongolian empire,

but he is a very different leader than his father.

Ogodei, a very different personality

from Chinggis.

He seems to have been something

of a merry monarch.

There's a story about Ogodei Khan that he was being nagged

by his courtiers for drinking too much.

So he promised that he would drink half as many goblets

of wine every day, but he then promptly doubled the size

of his goblet so that he could continue to drink

as much as he wanted.

And that seems rather typical of his character.

He was clever, shrewd, generous, open-handed.

One of the things he was well known for was giving

all sorts of servants, even kind of strangers

and underlings, large amounts of money and wealth.

On one occasion, he's supposed to have looked at the Treasury

stuffed full of products, and said, you know,

what's the point of us keeping all this here?

We only have to guard it.

Why don't we just have people take it away?

And apparently, invited people to just come

and take away the treasures.

But that wasn't stupidity, I think it was seen

as generosity, and he felt that that actually

was a valuable quality of a ruler.

He wasn't the most famous or victorious of the various

generals of the Mongol Empire, but Ogodei does seem to have

been quite gifted when it came to political leadership.

He is the guy who begins to envision the Empire

as a true empire, as a functioning state.

Under Ogodei's reign,

the Mongol Empire expands much further.

Ogodei Khan's first move is to address unresolved

matters from his father's reign.

-He is determined to finish off the Jin empire.

He's going to finish what Chinggis Khan started there.

Well, that's what his father would have liked.

Ogodei and his brother Tolui lead

the campaign against the Jin empire,

fortified by the assistance of one of their most

loyal and trusted men.

They recall the general Subutai to finish off the Jin,

and he does so he attacks Kaifeng.

However, in 1232 as the Mongol forces

are attacking the Jin, Ogodei unexpectedly falls ill.

One of the most fascinating and mysterious

incidents recorded by the Secret History was the moment

when Ogodei Khan is campaigning with his younger

brother Tolui in northern China.

And the record says that Odogei becomes really seriously ill.

The account says that the shamans have decided

this is because the local spirits are attacking him.

Mongolian original belief is shamanism.

So there is so many shamanist tales in The Secret History.

Shamans are not priests, per se,

they're intermediaries with the spirit world,

and many illnesses are viewed as being caused by spirits.

So you'd call shaman in to enter the spirit world

to find out what spirit is tormenting the soul of Ogodei,

or if they had stolen his soul, you need to go out

and find it and bring it back.

And they try all sorts of different cures,

and in the end, they say, you know,

the sacrifice of animals isn't enough.

Only the sacrifice of a royal prince will satisfy

the spirits and save the life of the Khan.

So Tolui tells the brother,

saying that you are the Khan of Mongols.

If you die, Mongols will have no Khan

so I'll die instead of you, channel all the curses to me.

He drinks a potion, a preparation,

possibly poison, prepared by the shamans.

And he dies.

And when he dies, Ogodei Khan recovers.

Now this is a really interesting moment,

because it looks as if the prime candidate

who might have otherwise expected to become

the emperor had not only stepped aside

and allowed his brother Ogodei to become emperor,

but actually sacrificed his life to support his throne.

We don't really know how historically accurate that is.

It could have happened, of course,

it might well be a kind of semi fictional account

of something else. He could have just died

of drunkenness. That might well be

a sort of most likely explanation really.

He drank heavily, and perhaps he drank heavily

because he was robbed of the throne.

But I have my suspicions that Ogodei might have had

his brother poisoned to remove that potential threat.

Tolui is dead,

but Ogodei's battle with the Jin continues.

He besieges their capital, Kaifeng,

and reduces it to a pitiful state.

eventually the Mongols take the city,

and that's the end of the Jin empire in 1234.

With the Jin wrapped up there's some other tasks as well.

Out west in the Middle East,

where the Khwarazmian Empire had been defeated

by Chinggis Khan and his general.

The son of the old emperor, the old Khwarazm Shah,

Jalal al Din, begins to rally the troops,

trying to create his own force to combat

the Mongols and to retake some of the territories

and cities that he's lost.

And Ogodei sends a general named Chormaqan,

and they march with allegedly 50,000 troops

into what is now Iran,

Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.

Chormaqan dispatches a second unit of troops

to capture and kill the Shah's son

before he can rebuild his father's empire.

Its sole job is to hunt him like an animal.

Eventually this task force does hunt him down.

Allegedly, he escapes it and is killed in the mountains

by Kurdish peasants.

Meanwhile, Chormaqan's own army

is forcefully bringing Iran

under the control of the Mongolian empire.

Local princes are coming to submit to Him,

and then he moves into Azerbaijan,

into the Mughan steppe.

And then they go forth and conquer Armenia and Georgia,

wrapping all that up in 1240.

All middle eastern region are preparing

to be a part of the Mongol Empire.

In Ogodei's reign, the Empire expands further.

The logic of Ogodei's advance

now becomes ideological.

Chinggis had wanted booty and had been inspired

by his own success to gain more and more land.

But Ogodei sees things differently,

namely, that the Mongols should conquer the world.

They knew from the great raid under Chinggis that there was

not just Russia, but Europe and beyond,

and all of this was up for grabs,

and the natural inheritance of the Mongols.

As Ogodei's realm expands.

He realizes the creation of a central stronghold is crucial

for the Empire's future.

He decided to have his own capital.

Having a city for a nomadic empire Khan sounds

very strange, but in fact, it's really part of the way

they envision the control of the world.

In 1235, Ogodei orders the construction

of a city Karakorum.

This will be in the Orkhon River Valley.

The Orkhon River Valley has long been an important site

in steppe history.

It's in the central steppe of the Mongolian plateau.

There's good water, there's good pasture.

It's a perfect place to establish a capital.

This was the first time that they'd had a fixed site

for a capital.

Before that, it had been movable tents.

To build a great capital Ogodei needs

a skilled workforce.

-So craftsmen are going to be taken by force

from northern China to Mongolia,

1000s of them are going to stay with their family

in the area and remain for probably several generations,

and will be part of the population of the city.

It wasn't particularly impressive

as a built structure. Instead, it was more of a kind

of leisure and administrative center,

and he also has nearby pavilions, movable palaces,

spring pastures and hunting grounds,

so that he can create a kind of fuller center,

a center that can attract his court and that can act

as a kind of center of gravity in its own right.

Karakorum was quite a cosmopolitan city

of that time, because every trade, every Silk Road,

and not Silk Road trade, comes to Karakorum

Karakorum was not just an exit off the Silk Road.

It was not one of the main branches.

Ogodei turns it into the destination.

Merchants would go and they'd be paid double

or even triple for their goods.

What he's doing is establishing a principle that

if you're a merchant, you want to go here,

even though you're traveling into the middle of

literally nowhere, you will make money.

We know they were traders,

but also religious people.

The Mongol built the city also to help religious leaders

to have their own communities and build their own buildings.

Ogodei himself seems to have been very open

minded about different religious creeds,

different religious specialists could debate and philosophize.

Religious elite are exempted from taxation,

and they are also exempted from conscriptions.

They don't go to war. They don't fight

because Mongol said these people need to pray.

It explains why all these religious leaders from

all these religions are going to support very early on,

Chinggis Khan and his successors,

because they immediately see the benefit for their community.

Thanks to Ogodei's embrace of religious freedom,

Kara quorum prospers, attracting a wide range

of cultures and turning it into a bustling center.

This city is immediately like boiling,

you know, with different faces, cultures and religions.

Karakorum also becomes the center

for a lot of political activity and diplomatic activity,

so ambassadors arrive, envoys.

Rulers from other lands will send envoys

or turn up themselves in person at Karakorum.

Karakorum, in many ways, it was a place not only where

envoys and travelers could come and expect eventually to meet

the Khan, but it was also a walk in closet

where he could store all of his stuff.

This is where the treasure houses were.

This is where they put all the loot from the campaigns.

Ogodei also created a true administration.

So we have these territories that are ruled by the sons

of Chinggis Khan, but we also need imperial control

over them, so we'll divide them into fiscal districts

where we will gather the taxes.

They did not try to make everything all at once.

It was a gradual process.

Probably the greatest accomplishment of Ogodei

was he made a city that soon became

arguably the most important city in the world.

Everyone flocked there.

With Karakorum flourishing,

Ogodei holds a Kurultai once again to discuss pressing

matters of state, including which new territories

the Mongol army should conquer next.

Karakorum fills with countless Mongolians arriving to attend

Ogodei's Kurultai, including prominent members

of the aristocracy, each seeking the Khan's ear.

Ogodei faced a lot of ambitious other royals,

and part of his role as the chairman or the overlord was

to try and satisfy different factions within the royal

and imperial family.

The son of Jochi, Batu was increasingly asking Ogodei

for support so that he could claim his own kingdom,

because Jochi had been given by Chinggis Khan

a notional rulership of the lands to the west.

Since Jochi had died, that promise passed Batu Khan

and Ogodei takes the request that Batu is making seriously.

Ogodei's most loyal General Subutai supports

Batu's plan to push westward, eager to settle old scores

from an expedition 14 years earlier.

This followed the death of the Shah and the collapse

of the Khwarazmian empire.

In 1221, Jebe and Subutai,

two of Chinggis Khan's best generals,

are released on a kind of detached command,

and they end up undertaking what must be one of the most

outstanding and extraordinary adventures in military

exploration in history.

-Now, Subutai, after he had chased Muhammad Khurram Shah

and ended his life on the island from dysentery.

Subutai put in a request to Chinggis Khan that he and Jebe

would continue westward to explore those lands,

and so they go on this reconnaissance

and they went through Armenia, Baghdad

And the small column of troops go into

what is now Georgia, devastate a good deal of Georgia,

shatter that particular culture,

and then go on into southern Russia.

When they came down the other side

of the mountains, they found that news of their arrival

had got ahead of them, and they were actually faced

by a large army waiting for them.

So that is the Kipchaks who live in the southern Russian steppes,

but they're joined by allies locally,

Alans or other nearby polities have sent

a really substantial army.

the Mongol invasion force under Subutai and Jebe

are really in no position to defeat them.

It's then that Subutai uses diplomacy.

He manages to open diplomatic relations with the Kipchaks,

and he basically bribes them with an enormous gift

of the plunder that they'd accumulated

from other conquests to create a kind of separate

arrangement with the Mongols and Alans.

And that strips off about half the army,

leaving the other half much weakened, and of course,

Subutai and Jebe attacked that and destroyed it.

Then, typically, Subutai and Jebe chased after

the Kipchak force caught up and defeated them,

and then took back all the tribute they'd handed over

as bribes in the first place,

and they then settled down in 1222,

to find out more about this European region

and now on the fringes of Europe, quite close

to the Black Sea and Sea of Azor.

Having collected quite a lot of information,

start to begin to make their way back east to rendezvous

with Chinggis Khan.

The Mongols presence has not gone unnoticed,

and the Russian princes and the traumatized refugees

from the Kipchak who have been defeated by the Mongols,

they begin to assemble an army and shadow the Mongol force.

Now, by all accounts, that Russian and Kipchak army

was probably four or five times as big as the Mongol force.

It was certainly a very formidable force.

So Subutai and Jebe withdraw.

They use a perfect example of a step tactic,

which is the feigned retreat.

And they use this many times in battle the Mongols,

but this time, they use it on a strategic scale.

So instead of just withdrawing, you know,

a few miles on a battlefield, now,

Subutai and Jebe withdraw for nine days solid.

And as the Russian army follows them,

they string them out so that they don't go too quickly.

They don't want to lose track of them.

They want the Russians to remain in contact.

And they string out that army all the way to a river,

which happens to be the Kalka River.

Eventually, there's a battle at the river Kalka

where they encounter the Mongols,

and the Mongols annihilate them.

When one part of the Russian army is across

the river, strung out and tapped from the other one,

they turned around and defeat it, and in the chaos,

they drive through and destroy almost all of that Russian Army.

They completely annihilate this much larger Russian force.

However, during the battle,

the Mongols also suffered important casualties.

Jebe died in that encounter, probably,

because he disappears from the sources.

With the loss of Jebe, Subutai plans to return

home and report what he discovered

in the Russian lands.

Subutai goes back.

He has to fight his way through the Kipchak tribes,

the Volga Bulgas and some others

in order to cross the Volga River to link up with Jochi.

Subutai has a plan. He wants to conquer

all of the Kipchak tribes.

Now, 14 years later, at the Kurultai of 1235,

it is agreed that Subutai shall return to the land

of the Kipchaks to take their territories for Batu

and settle his unfinished business.

Ogodei Khan has decreed that his nephew Batu

should head west with a general Subutai

and conquer the Kipchak people.

-Kipchaks are the most powerful nomads

in Western Asia.

The Kipchaks are the real targets.

They are great warriors. And every state that borders

the steppes uses Kipchak warriors as mercenaries,

they intermarry with them,

they have marriage alliances with them.

The Khawarzam Shah, he had a lot of nomadic troops.

The Georgians had Kipchak mercenaries.

Ruling family would have some connection to the Kipchaks,

because you wanted someone on your side from the steppe.

So for Subutai is mine, and probably every Mongol there,

subduing the other nomads was key,

because you can add those to your own armies, augment them.

They fight the same.

Their weapons or cultures are very similar.

You take the nomads, you conquer them,

you incorporate them into your army,

and suddenly you have more troops

and you can do more things.

To defeat the Kipchaks and conquer

the western lands.

Ogodei must create a formidable army.

Ogodei Khan, sometime around 1236,

puts together a very large army.

He requires the other princes and his other subjects

to furnish Batu Khan.

He's the one who's going to be in charge

with the conquest of the northwestern part of the world.

And Batu will be one of the greatest leaders

of the Mongol Empire.

Batu's army is formed from conscripts and soldiers

from other Mongolian houses.

Guyuk and Mongke, two of the other princes

of the Imperial house, also served as commanders

in the new army.

The fact that they sent those very important

princes mean they care very much about this campaign.

Subutai, the general is certainly the brain

of the operation.

Subutai was there with Jebe at the Kalka River,

and this will create some tension.

Batu builds a force of nearly 100,000 men,

with cavalry, infantry and siege engineers

from the Mongolian steppes and the lands of Persia and China.

The campaign towards Russia

and the Russian principalities is actually one of the biggest

ever organized by the Mongols.

The campaign really starts in 1236,

the idea was first to control the lower Volga Valley.

Volga is a major trade artery, and also there are people

living around the Kipchak, but also important Muslim kingdom

called the Volga kingdom.

And this is Volga Bulgaria, so it's different from European

Bulgaria, but this kingdom is also very important,

and the Mongol really wanted to absorb it into

the Mongol Empire.

And this happened in between 1235 and 1238,

it took a lot of time.

It has taken almost three years for Batu

to build his army.

Now highly trained and tactically skilled,

Batu and his general Subutai launched their campaign

against the Kipchaks.

It will be a ferocious war.

It's always more difficult for nomads

because they have to chase other nomads.

Cities, it's easy. You acquire your siege engines,

and you attack and you wait.

So it's very different type of war.

Militarily, the nomads are much more dangerous

than anyone else.

A full force of Imperial Mongol military

might was brought to bear to actually conquer the region.

the Mongol army clashes fiercely

with the Kipchaks, overpowering them

and inflicting massive casualties in a matter

of months, 1000s of men are killed,

and The Mongols now control all of the steppe lands,

having crushed the nomadic Kipchaks and Bulgars,

Batu and Subutai realize they stand at the edge of a new

land in the wealthy cities of a region known as Kievan Rus.

-after they deal with the Volga Bulgars,

and they've subdued much of the steppes they do decide,

as long as we're here, let's go after these cities

-Without waiting for Ogodei Khan's permission.

Subutai and Batu decide to invade Kievan Rus,

six long years of brutality and bloodshed awaits.

In the most devastating show of Mongolian strength.