Original subtitles

The mighty warrior, Genghis Khan is dead,

and the Mongolian empire is ruled by his son, Ogodei.

It seemed as if it was chalk and cheese.

Very different personal qualities

between these two men.

A wise yet drunken ruler.

Ogodei Khan has built a Mongolian capital

called Karakorum.

Ogodei, had a bigger vision

of what they could achieve

Under his watch,

the Empire has expanded dramatically,

and it continues to grow by trade and also by force.

They felt under Ogodei,

'Well, who is going to stop us?'

Ogodei Khan's nephew, Batu,

has gathered a great army to capture more territory,

and with veteran General Subutai at his side,

he has crushed the nomads of the Northern steppes.

Now Batu and Subutai stand at the brink of a new conquest

more colossal than either could have imagined.

The Mongols, their perspective was,

'We are meant to rule the world.

You can either submit or you can die'.

Led by Chinggis Khan's grandson, Batu,

the Mongolian army has traveled deep into foreign lands.

Having defeated the nomads of the Northern Steppes,

they now stand on the border of Kievan-Rus,

a territory that today comprises Western Russia,

Ukraine and Belarus.

Rich with people and goods, it proves a tempting target.

After they deal with much of the Steppes they do decide,

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

The size of the army is probably something

like 120,000.

Batu Khan being of royal blood, the Royal House,

grandson of Genghis, is nominally in command

of the Mongol invasion force, but his advisor,

Subutai is probably the best of the Mongol generals.

He dates right back, He was one of Chinggis Khan's

original commanders, and he was the real strategist

and military genius behind the Mongol invasion

of what became Russia.

-We always wonder how the Mongol could conquer

so many different peoples, in rather short amount of time,

and there is clearly one explanation.

They know how to fight in winter.

They really decided on the decision of war,

people in village, people in cities,

they don't fight in winter, usually they don't know

how to organize themselves. They are puzzled.

They are scared to do it.

The Mongols force them to fight when they are not ready for it.

Mongols really can stand a harsh cold,

and they are able also to walk and fight on the ice.

Being used themselves to operate

in icy conditions, the Mongols had no trouble operating

in this frozen landscape.

When they invade Russia, the rivers are frozen.

That makes some highways they can easily cross.

If you look at Central or Asia,

you see all those big rivers.

Imagine crossing this when it's summertime.

Logistic is crazy.

The ice was so thick that it could support

men, horses, carts and so on, to both cross them,

but also in some places, to move along them.

It transformed central Eurasia into a place

where nothing can stop them.

At the time, the area that was known

as Kievan-Rus were actually a set of principalities.

Each one usually had a city and a series of local rulers,

almost like city states.

This set of principalities now lay in the crosshairs

as the next target for a Mongol invasion.

The Mongols breach the frozen borders

of Kievan-Rus, and descend mercilessly on the city

of Ryazan, encircling it, entrapping

the terrified inhabitants within its walls.

The Mongols, typically, before they would attack

anywhere, would give them an option of surrender.

They would send envoys, typically included someone

who could speak the local language.

In one case with the Rus, we do have a female envoy.

Now in the Rus sources, she's described as a sorceress.

It's Orthodox Christianity, 'thou shalt not suffer

a witch to live', and so they kill her.

And of course, if you kill a Mongol envoy,

you've basically sealed your own death warrant.

Avenging the death of their envoy,

the Mongol forces besiege Ryazan.

After days of fierce bombardment,

the city falls and is burned to the ground.

The royal family is executed, the population slaughtered,

all to send a gruesome warning to nearby cities

surrender or die.

Their longer way of war that you see

in the Russian principalities is trying to make them

understand they have not a chance against the Mongol,

and force them to open up the city doors.

The victory is a victory when the city is not destroyed,

it's left untouched and unarmed.

Some thought it's better to align with the Mongol.

Some others said, okay, no way.

We can't let them conquer us.

This is a really major force,

and it's able to overwhelm one Russian city after then next.

Ryazan, Suzdal, Rostov.

One after another, they fall to the invading Mongol army.

I really doubt that the Rus were caught unaware.

They had to be aware of the Mongols.

They certainly would have heard at least something

and people fleeing from the Mongols,

I don't think they fully appreciated

the magnitude of the Mongol threat.

Having refined the art of warfare

under Chinggis Khan and his son Ogodei,

the Mongols have become an unstoppable force.

Their battle tactics, unrivaled.

City after city crumbles before them.

They use a terrifying encircling technique

against their prey. It is called the Nerge.

-The Nerge is a hunting circle.

You have many guys who form a line that eventually forms

a circle, and then that circle draws in and contracts,

driving the game into a center area.

All of the riders in the Nerge have to maintain

their line and prevent any animal from escaping.

Now, instead of herding animals, you're herding people.

So you can control the movement of people.

You can drive people from outlying villages into cities,

and the Mongols are doing this on a scale that spans

hundreds of miles.

They're attacking multiple points.

They're preventing any unity of the Kievan-Rus

principalities from forming.

Thanks to their unmatched skills

on the battlefield, the Mongols continue to advance across

the land, destroying cities that refuse to surrender.

Moscow shares this dreadful fate.

So Moscow, at that time, it was made of wood.

Of course, there are some stone buildings,

but mainly wood, because they're in a forest and well,

you have plenty of wood to make cities with.

And they typically always allow people to escape,

because you can't sow terror unless there are survivors.

Up north in Novgorod,

the rulers simply surrenders to them,

which undoubtedly would have been sacked along with

the rest if they didn't put up any kind of resistance.

This invasion leaves a trail of destruction,

permanently reshaping Kievan-Rus.

Yet contrary to popular belief, the Mongols

were not merely agents of death.

They did destroy, but where they saw it

as important, they also rebuilt.

Reconstruction starts very quickly,

also after the conquest.

Destructions come quick, but reconstructions

come even quicker.

They did not want to live in cities.

They did understand their importance and would take

steps to help these towns recover, because they viewed

it as integral for trade, which brought in more wealth

for the Mongols.

After the Mongol conquest, very frequently,

local rulers were allowed to get on with ruling their own

local areas that provided they swore fealty

to the Mongol Khans. Their tribute had to be delivered.

Orders had to be obeyed, but there wasn't very much

by way of direct Mongol administration

of those Rus areas.

They basically they were either killed or they swore fealty

to the new overlords.

Whether through annihilation or surrender,

cities of Kievan-Rus fall one by one

to the unstoppable armies of the Mongolian empire.

Their invasion of the West has only just begun.

In the wake of their initial victories in Kievan-Rus

the Mongolian army under the command of Ogodei Khan's

nephew, Batu, settle in the Don Basin.

They must rest and regroup if they are to take

their campaign deeper into foreign lands.

These were lands that could easily be used

for Mongol rulers themselves to their own royal centers,

and frequently they did actually live in and around

these grassland regions.

And it's from there that Batu Khan himself,

once he's established power in the region,

exercised indirect control over the principalities

of the Rus in the North.

The family come, they join, actually.

They don't go on the battlefield, of course,

but they organize a camp.

So the Mongol warriors are not alone and fighting,

but they have the logistic of the family behind them,

which helped them just to get the food.

Also, it's part of the logistic of the armies.

So, it's a very different type of war.

As the Mongol force rests,

maintaining control over the Kievan-Rus principalities

requires an intricate web of contacts, envoys and spies.

One such figure rumored to have joined Batu service

is an English knight.

There's only a few fragments of information

about this Englishman who seems to end up in the service

of Batu Khan.

It's speculated that he might have been originally

from the Crusades.

At some point in the Holy Land, he detached himself, got lost.

-They were adept at taking on anybody

who was willing to speak to them about what was happening

in foreign parts.

And he's a bit of an aristocratic down and out

who was extremely good at languages.

He probably was engaged in translating

material and gathering information,

intelligence information for Batu Khan.

Batu and Subutai were making use of various kinds of

networks and connections to gather information

about the European kingdoms that they now faced.

Operating on a wide front,

the Mongols attack the remaining cities

of the Kievan Rus and their biggest target

will be their religious and cultural capital.

You have Mongol armies from the North,

you have Mongol armies coming up from Steppe,

and they all converge on Kiev.

Kiev was the center of Christian learning

at the time, sort of glittering golden center, most famous,

largest, richest of these principalities.

-The prince of Kiev, he flees and leaves them

to their fate.

There's the usual kind of massacre

after Kiev falls.

Many people take refuge in the many churches

of Kiev, thinking, well, that they'll be safe there.

Those churches are also made out of wood.

Rather than trying to cut through and you know bust

the doors open, they'll just light up the churches.

Particularly shocking to many

of the Chronicles, since they were frequently churchmen,

was the sacking of churches and Cathedrals.

Mongols had very little respect, really

for this particular religion.

The Mongolian siege of Kiev was their most

ruthless yet, and the savage aftermath

would remain a warning for years to come.

Later, in the mid-1240s we have a Franciscan friar,

a missionary, who's also serving as a papal envoy

to the Mongols. He's traveling through

and as he's approaching Kiev,

long before he ever reaches Kiev,

he just sees rows and rows of skeletons,

just bones scattered on the approaches to Kiev,

which gives us an idea of the size of the massacre.

With the Rus conquered, now what?

Well they could continue going west.

Having moved through Russia,

they're really on the fringes of

what we would think of as Europe now.

Refugees had started to pour into neighboring areas,

particularly Hungary.

Béla the Fourth, the ruler of Hungary,

was faced with refugees and nobles and Royals rocking up

on his borders, begging for entry for refuge

from the invading Mongol army.

So, there was already, kind of, shock waves radiating out

from the Mongol conquests.

Batu and Subutai have overrun the Kievan-Rus

who have destroyed their cultural capital.

Refugees from their destructive campaigns have fled

to Hungary in the hope it will provide refuge,

but there will be no escape from the Mongol onslaught.

The Kingdom of Hungary was a very powerful kingdom,

and had been making inroads into the southern steps around

the Black Sea, trying to extend their influences.

And the Hungarians knew the Mongols were coming.

You have refugees coming in from the Rus.

You have Kipchaks fleeing from the Rus.

The nomadic Kipchaks people had suffered

the invasion of Batu's forces when his campaign first

pushed into the West.

Their survivors now seek sanctuary in Hungary.

-The Mongols had demanded them back because

they considered them to be runaway subjects,

but Béla the fourth, the King of Hungary,

won't send back the Kipchaks.

Probably couldn't, they're very powerful.

They're already on his territory,

so he instead tried to shelter them and also make use of them.

They could provide the same kind of military skills

as the Mongols themselves had.

The threatening messages that Béla the fourth received

from the Mongols left him in no doubt that he could expect

to be attacked next.

They want him killed basically,

because they say this, this guy did not submit to us.

So, they have one thing in mind is really to get rid of

this powerful king.

And so the Mongols invade.

The Mongolian forces not only raid Hungary,

but their neighbor, Poland too, invading to prevent them

from helping King Béla.

-The invasion incorporated two great columns.

They'll send a small army to Poland,

and then the main army, led by Batu and Subutai,

goes into Hungary.

And these two were somehow in communication

with each other. There were messengers galloping

between the two that each know where the other was.

In Poland 1241, we had the Battle of Liegnitz.

This is a typical Central or Eastern European

army of the time.

Polish knights, Teutonic Knights,

maybe a handful of Templars.

Peasant levies.

Then the Mongol army of maybe 20,000 men.

The Mongols approach, they're shooting arrows

at the lines of the Europeans.

And then the Knights were restless,

and they charged the Mongols.

The Knights have the Mongols fleeing for their lives,

and then we see that it's a trap.

Before they know it, Mongol cavalry are attacking

their flanks. They're shooting arrows.

Once they start breaking up,

it's individual warriors on their own.

The Knights were vastly over armored

and extremely cumbersome.

Of course, the Mongolians and their small ponies

could gallop in and out of their ranks extremely easily.

And once upset, a Polish knight was an easy victim.

A finely honed war machine.

The Mongols wield a relentless arsenal of tactics

that the Polish knights are unable to counter.

There are Mongol riders with these pots

that are billowing smoke.

They're making a smoke screen.

The infantry can't see what's happening on the other part

of the battlefield.

They can hear the screams, and then out of the smoke,

you see Mongol riders coming with lances and swords.

As they charge, they maintain silence until shortly

before contact where they lit out a scream of "ure",

from once we get the words 'Hurray',

it's a Mongol battle cry.

And then they hit you, and there's also Mongol riders

flanking you, going around you, and this army is decimated.

Mongol forces easily destroyed

the Polish ones at Liegnitz.

They faced little chance against a really well-oiled

and practiced Mongol military machine,

which was probably really far more sophisticated

and definitely more experienced.

Batu and Subutai armies cannot be stopped.

News of their military success eventually reaches

their powerful leader, Ogodei Khan, who is thousands

of miles away in Mongolia's new capital city, Karakorum.

Ogodei remains in Karakorum in Mongolia

while the European campaign is going on.

He has been in power for about five years.

He's not going on campaign anymore.

There are accounts of Ogodei

being advised to leave the campaigning to others

and to concentrate himself on just having a good time,

probably in and around, Karakorum his capital.

He's ruling.

He's working on the administration.

He's dealing with merchants.

He's dealing with other people who come to Karakorum.

The Empire is expanding so quickly that

to be an imperial overlord, to exercise some kind of influence

and control over all these moving parts.

It was quite politically astute to take up residence

in the center.

He's enjoying a good life.

Ogodei has sort of a popular image of being the jolly drunk.

He seems jovial in many of the sources, humorous.

As they expand, they have new forms of alcohol coming into

the Mongol Empire and to the Mongol court.

And the great thing about being the Khan is you get

the best of everything.

So Ogodei has his choice of new alcohols to try and try he does.

Ogodei is a lover of indulgence and excess,

yet beneath his drunken facade lies the mind of a sharp

tactician, and he governs wisely with his wife Töregene

serving as a vital counselor.

She was also main ruler of the Mongol Empire.

She had a great influence on the decisions of the Khan.

Any deals with the religion, she would deal with their own

issues and say just how to pacify them,

how to solve these issues and how it would be done.

With Ogodei there's also a lot of time

at court for arts, music, dance, wrestling.

The Mongols are probably the richest people on earth

at that time, people would come from far away trying to get

into the Mongol land and discover the life there,

integrating new habits, new fashion, new foods.

Karakorum, it becomes a real city.

Ogodei consolidated a lot of the Mongol Empire,

and we know that he introduced new reforms.

He introduced various kinds of taxes and generally attended

to management and administration of this

now increasingly vast empire.

He established the Yam relay system,

an extraordinary network of relay stations,

which meant that messages could be sent across 1000s of miles

extremely rapidly by a sort of Pony Express relay

of messengers, swapping horses every 15 or 20 miles across

vast distances.

And that's also changed the face of trade

in central Eurasia developed up to the Abbasid Caliphate,

up to Middle East.

It covered now middle Eurasia as well,

and certainly more of China.

These new horse and rider relays not only ensure

control over the empire, but enabled swift coordination

between Mongol forces during their conquests.

The Mongol military machine was in many ways,

far superior to anything available to European rulers

at that time, they got really well tested and developed

systems for coordinating large numbers of troops they could

and did operate in independent columns that struck different

targets and then rendezvoused.

It is through these carefully coordinated assaults

that Ogodei is able to strike against numerous foes.

During his reign, he sends forces against Korea, Georgia,

Armenia and the Song Dynasty of China.

Yet his greatest war is the one led by Subutai

and Batu against King Béla of Hungary,

who was supported by a fearsome army

bolstered with Kipchak refugees.

So we turn our gaze to Hungary King Béla.

He views the Kipchaks as a valuable military asset.

He's gathered his army.

It's a large army, maybe 70,000

immense for a European army at this time.

The enormous Hungarian army has a deep

understanding of the surrounding lands and rivers,

giving them a huge tactical advantage.

This will be Batu and Subutai toughest battle yet.

They've reached a point by the Sajó River,

known as Mohi.

-They've got a kind of strong hold next

to the river that they were trying to defend.

When Mongols approached to this river,

there was only one bridge which Béla people burned it

so Mongols couldn't cross it.

Nevertheless, Batu Khan advances

and engages the Hungarian force.

They attack and initially, that's not

working out, and eventually they'll decide

they're going to advance with a rolling barrage.

Batu sends wave after wave of battle-hardened

warriors to break the Hungarian forces.

This was one way in which battle could inflict

casualties on the defenders in the course of the battle.

While Subutai crosses the river further down,

circles around the back and eventually pins the Hungarians

up against the river.

The Hungarians had taken all their wagons

formed a circle, essentially a fortified it,

so you can't just charge in.

So the Mongols encircle it, tried to draw

the Hungarians out.

It was actually touch and go.

It was by no means certain that the Mongols were going

to win in this case.

The Hungarians notice there appears to be a gap

in the Mongol lines.

So, they can either sit here and wait for the Mongols

to wear them down, or they can try to fight their way out

towards that gap.

Unfortunately for them, it was a trap.

It's always easier to kill people when they're running

away and not fighting back, so then your riders

can just ride them down.

It ends in a really unmistakable

and decisive Mongol victory.

One of the main examples of great

strategies of Subutai

A kind of brilliant campaign that illustrates

many of the strengths of the Mongol method of war.

It was a comprehensive Mongol victory,

but Béla the fourth of Hungary, the king, escapes.

One of the rare, you know, rulers

who really managed to escape the Mongols.

The fleet of the Hungarians

of the armies scattered.

Batu extends control over most of Hungary.

The Mongols ravage Hungary,

besieging and leveling its cities.

In the aftermath of the invasion,

a quarter of the population of Hungary is left dead,

either slaughtered in battle or starved by the crippling

famine that sweeps across the land.

Now, Mongols are really close to Western Europe.

It looks like maybe they're going to invade Austria.

There are Mongol riders seen near Vienna.

At that point, the rest of Europe has gone berserk

with the fear of what's about to descend on them.

There are these scaremongering accounts

emerging of this kind of diabolical,

devilish people arriving from the east and Christendom

itself being under threat.

Naturally, people are looking for scapegoats.

We have two of the most influential figures,

the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor,

squabbling over whose fault it is.

And next thing you know, both of them are declaring crusades.

We get all sorts of fears being played out in letters

going back and forth between rulers, between priests,

between monks.

This becomes a sort of moment of heightened panic.

It seems that no one can stop these strange invaders

from the East.

Wherever the Mongols go,

whether it's the Islamic world, the Orthodox world,

or Catholic Christendom, there's an apocalyptic

sense of dread.

Rulers across Europe begin to wonder how

and if the invaders can be stopped.

By 1241, the Mongol Empire is kind of at its zenith to date.

It includes an enormous amount of territory stretching

from the edges of Hungary and Poland right across Eurasia

to Korea in the east.

So this is a colossal continent spanning empire

that has been forged in an extraordinarily

short space of time.

-There is now no threat to those new lands

the Mongol has conquered, whether it's the Kievan Rus

lands or the Kipchak steps.

The Mongols, they don't have to prove

they can move the will, it's clear.

Ogodei Khan is the most powerful man in the world.

He stands on the precipice of conquering Europe.

His armies seemingly unstoppable.

At this moment in 1241, Ogodei Khan himself dies.

-He was a notorious drunkard

and basically died of drink.

It's pretty certain that his lifestyle

led to his relatively early death.

He seemed to have indulged himself freely

in all sorts of past times.

No surprise perhaps that he didn't live to a ripe old age.

There are some rumors that maybe he was poisoned.

There are some things that he might have done to diminish

the power and authority of his sister,

Al-Altan and some other sisters.

They had significant influence and often returned to court.

And so there's a question of maybe one of them got fed up

with Ogodei's grasping hands at trying to accumulate

more power and territory, taking away from his sisters

and so one of them poisoned him.

There's also a possibility that maybe his wife, Töregene,

poisoned him.

After the death of her husband,

she helps run the Imperial bureaucracy and prepare

for the Kurultai, where the new Emperor will be decided.

All Mongol Khan's,

they have to nominate the successors, he didn't.

He thought he would live longer, so he didn't mention

his successor.

Maybe Töregene decided, maybe she should step in

and help her number one son take the throne.

So with the death of Ogodei,

the question of who will succeed,

this becomes a central feature.

What other noble houses, the other royal branches

of the family, also definitely had ambitions here.

Political tension among the Mongols.

So the conquest stopped.

War stopped because Mongols need to gather to organize

a great assembly, great Kurultai and decide

who's going to be next.

The main princes as well as the top commanders

and nobles return to Mongolia to begin the process of working

on the succession, trying to come to some accommodation

between the different factions within the empire so that

a new emperor can be crowned.

The Mongol Empire is poised it seems to invade

and conquer much, or possibly all, of Europe.

But individuals like Subutai would have to go back

for a Kurultai to select a new ruler.

It looks like the news of Ogodei's death

reaches the Mongol armies in Europe, probably in 1242,

and that's when the withdrawal begins

from the eastern part of Europe.

But they decided to abandon these conquest.

Although Europe is within their grasp,

Subutai and Batu must abandon their campaign,

summoned to Karakorum to choose the next Khan.

Europe has been saved by Ogodei untimely death.

It will never try after that to get back

to Hungary, but they will never go on in the West,

because they consider that this is a solid border

that worked well.

So, it's a really fascinating question as

to whether or not the Mongols could have conquered Europe

if Ogodei had not died and the Mongol war machine

had continued to roll west.

It's by no means certain that the Mongols would have been

stopped if they continued.

Certainly, if you look at the sophistication of their armies,

excellent and very developed communication,

it's actually quite possible that they could have defeated

any of the European armies that were fielded against them.

Ogodei Khan is dead.

His sudden death has left the Mongolians without a successor,

paralyzing their military expansion.

However, despite this turmoil, the Empire remains unmatched

in scale and power.

Father and son, Chinggis Khan and Ogodei Khan,

have, between them, forged and then consolidated about

the largest contiguous land empire to date in the Eurasian

continent, all the way from Korea and the East

right through to Hungary in the West.

So this is an extraordinary achievement.

The significance of the Mongol Empire

in global history is huge, and actually

it has been rediscovered in a way.

Actually we think today we saw in that it's comparable

to Roman Empire or Ottoman Empire.

-The Mongols shaped the world

which we know today.

There wouldn't be Russian, rural Russian,

without a Mongol conquest, there wouldn't be Iran, Iraq,

you know, all these Middle Eastern people without Mongol

conquest, there wouldn't be Central Asia

without a Mongol conquest.

Korea, Japan, were very much defined, you know,

who they are in relation to the Mongolians.

Nationalistic discourse, they would say,

well, Mongol period is the worst period for us.

Because of them, we didn't get into modernity

as quickly as we should have.

It has to be seen as a negative period of history.

And now, of course, thanks to the work also

of many researchers, it's really an international endeavor,

we really are able to show and prove, based on fact,

that it's a very rich period of human history

with a lot of development in many, many ways.

They put together cultures, religions, peoples.

They had their own taste.

They had their own vision of things.

So, they are very active in art, in science.

Cartography was super important for them.

So they mapped the world differently under the Mongols.

So the vision we have of the world really

is coming from the Mongol period.

Mongolia today is the heartland

where everything started.

So where built Chinggis his own country,

where Chinggis Khan Tribe started its journey.

We are a proud continuation of Chinggis Khan's legacy.

Ogodei Khan is definitely eclipsed, I think,

now in the historical memory by his father, Chinggis Khan.

Chinggis Khan was this continent spanning conqueror.

He'd come from a really difficult position,

an exiled prince who'd become this unbelievably successful

and powerful Emperor.

Where Chinggis had this hardness, this will to succeed,

this will to power, Ogodei was easy going, charming,

indulgent and self-indulgent.

So it seemed as if it was chalk and cheese,

very different kinds of personal qualities

between these two men.

But it has to be said that Chinggis Khan began

the process, but the area under proper Mongol Imperial

administration almost doubled during the period

of Ogodei Khan's reign.

I don't think that Chinggis Khan

ever thought like conquering the world,

but I think that he thought,

I'm going to conquer the nomadic world,

which was the most important world for him.

Ogodei, he had a bigger vision of what he could achieve,

because the Mongol armies they've been so far,

maybe even felt under Ogodei, well, who's going to stop us?

In just two generations,

the Mongolian empire has grown from a group of warring

factions into one of the most powerful forces on Earth,

guided by its future Khans, its expansion will continue,

shaping it into the greatest empire humanity has ever known.

-It's impossible to find a good parallel

with the scope and scale of this imperial conquest,

but all of that began with The story of Chinggis Khan.