Mongol conquest of Central Asia

After the resounding victories won in Central Asia, the Mongol nobility set its sights on the conquest of East Turkestan, Central Asia and Kazakhstan. The Mongol state was separated from the Khorezmshah empire by a buffer possession, headed by Kuchluk Khan. He was the leader of the Naimans who fled to the west as a result of their defeat in 1204 from the army of Temujin. Kuchluk went to the Irtysh valley, where he united with the Merkit khan Tokhtoa-beki. However, after another defeat in 1205, Kuchluk with the remnants of the Naimans and Kereits fled to the valley of the river. Chu. As a result of a long struggle with local Turkic tribes and Kara-Kitai, he established himself in Eastern Turkestan and Southern Semirechye. However, in 1218, a huge Mongol army under the command of Jebe Noyon defeated the troops of Kuchluk Khan. Genghis Khan, having conquered Eastern Turkestan and Southern Semirechye, came close to the borders of the Khorezmshah power, which included Central Asia and most of Iran.

After the Mongols captured large areas of the Jin Empire, Khwarazmshah Muhammad II (1200-1220) sent envoys to the court of Genghis Khan. The main purpose of this diplomatic mission was to obtain information about the armed forces and further military plans of the Mongols. Genghis Khan favorably received envoys from Khorezm, expressing hope for the establishment of intensive trade relations with the Muslim East. He ordered to convey to Sultan Muhammad that he considered him the ruler of the West, and himself the ruler of Asia. Following this, he sent a return embassy to Urgench, the capital of the Khorezmshah state. The formidable warrior proposed, through his ambassadors, to conclude an agreement on peace and trade between the two world powers.

In 1218, the Mongols sent a large trade caravan to Central Asia, carrying many expensive goods and gifts. However, upon arrival at the border town of Otrar, the caravan was plundered and killed. This became a convenient pretext for organizing a grandiose campaign of the Mongol army. In the autumn of 1219, Genghis Khan moved his army from the banks of the Irtysh to the west. In the same year it invaded Transoxiana.

The news of this alarmed the Sultan's court in Urgench. The urgently assembled Supreme Council of State was unable to develop a reasonable plan of military action. Shihab ad-din Khivaki, the closest associate of Muhammad II, proposed gathering a people's militia and meeting the enemy with all fighting forces on the banks of the Syr Darya. Other plans for military operations were also proposed, but the Sultan chose passive defense tactics. The Khorezmshah and the dignitaries and generals who supported him, underestimating the siege art of the Mongols, relied on the fortress of the cities of Transoxiana. The Sultan decided to concentrate the main forces on the Amu Darya, reinforcing them with militias from neighboring regions. Muhammad and his commanders, holed up in fortresses, hoped to attack the Mongols after they had scattered throughout the country in search of booty. However, this strategic plan did not materialize, which led to the death of thousands of rural and urban populations in Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan.

The huge army of Genghis Khan reached Otrar in the fall of 1219 and, after a five-month siege, captured it (1220). From here the Mongols moved forward in three directions. One of the detachments under the command of Jochi Khan set out to capture cities in the lower reaches of the Syr Darya. The second detachment moved to conquer Khojent, Benaket and other points of Transoxiana. The main forces of the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan himself and his youngest son, Tului, headed towards Bukhara.

The Mongol army, like a fiery tornado, fell on the cities and villages of Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Everywhere they met resistance from ordinary peasants, artisans, and shepherds. The population of Khojent, led by Emir Timur Malik, offered heroic resistance to the foreigners.

At the beginning of 1220, after a short siege, Genghis Khan took, destroyed and burned Bukhara. Most of the townspeople, with the exception of the local nobility who went over to the side of the conquerors and some of the captured artisans, were killed. The inhabitants who accidentally survived the massacre were mobilized into militias to conduct siege work.

In March 1220, the hordes of Genghis Khan appeared near Samarkand, where a strong garrison of the Khorezmshah was concentrated. However, the city was taken, destroyed and completely plundered.

The defenders of Samarkand were killed; only a part of the skilled artisans escaped this fate, but were driven into slavery. Soon all of Transoxiana came under the rule of the Mongols.

The critical situation that had arisen required urgent and decisive measures, but the weak-willed Sultan and his closest associates did nothing to organize resistance to the enemy. Mad with fear, they sowed panic, sending out decrees everywhere about the non-interference of the civilian population in hostilities. Khorezmshah decided to flee to Iraq. Genghis Khan sent a detachment of the Mongol army to pursue Muhammad, who went to Nishapur, and from there to Qazvin. The Mongol cavalry quickly moved in the footsteps of the Khorezmshah to Northern Khorasan. The detachments of Jebe, Subedai and Toguchar-noyon captured Nisa and other cities and fortresses of Khorasan and Iran in 1220. Fleeing from the persecution of the Mongols, the Khorezmshah crossed to a deserted island in the Caspian Sea, where he died in December 1220.

At the end of 1220 - beginning of 1221, Genghis Khan sent his commanders to conquer Khorezm. Here at that time the remnants of the Sultan’s army, consisting mainly of Kipchaks, were concentrated. In Khorezm there were the sons of Khorezmshah Muhammad, Ak-Sultan and Ozlag-Sultan, who did not want to cede power to their elder brother, Jalal ad-din. The Khorezm forces were divided into two camps, which made it easier for the Mongols to capture the country. As a result of acute disagreements with his brothers, Jalal ad-din was forced to leave Khorezm, he crossed the Karakum and went to Iran, and from there to Afghanistan. While in Herat and then Ghazni, he began to assemble effective anti-Mongol forces.

At the beginning of 1221, the army of Genghis Khan under the command of the princes Jochi, Ogedei and Chagatai captured almost the entire left bank of the lower reaches of the Amu Darya. Mongol troops began the siege of Urgench, the capture of which was given special importance by Genghis Khan. The blockade of the city for six months did not produce any results. Only after the assault was Urgench captured, destroyed, and its remains flooded by the waters of the Amu Darya (April 1221).

Jalal ad-din, who gathered a large army, offered fierce resistance to the Mongols. In the summer of 1221, he defeated a thirty-thousand-strong Mongol army in a battle in the Pervan steppe. Genghis Khan, concerned about the successes of Jalal ad-din and the rebels in Khorasan, personally opposed him. Jalal ad-din was defeated in a battle on the banks of the river. The Indus went deep into India, where, however, it did not receive the support of local feudal rulers, in particular the Delhi Sultan Shams ad-din Iltutmish. Mongol troops, meanwhile, suppressed popular uprisings and again captured Northern Khorasan.

In October 1224, the main contingent of Genghis Khan's army crossed the Amu Darya and moved to Mongolia. One of the important reasons for her departure to Central Asia was the uprising of the Tangut inhabitants. Genghis Khan transferred the affairs of administration (primarily tax) of Central Asia to the Khorezm merchant Mahmud Yalovach (his heirs performed these functions until the beginning of the 14th century). The conquerors installed their representatives of power, or chief administrators (daruga), in the conquered regions of the region; military garrisons were maintained in cities and fortresses.

Taking advantage of Genghis Khan's departure to Mongolia, Jalal ad-din returned from India to Iran. His power was recognized by the local rulers of Fars, Kerman and Persian Iraq. In 1225, he took Tabriz and announced the restoration of the power of the Khorezmshahs. With the support of the city militia, Jalal ad-din won a victory over the Mongols near Isfahan in 1227, although he himself suffered heavy losses. At the same time, for a number of years, he carried out campaigns against the local feudal rulers of Transcaucasia and Western Asia. Jalal ad-din was a brave commander, but did not have the flexibility of a politician. With his ambitious behavior and predatory attacks, he alienated many representatives of the local nobility and the general population. In 1231, unable to withstand the dominance of the Khorezmians, the artisans and urban poor of Ganja rose up. Jalal ad-din suppressed the uprising, but a coalition of the rulers of Georgia, the Rum Sultanate, and the Ahlat Emirate formed against him.

After the death of Genghis Khan (1227) at the kurultai of 1229, his son Ogedei (1229-1241) was elevated to the throne of the Mongol Empire. Continuing his father’s policy of conquest, the Great Khan (Kaan) ordered a huge army to move to Khorasan and Iran. The Mongol army under the command of Noyon Chormagun marched against Jalal ad-din. Having devastated Khorasan, she entered Iran. Under the onslaught of the Mongols, Jalal ad-din retreated to Southern Kurdistan along with the remnants of his troops. In 1231 he was killed near Diyarbakir. The death of Jalal ad-din opened the way for the Mongols to penetrate deep into the countries of the Near and Middle East.

In 1243, Khorasan and the regions of Iran captured by Chormagun were transferred to Emir Arghun by order of Ogedei-kaan. He was appointed governor (basqak) in a region almost completely devastated by the Mongols. Arghun made an attempt to improve economic life and restore rural settlements and cities of Khorasan. However, such a policy met resistance from the Mongolian steppe nobility, accustomed to plunder.

The Mongol conquest dealt a terrible blow to the development of the productive forces of the conquered countries. Huge masses of people were exterminated, and those left alive were turned into slaves. “The Tatars,” wrote the 13th-century historian Ibn al-Athir, “did not take pity on anyone, but beat women and babies, ripped open the wombs of pregnant women and killed fetuses.” Rural settlements and cities fell into ruins, and some of them lay in ruins at the beginning of the 14th century. The agricultural oases of most regions were turned into nomadic pastures and camps. Local pastoral tribes also suffered from the conquerors. Plano Carpini wrote in the 40s of the 13th century that they “were also exterminated by the Tatars and live in their land, and those who remained were enslaved.” The increase in the share of slavery under the Mongols led to social regression of the conquered countries. The naturalization of the economy, the strengthening of the role of cattle breeding at the expense of agriculture, and the reduction of domestic and international trade led to a general decline.

The countries and peoples conquered by the Mongols were divided among the offspring of Genghis Khan. Each of them was allocated an ulus (destiny) with a certain number of troops and dependent people. Tului, the youngest son of Genghis Khan, according to custom, received Mongolia as an inheritance - the indigenous domain (yurt) of his father. 101 thousand soldiers out of 129 thousand regular army men were placed under his command. Ögedei, the third son of Chinggis Khan, was allocated an ulus in Western Mongolia centered on the upper Irtysh and Tarbagatai. After his enthronement in 1229, he settled in Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol Empire. The heirs of Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan, were given lands located to the west of the Irtysh and “from the borders of Kayalyk (in Semirechye) and Khorezm to the places of Saksin and Bulgar (on the Volga), right up to the limits where the hooves of the Tatar horses reached.” In other words, this inheritance included the northern part of Semirechye and Eastern Dashti Kipchak, including the Lower Volga region. The borders of the Dzhuchiev ulus were expanded under Batu Khan, who made a campaign to Kama Bulgaria, Rus' and Central Europe. After the formation of the Golden Horde, the Lower Volga region became the center of the Juchid ulus. Chagatai, the second son of Genghis Khan, received from his father 4 “darkness” (or tumen, Mong. “10,000”, as well as “countless multitude”), which included the territories of the Barlas and Kungrat tribes, and lands from the Southern Altai and the river. Or to the Amu Darya. His possessions covered Eastern Turkestan, a significant part of Semirechye and Transoxiana. The main territory of his ulus was called Il-Alargu, the center of which was the city of Almalyk.

Thus, a significant part of Central Asia and Eastern Kazakhstan became part of Chagatai’s possessions. However, his power extended directly to the nomadic Mongols and the steppe Turkic-speaking tribes they conquered; actual control in the western regions of the Chagatai ulus was carried out according to the order of Genghis Khan by Mahmud Yalovach. Choosing Khojent as his residence, he ruled the region with the help of military contingents of Mongolian Baskaks and Darugachi (or Daruga).

The situation of the settled population of Transoxiana after the invasion of Genghis Khan was very difficult. The rule of foreigners was accompanied by acts of brutal violence, extortion and robbery of civilians. In this, the Mongolian aristocracy was helped by the Central Asian nobility, who went over to the side of the conquerors. The dominance of newcomers and local feudal lords led to the uprising of the masses of Bukhara. In 1238, the villagers of Tarab, one of the villages in the vicinity of Bukhara, rose up to fight. The rebels were led by screen maker Mahmoud Tarabi. Gathering peasant detachments, he entered Bukhara and occupied the palace of the Sadr dynasty that ruled the city. However, the rebels were soon defeated, and Mahmud Tarabi died in the battle with the Mongol army. After this, Mahmud Yalovach was recalled to Karakorum and removed from his post. His son Masud Beg was appointed instead.

In the late 40s - early 50s of the 13th century. Fierce strife and a struggle for power began between the descendants of Genghis Khan. Having significant military forces and economic power, they strived for independence in every possible way. This process was also based on the further development of the appanage feudal system in the Mongol Empire. The lack of strong economic, political and cultural ties, the multi-tribal nature of the empire, and the struggle of conquered peoples against their enslavers led to the disintegration of the vast Mongol power into independent states.

Chagatai, being the eldest in the Genghisid family, enjoyed great authority and influence, and Khan Ogedei did not make important decisions without his consent. Chagatai appointed Kara Hulagu, the son of his brother, Matugen, as his heir. After the death of Ogedei in 1241, and then Chagatai as a result of intense confrontation in 1246, Guyuk (1246-1248) became the Great Khan. Yesu Mongke was proclaimed ruler of the Chagatai ulus. Kara Hulagu was removed from power by the united heirs of the uluses of Chagatai and Ogedei. However, after the death of Guyuk, the flames of new civil strife flared up. During a fierce struggle between the descendants of Ogedei and Tuluy, Mongke (1251-1259), the eldest son of Tuluy, came to power. Many princes from the Chagatai and Ogedei clans were executed. The ruler of the Chagatai ulus was Orkyna, the widow of Kara Hulagu (d. 1252).

Mongol Empire in the middle of the 13th century. was actually divided between the heirs of Tuluy and Jochi. The border lines of the possessions of Batu, the son of Jochi, and the Great Khan Mongke passed through time. Chu and Talas. Semirechye came under the rule of Mongke, and Maverannahr temporarily fell into the hands of the Jochids.

In 1259, after the death of Mongke, a new round of feudal strife occurred in the Mongol state, ending with the proclamation of Kublai, Mongke's brother, as the supreme ruler of the Mongol Empire (1260).

The Chinggisid state was considered as the property of the ruling dynasty and its numerous representatives. The Great Kaan had broad prerogatives, combining military, legislative and administrative-judicial powers in one person. The political structure of the Mongolian state retained the kurultai - the council of nomadic nobility under the auspices of the Chingisids. Formally, the kurultai was considered the highest body of power, at which the supreme khan was elected. The Kurultai resolved issues of peace and war, domestic politics, and considered important disputes and litigation. It met, however, in fact only to approve decisions prepared in advance by Kaan and his inner circle. Councils of the Mongol nobility met until 1259 and stopped only with the death of Mongke Khan.

The Mongol Empire, despite the existence of the supreme khan's power, actually consisted of a number of independent and semi-independent possessions, or fiefs (uluses). The ulus rulers - the Chingisids - received income and taxes from their appanages, maintained their own court, troops, and civil administration. However, they were usually not allowed to interfere in the management of agricultural areas, for which the supreme khans appointed special officials.

The ruling layer of the Mongol uluses consisted of the highest nobility, led by the direct and lateral branches of the Chinggisid dynasty. Civil administration in the appanages was exercised over the settled population with the help of the old local bureaucracy. In the Chagataid state under Masud Beg, a monetary reform was carried out, which played an important role in the rise of the economy of Central Asia.

In some cases, civil administration in the Chagataid state was carried out with the help of old dynasts who bore the title "malik". There were such rulers in a number of large regions and cities of Transoxiana, in particular in Khojent, Fergana, and Otrar. The Mongol authorities themselves, the daruga, were also appointed to the conquered regions and cities of Central Asia and East Turkestan. Initially, their power was limited to the performance of military functions on the ground, but over time their prerogatives expanded significantly. Daruga began to carry out duties for the population census, recruiting troops, establishing a postal service, collecting and delivering taxes to the Khan's horde.

The bulk of the nomadic and sedentary population of the Chagatai ulus was at various stages of the feudal system. Feudal relations were most developed in agricultural areas, which retained the previous socio-economic institutions. The nomadic population, consisting of Mongolian and conquered Turkic-speaking tribes, was at the early feudal stage of development with strong remnants of the tribal system. Nomads were obliged to perform military service, perform various duties and pay taxes in favor of their masters. The nomads were divided into tens, hundreds, thousands and “darknesses” to which they were attached. According to the codes of Genghis Khan, they did not have the right to transfer from one owner or boss to another. Unauthorized crossing or flight was punishable by death.

The Mongol arats paid taxes in favor of their nobility and the supreme khan's court. During the reign of Mongke, the so-called kupchur was collected from them in the amount of 1 head of cattle per 100 heads of animals. Kupchur was paid by peasants, as well as artisans and townspeople. In addition, the agricultural population paid a land tax - kharaj and other taxes and fees. Villagers paid, in particular, a special tax in kind (tagar) for the maintenance of the Mongol army. They were also required to maintain postal stations (pits). The collection of numerous taxes was aggravated by a predatory tax farming system that ruined a lot of farmers and cattle breeders.

At the beginning of the 14th century. The importance of the Chagataid family in Central Asia and Semirechye grew rapidly. The Chagataid rulers sought to centralize power and further rapprochement with the settled nobility of Transoxiana. Kebek Khan (1318-1326) tried to restore city life and establish agriculture and trade. He carried out a monetary reform, which copied a similar reform of the Hulaguid ruler of Iran, Ghazan Khan. The silver coin he introduced into circulation in 1321 became known as “quebecs”. In violation of the ancient traditions of the nomadic Mongols, Kebek Khan rebuilt the river in the valley. Kashkadarya Palace (Mongolian: Karshi), around which the city of Karshi grew. These innovations met with stubborn resistance from the backward patriarchal strata of the Mongol aristocracy. Therefore, Kebek Khan's reforms were generally limited.

Under Kebek Khan's brother and successor, Tarmashirin (1326-1334), the next step towards rapprochement with the local nobility was taken - the proclamation of Islam as the official religion. Tarmashirin fell victim to the nomadic Mongols, who adhered to patriarchal traditions and pagan beliefs.

In the late 40s - 50s of the XIV century. The Chagatai ulus broke up into a number of independent feudal estates. The western regions of the state were divided between the leaders of the Turkic-Mongolian tribes (Barlas, Dzhelairs, Arlats, Kauchins). The northeastern territories of the Chagatai ulus became isolated in the 40s of the 14th century. into the independent state of Mogulistan. It included the lands of Eastern Turkestan, the steppes of the Irtysh and Balkhash regions. In the west, the borders of this state reached the middle reaches of the Syradya and the Tashkent oasis, in the south - the Fergana Valley, and in the east - Kashgar and Turfan.

The main population of Mogulistan consisted of a pastoral population - descendants of mixed Turkic-Mongol tribes. Among them were Kanglys, Kereits, Arlats, Barlases, Duglats, from whose midst the local khan family came. In 1348, the nobility of the eastern regions of the Chagatai ulus elected Togluk-Timur as the supreme khan. Relying on the top of the Duglats and other clans, he subjugated Semirechye and part of Eastern Turkestan. Togluk-Timur converted to Islam, enlisted the support of the Muslim clergy and began the struggle for the possession of Transoxiana. In 1360, he invaded the Syr Darya valley from Semirechye, but disagreements between the military leaders interrupted his further advance into the depths of the Central Asian Mesopotamia. In the early spring of the next year, Togluk-Timur again set out on a campaign against Transoxiana, where Timur, who had previously received the city of Kesh (Shakhrisabz) as an inheritance from Togluk-Timur, went over to the side of the Mongols. The Moghulistan army occupied Samarkand and advanced south to the Hindu Kush mountain ranges. However, Togluk Timur's power in Transoxiana was short-lived. Soon he returned to Mogulistan, which was used by local nomadic leaders to overthrow his son, Ilyas-Khoja, who was left in the region as a governor. Timur also opposed him in alliance with the Chagataid ruler of Balkh, Emir Hussein. Ilyas-Khoja fled to Mogulistan, where unrest began after the death of Togluk-Timur.

In 1365, Ilyas-Khoja attacked Transoxiana and defeated Hussein and his ally Timur in a battle on the banks of the Syr Darya. Having plundered the cities and villages of Tashkent and other oases, the Moghulistan army headed towards Samarkand. Ilyas-Khoja was unable to capture the city; its defense was organized by the residents themselves, led by the Serbedars. Ilyas-Khoja was forced to go back to Semirechye.

There is hardly a person who does not know that for almost three centuries Rus' was under the yoke of the Golden Horde. But, apparently, not everyone knows that by 1236, the year of the invasion of Rus', and later Eastern Europe, the Mongols had already conquered China and most of Asia, representing a well-trained and uniquely organized military force with colossal experience of victorious battles.

With this material we open a series dedicated to the great conquests of the Mongol Empire, which radically changed the fate of many peoples of medieval Asia and Europe. After all, the Mongols conquered and devastated all regions of the globe known to them, including part of Western Europe. And they owed their victories largely to the military and political genius of an illiterate tribal leader who became one of the greatest commanders in the world.

Khan of Khans

From birth his name was Temujin. But this man went down in history under the name Genghis Khan, which he appropriated to himself only at the age of 51. Neither his true image nor his height and build have reached us. We don’t know whether he shouted orders that changed the lives of entire nations, or muttered, making the thousands of troops lined up in front of him tremble... But we still know something about his life.

Temujin was born in 1155 on the banks of the Onon River. His father Yessugai-bagatur was a wealthy noyon from the Borjigin clan of the Taichjiut tribe. In a campaign against the Mongol “Tatars”, he killed the Tatar Khan Temujin with his own hand. And when he returned home, he learned that his wife had given birth to a son. While examining the baby, Yessugai discovered a blood clot on his palm and decided to name it after the killed enemy, Temuchin. The superstitious Mongols took this as a sign that foreshadowed a powerful and cruel ruler.

When Yessugai-bagatur died, Temuchin was only 12. After some time, the ulus created by his father in the valley of the Onon River disintegrated. But it was from this time that Temujin’s ascent to the heights of power began. He recruited a gang of daredevils and took up robbery and raids on neighboring tribes. These raids were so successful that by the age of 50 he had already managed to subjugate vast territories - all of eastern and western Mongolia. The turning point for Temujin was the year 1206, when at the Great Kurultai he was elected Khan of Khans - ruler of all Mongolia. It was then that he received the formidable name Genghis Khan, which means “lord of the strong.” The great warrior, “Jeganhir” - a man born under lucky stars, devoted the rest of his life, being an elderly man by the standards of those times, to one goal - mastering the world.

In the hearts of his descendants, he remained a wise ruler, a brilliant strategist and a great lawmaker. Mongol warriors - the sons and grandsons of Genghis Khan, who continued the conquest of the Celestial Empire after his death - lived for centuries by the science of conquering him. And his collection of laws “Yasy” remained for a long time the legal basis of the nomadic peoples of Asia, competing with the norms of Buddhism and the Koran.

Neither before nor after Genghis Khan did the Mongols have such a powerful and such a despotic ruler, capable of directing the energy of his fellow tribesmen, tireless in battle and robbery, to the conquest of stronger and richer peoples and states.

By the age of 72, he had conquered almost all of Asia, but never managed to achieve his main goal: to reach the Western Sea “land of decline” and conquer “cowardly Europe.”

Genghis Khan died on the campaign, according to one version, from a poisoned arrow, according to another, from a blow when falling from a horse. The place where Khan Khanov was buried remained a mystery. According to legend, the last words of the Great Warrior were: “The highest pleasure lies in victory: to defeat your enemies, pursue them, deprive them of their property, make those who love them weep, ride their horses, hug their daughters and wives.”

"Mongols" or "Tatars"

The origins of the Mongols still remain a mystery. They are considered the oldest population of Central Asia, believing that the Huns (or Huns), mentioned by the Chinese three centuries BC, were... Mongols, or rather, their direct and immediate ancestors. Over the course of many centuries, the names of the tribes inhabiting the Mongolian Highlands changed, but the ethnic essence of the peoples did not change. Even regarding the name itself, “Mongols,” historians do not fully agree. Some argue that under the name “Mengu” or “Monguli” these tribes were known to the Chinese since the 10th century. Others clarify that only by the beginning of the 11th century most of what is now Mongolia was occupied by Mongol-speaking tribes. But, most likely, before the beginning of the 13th century, such a concept as “Mongols” was not known at all. There is an opinion that the name “Mongols” was adopted after the emergence of a unified Mongol state under Genghis Khan in 1206–1227. The Mongols did not have their own written language until the 13th century. Only among the Naimans (the most culturally developed of the Mongolian tribes) were Uyghur writings in use. By the beginning of the 13th century, the bulk of the population professed shamanism. They worshiped the “Eternal Blue Sky”, the Earth, and also the spirits of their ancestors as the main deity. At the beginning of the 11th century, the noble elite of the Kerait tribe adopted Nestorian Christianity, and both Christianity and Buddhism were widespread among the Naiman. Both of these religions entered Mongolia through the Uyghurs.

Persian, Arab, Armenian, Georgian and Russian chroniclers until the 60s of the 13th century called all Mongols “Tatars”; the same name could be found in Chinese chronicles starting from the 12th century. By the way, the concept of “Tatars” corresponded to the European concept of “barbarians”. Although the Mongols themselves never called themselves that. For one of the tribes that served on the border of Mongolia and China, the name “Tatars” was assigned historically. They were constantly at odds with the Mongols and probably even poisoned Genghis Khan's father Yessugai. In turn, Genghis Khan, having come to power, exterminated them without exception. But this did not stop the stubborn Chinese from still calling the Mongols “Tatars.” It was from China that this name later penetrated into Europe.

As for the commonly used “Mongol-Tatar” hybrid, it arose already in the 19th century. Although there were no Tatars in the troops of Genghis Khan, or later Batu. Modern Tatars have nothing to do with the people who lived in the 13th century on the border of Mongolia with China.

Hike to Asia

The word "horde", meaning a Mongol tribe or army, became synonymous with a myriad of warriors. Europeans of the 13th and 14th centuries imagined the Mongol army as huge, undisciplined crowds; they simply could not believe that they were defeated by a much smaller, but better organized army. Meanwhile, Genghis Khan's army was indeed small. But his warriors had been trained in the art of war since childhood in a cruel school in the Gobi Desert, and were incredibly resilient and resilient.

The Great Mongol Empire began with the conquest of China. 20 years later, the Mongols appeared off the banks of the Volga. Before coming to Europe, they conquered Bukhara, Samarkand, reached the Caspian Sea, devastated the territory of modern Punjab and only, guided by certain “diplomatic considerations,” temporarily postponed the invasion of India. Mongol troops visited Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in 1222 inflicted a crushing defeat on a large Georgian army assembled for the Fifth Crusade. They captured Astrakhan, Crimea, and stormed the Genoese fortress of Sudak.

In addition to Rus', Eastern and Southern Europe, the Mongols conquered Tibet, invaded Japan, Burma and the island of Java. Their troops were not only land forces: in 1279, in the Gulf of Canton, Mongol ships defeated the fleet of the Chinese Song Empire. Five years earlier, 40,000 Mongol warriors in 900 ships invaded Japan, capturing the islands of Tsushima, Iki and part of Kyushu. The Japanese army was almost defeated, but against all odds, the attacking fleet was sunk by a typhoon... But two years later, history repeated itself exactly. Having lost 107,000 soldiers, the remnants of the army of commander Kublai were forced to retreat to previously conquered Korea. By the way, the origin of the word “kamikaze” is connected with the Mongol invasion of Japan; this is how Japanese historians called the “divine wind” - a typhoon that destroyed enemy ships.

Mongols in the 13th century

11901206 Unification of Mongolia under the rule of Genghis Khan
1206 At the kurultai, Temujin was proclaimed Emperor of Mongolia and given a new name Genghis Khan
1211 The beginning of Genghis Khan's first Chinese campaign. Approaching the well-fortified northern Chinese fortified cities and discovering his inability to conduct a siege, Genghis Khan was discouraged
1212 Conquest of the environs of Yanjing
1213 Genghis Khan creates a siege train and conquers the kingdom of Jin to the Wall of China
1214 Emperor Jin signs a peace treaty with Genghis Khan and marries his daughter to him.
1215 Genghis Khan besieged, took and plundered Yanjing (Beijing). Emperor Jin recognizes the rule of the Mongol conqueror.
1218 For the first time, the laws of the Mongol Empire were systematized and recorded (“Great Yases”)
1223 Death of Mukhali, commander of troops in China
1225 × 1226 The final version of the Code of Laws “Yasy” was approved
August 1227 Death of Genghis Khan
1234 × 1279 War of the Mongol-Tatars with the Song Empire
1252 × 1253 Capture of the Mongol-Tatars under the command of Mongke Yunnan, which belonged to Nanzhao, vassals of the Song Empire
1253 Mongke's brother Kublai launched the Chinese campaign: a strong army group under the personal leadership of Kublai blocked the center of the Song Empire
1257 1259 The campaign against the Song was led by Mongke. Decisive victories of the Mongol-Tatars. The Song was saved from final defeat by Mongke's sudden death from dysentery and the subsequent dynastic disputes in Mongolia.
1259 × 1268 The revived Song Dynasty puts up stubborn resistance to the Mongol-Tatars
1276 The fall of the Song capital of Hangzhou. Final capture of the Song by the Mongol-Tatars
1279 Kublai Khan establishes the Yuan dynasty
1279 × 1368
1296 The “Great Yases” laws of the Mongol Empire were promulgated

Conquest of China

Having encountered fortified northern Chinese fortified cities on his way and discovering a complete inability to conduct a siege, Genghis Khan was initially discouraged. But gradually he managed to expand his military experience and, having created the much-needed siege train, conquered the territory of the Jin kingdom to the Chinese Wall...

With three armies, he marched into the heart of the Jin kingdom between the Wall of China and the Yellow River. He completely defeated the enemy troops and captured many cities. And finally, in 1215, he besieged, took and plundered Yanjing.

At the beginning of the 13th century, China was divided into two states: northern Jin (“Golden Kingdom”) and southern Song. The Mongol khans had long-standing scores to settle with the Jin power: the Jin emperor in every possible way set envious and greedy nomadic neighbors against the Mongols, moreover, the Jin people captured one of the Mongol khans, Ambagai, and put him to painful execution. The Mongols harbored a thirst for revenge... The enemy was strong. The Chinese army far outnumbered the Mongol army, their soldiers were highly trained, and their cities were well fortified.

Genghis Khan understood that it was necessary to carefully and comprehensively prepare for a big war. In order to lull the enemy's vigilance, the Mongols established “trade ties” with the Jin Empire. Needless to say, most of the Mongol "traders" were simply spies.

In the eyes of the Mongols, Genghis Khan tried to give the future campaign against the “Golden Kingdom” a special character. “Eternal Blue Sky” will lead troops to avenge the grievances caused to the Mongols,” he said.

In the spring of 1211, the Mongol army set out on a campaign. She had to travel about 800 kilometers to the Great Wall of China. A significant part of this route ran through the eastern territory of the Gobi Desert, where in those days it was still possible to find water and food for horses. Numerous herds of cattle were brought after the army as food.

Genghis Khan was accompanied on the campaign by four sons: Jochi, Chagatai, Ogedei and Tuluy. The three eldest occupied command posts in the army, and the youngest was under his father, who directly commanded the center of the army, which consisted of 100,000 of the best Mongol warriors.

In addition to outdated war chariots with a harness of 20 horses, the Jin army had serious military weapons for those times: stone throwers, large crossbows, each of which required the strength of ten people to pull the bowstring, as well as catapults, each of which was operated with the help of 200 people.

The exact time of the appearance of gunpowder weapons is unknown. The Chinese used explosives as early as the 9th century. Perhaps the world's first gunpowder weapon was the Chinese bamboo musket, which appeared in 1132. It is known that in the wars with the Mongols, the Chinese developed the first combat missiles...

The Jin people used gunpowder both to construct landmines that were ignited by a drive, and to charge cast iron grenades that were thrown at the enemy using special catapults.

The Mongol commanders had to act far from sources of replenishment of supplies, in an enemy country, against superior forces, which, moreover, could quickly make up for losses.

But a huge advantage of the Mongols was their excellent awareness of both the enemy army and the country, achieved thanks to intelligence. Moreover, reconnaissance was not interrupted during military operations. Its main goal was to identify the most convenient site for capturing the Great Wall of China.

Genghis Khan successfully attacked the outer wall in a weakly defended area, 200 kilometers west of the shortest route. But the Mongols met the greatest resistance after they had already passed the outer wall.

In the first major battle after crossing the wall, the talented Mongol commander Jebe inflicted a heavy defeat on the Jin people, going to their rear. It was then that it became clear that the Mongols were familiar with the terrain almost better than the enemy. Meanwhile, the senior princes, who received from their father the task of capturing the cities in the north of Shanxi province in the bend of the Yellow River, completed it successfully.

Thus, within just a few months, having broken the resistance of the enemy army and captured vast territories with a dozen fortified cities, the Mongols approached the “Middle Capital” of the state of Jin Yanjing. It was located near present-day Beijing and was the largest city in Asia. Its population was slightly inferior in size to the population of the current Chinese capital, and its huge towers and high walls could rival in their power any city in the world.

The panic sown by the Mongol troops in the suburbs of the capital greatly alarmed the emperor. All men capable of bearing arms were forcibly taken into military service, and not a single person was allowed to leave the city on pain of death...

Genghis Khan understood that he was unlikely to be able to defeat this stronghold using primitive siege weapons. Therefore, not risking storming the city, in the fall of 1211 he withdrew the army back behind the Great Wall. Then, providing the most favorable conditions for service, and sometimes resorting to force, Genghis Khan created his own engineering corps, no less effective than in the armies of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. In 1212, Yanjing and a dozen of the strongest cities still continued to hold out. The Mongols took less fortified fortresses either by open force or by resorting to cunning. Sometimes, for example, they pretended to flee from under the walls, leaving a convoy with property. If the trick was successful, the Chinese garrison decided to launch a sortie and was subjected to a surprise attack...

In one of the battles near the walls of Yanjing, Genghis Khan was seriously wounded in the leg by an arrow. His army was forced to lift the blockade of the capital and retreat behind the Great Wall again.

In 1214, the Mongols again invaded the Jin borders. But this time they acted according to a new scheme. Approaching fortified cities, they drove local peasants in front of them as human shields. The discouraged Chinese did not dare to shoot at their own people, and as a result they surrendered the city.

Genghis Khan ordered the destruction of many captured northern Chinese cities so that “the Mongol horses could never stumble in the place where the fortress walls stood.” But in the same year, 1214, the Mongol army had to face a new and much more terrible enemy - a pestilence that began to mercilessly mow down its ranks. The Chinese did not dare to attack even such an exhausted army. Moreover, the emperor offered Genghis Khan a large ransom and a princess of the imperial house as his wife. He agreed, and the Mongol army, fairly burdened with untold riches, was drawn back to its native land.

Genghis Khan returned to the capital Karakorum, leaving the commander Mukhali as his viceroy in the conquered regions, giving him the title “Guo-wan”, which in Chinese means “senior”, “venerable”, “sovereign of the district”, and instructing him to complete the conquest of the “Golden Kingdom" by the forces of a small detachment left under the command of Mukhali... Very little time passed, and in 1215 Genghis Khan again moved to the kingdom of Jin with three armies. Having completely defeated the enemy's ground forces, he besieged, captured and plundered Yanjing. Then Emperor Jin was forced to recognize the rule of the Mongol conqueror.

China In the 13th century

1348 The beginning of the uprisings in China
1356 × 1368
1356 × 1366
1368
1368 1644 Ming Dynasty in China
1368 × 1388
1372
1381
1388
1233
1234
1234 × 1279
1263
1268 × 1276
1276

China In the 14th century

1348 The beginning of the uprisings in China
1356 × 1368 Popular uprising in China led by Zhu Yuan-chang. Directed against Mongol rule in China
1356 × 1366 Civil strife between the rebels. Zhu Yuan-chang becomes the sole leader of the rebels
1368 Flight of Togan-Timur to the steppe from Beijing. Founding of the Ming Dynasty in China
1368 1644 Ming Dynasty in China
1368 × 1388 War of the Ming Empire with the Mongols
1372 General Su Da's campaign against the Mongols. Destruction of Karakorum, the capital of the Mongols
1381 Fall of the last Mongol possession in China Yunnan
1388 The Ming defeated the Mongols at the Battle of the Kerulen River
1233 Subudai captured the Jin capital of Kaifeng. For the first time, the Mongols did not completely destroy the city. The merit of Yelu Chutsai, Khitan, advisor to Genghis Khan
1234 Attempt by the Song to divide the Jin with the Mongols. Ogedei refused partition. Song attempt to capture former Jin Province Henan. Beginning of the Mongol-Song War
1234 × 1279 War of the Mongols with the Song Empire
1263 Proclamation of Beijing as the capital of the Mongol Empire
1268 × 1276 Kublai Khan personally led the campaign against Song
1276 The fall of the Song capital of Hangzhou. Final capture of the Song by the Mongols
1279 Kublai Khan establishes the Yuan dynasty
1279 × 1368 Reign of the Yuan Dynasty in China
1290 Census in China. It amounted to about 59 million people

Facing West

For the next half century, the Mongols continued to war in China. In the end, they managed to conquer not only the northern Jin Empire, but also the southern Song. In 1263, the official capital of the vast Mongol state was moved from Karakorum to Beijing.

By 1279, the conquest of China was complete and it became part of the vast Mongol Empire. Kublai Khan, the first Mongol ruler of China, founded the ruling Yuan dynasty there. Even in its name, the Mongols did not fail to emphasize the universal nature of their power: “yuan” in Chinese means “the source of the universe.”

The Mongols, who imposed their own rules in China, despised both the Chinese way of life and their learning. They even abolished the traditional examinations for entry into the civil service, which now accepted almost only Mongols. The Chinese were forbidden to move at night, hold meetings, or study foreign languages ​​and military affairs. As a result, numerous uprisings broke out here and there, and famine occurred. The Mongols won, but only temporarily. And it was in China that they absorbed many of the achievements of a rich and highly developed civilization, which they later used to conquer other peoples. During their reign, the Mongols never managed to destroy the Chinese state, although the pro-Mongol Yuan dynasty ruled in China for just over 150 years. The Chinese not only managed to free themselves from Mongol oppression, but also destroyed the capital of the invaders. The power of the new, truly Chinese Ming dynasty both on land and at sea became undeniable. Even distant Ceylon began to pay tribute to China. The Mongols were never able to regain their former influence in the East.

Now their main interests are concentrated in the West, namely in Europe...

The wars of the Mongol khans, aimed first at creating a world empire, and subsequently, after the collapse of the unified Mongol state, at expanding and retaining the territory of the Mongol states formed in various regions of the world.

At the beginning of the 13th century, the tribes of modern Mongolia were united by Genghis Khan (Temukhin) into a single state. In 1206, the kurultai (council of khans) proclaimed Temujin Genghis Khan (ruler of the strong).

The Mongols were nomadic pastoralists. Almost the entire adult population were not only shepherds, but also warriors and horsemen. All Mongols were personally free. They made up an army of up to 120 thousand people. The light and heavy Mongol cavalry was supplemented by infantry, recruited from conquered and allied peoples. Every 10 Mongol tents had to field from 1 to 3 warriors. Several families of 10 wagons each had to field 10 warriors. The soldiers did not receive salaries, but lived solely off the spoils. The army was divided into tens, hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands (tumens). The main weapon of the Mongols was a bow, each of which had several quivers of arrows. The warriors also had spears with iron hooks, which could be used to pull enemy riders off their horses, curved sabers, leather helmets (for the nobility - iron), lassos and light long pikes.

Between 1194 and 1206, the Mongols conquered Manchuria, northern China, and southern Siberia. In 1206, 1207 and 1209, the Mongols fought the Tangut Kingdom in Northwestern China. In 1211, Genghis Khan began a war with China and in 1215 took Beijing by storm and sacked it.

In 1218, the kurultai decided to go to war with Khorezm, the largest state in Central Asia. On the way to Khorezm, a 20,000-strong detachment under the command of Jebe conquered the Kara-Chinese Empire. Another detachment of the Mongol army headed to the Khorezm city of Otrar near the Syr Darya River. The Khorezm Sultan (Khorezmshah) Muhammad came out to meet this detachment with a strong army. A battle took place north of Samarkand, which did not lead to decisive results. The Mongols defeated the left wing and center of the enemy, but their left wing, in turn, was defeated by the right wing of the Khorezmians, led by the son of the Sultan Jelal-ed-Din.

As darkness fell, both armies withdrew from the battlefield. Muhammad returned to Bukhara, and the Mongols returned to meet the army of Genghis Khan, which set out on a campaign at the end of 1218. Muhammad did not dare to engage in battle with the main forces of the Mongols and retreated to Samarkand, leaving strong garrisons in a number of fortresses. Genghis Khan with the bulk of the army moved to Bukhara, sending his son Jochi to the Seyhun River and the city of Jendu, and two other sons, Chagatai and Oktai, to Otrar.

In March 1220, Bukhara was taken and plundered, and the 20,000-strong garrison was almost completely killed. The same fate befell Samarkand with its 40,000-strong garrison. Muhammad's army gradually fled. Its remnants retreated to Iran. On May 24, 1220, a 30,000-strong Mongol corps under the command of Jebe and Subede cut off the retreat routes of the Khorezm army, occupying Nishapur on May 24. Muhammad's 30,000-strong army dispersed without taking the fight.

Meanwhile, Jochi, after a seven-month siege, occupied the Khorezm capital of Urgench. Historians claim that the Mongols destroyed 2,400 thousand inhabitants of the city, but this figure is exaggerated to the point of absurdity: it is unlikely that the entire population of the cities of Khorezm much exceeded this value.

Genghis Khan's army took Balkh and Talekan. Genghis Khan's son Tului besieged Merv for six months, which he took in April 1221 with the help of 3 thousand ballistas, 300 catapults, 700 vehicles for throwing oil bombs and 4 thousand assault ladders.

Soon after the fall of Merv, Muhammad died, and his son Jalal-ed-Din continued the fight against the Mongols. He managed to gather a large army and defeat a 30,000-strong detachment of Mongols near Kabul. Genghis Khan moved against Jalal-ed-Din with his main forces. On December 9, 1221, a battle took place between them on the banks of the Indus River. The Mongols defeated the flanks of the Khorezmians and pressed their center to the Indus. Jalal-ed-Din with four thousand surviving soldiers escaped by swimming.

In subsequent years, the Mongols completed the conquest of Khorezm and invaded Tibet. In 1225, Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia with rich booty.

The Subede (Subedea) detachment, having passed through Northern Iran, invaded the Caucasus in 1222, defeated the army of the Georgian king, took Derbent and entered the Polovtsian steppes through the Shirvan Gorge. The Mongols defeated the army of the Cumans, Lezgins, Circassians and Alans, and at the beginning of 1223 they raided the Crimea, where they captured Surozh (Sudak). In the spring they returned to the Polovtsian steppes and drove the Polovtsians to the Dnieper.

The Polovtsian Khan Kotyan asked his son-in-law, the Galician Prince Mstislav, for help. He gathered a council of southern Russian princes in Kyiv, at which it was decided to field a united army against the Mongols. Together with the Polovtsians, it concentrated on the right bank of the Dnieper near Oleshya.

Princes Daniil Volynsky and Mstislav Galitsky with a thousand horsemen crossed the Dnieper and defeated the advance detachment of the Mongols. However, this success destroyed the Russian-Polovtsian army. Without a clear idea of ​​​​the enemy’s forces, it moved across the Dnieper into the Polovtsian steppes.

Nine days later, the Allies approached the Kalka (Kalets) River. Here the rivalry between the two most powerful princes manifested itself - Mstislav of Kyiv and Mstislav of Galicia. The Kiev prince proposed to defend on the right bank of the Kalka, and the Galician prince, along with most other princes and the Polovtsians, crossed the river on May 31, 1223. The advance detachment of Daniil of Volyn and the Polovtsian commander Yarun suddenly came across the main forces of Subede and was put to flight. The fugitives mixed the ranks of Mstislav Galitsky's squad. Following them, the Mongol cavalry burst into the location of the main forces of the Russian army. The Russian squads fled in disarray beyond Kalka and further to the Dnieper. Only Mstislav Galitsky and Daniil Volynsky with the remnants of their squads managed to escape. Six princes, including Mstislav of Chernigov, died.

The Mongols besieged the camp of Mstislav of Kyiv. His squad managed to repel several attacks. Then Subede promised to let Mstislav and his soldiers go home for a ransom. However, when the Russians left the camp, the Mongols captured them, and Mstislav of Kyiv and two princes allied to him were executed with a terrible death. Planks were laid on the unfortunates, and feasting Mongol military leaders sat on them.

The defeat of the Russian troops was caused by disagreements between the Russian princes and the higher combat effectiveness of the Mongol light cavalry. In addition, the army of Subede and Jebe had the opportunity to beat the enemy in parts. The Mongol army in the Battle of Kalka numbered up to 30 thousand people. There is no data on the size of the Russian-Polovtsian army, but it was probably approximately equal to the Mongolian one.

After the victory at Kalka, Jebe and Subede moved to the middle Volga. Here the Mongols were unable to break the resistance of the Volga Bulgars and returned to Asia along the Caspian steppes, where in 1225 they united with the army of Genghis Khan.

In 1227, Genghis Khan and his eldest son Jochi died. The second son of Genghis Khan, Ogedei (Oktay), became the Great Khan. After the death of Genghis Khan, the Mongol Empire was divided between his sons into four khanates. The Great Khan himself ruled in the Eastern Khanate, which included Mongolia, northern China, Manchuria and part of India. His brother Jaghatai received Central Asia and the upper reaches of the Ob and Irtysh. The Ulus of Jochi, which included a vast territory from northern Turkestan to the lower reaches of the Danube, was headed by his son Batu (Batu). The Persian Khanate, which included Persia proper and Afghanistan, was headed by Hulagu.

In 1234, the conquest of the Jurchen state of Jin in Northeast China was completed. In this war, they were short-sightedly assisted by the troops of the southern Chinese state of Song, which soon itself became a victim of Mongol aggression. In 1235, Oktay convened a kurultai, at which it was decided to undertake campaigns in Korea, South China, India and Europe. The campaign against European countries was led by Jochi's son Batu (Batu) and Subede.

In February 1236, they concentrated an army in the upper reaches of the Irtysh and headed towards the middle Volga. Here the Mongols conquered the state of the Volga Bulgars, and then moved to Rus'. In the same year, the conquest of Armenia and Georgia, weakened by the war with the Khorezmshah Jalal-ed-Din, who captured and plundered Tbilisi in 1226, was completed.

In 1237, the Mongol army invaded the Ryazan principality. The Tatars (as the Mongols were called in Rus') defeated the advance detachment of the Ryazanians on the Voronezh River. The Ryazan prince and his vassals, the princes of Murom and Pronsky, turned to the Grand Duke of Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich for help, but his army did not have time to prevent the fall of Ryazan. The city was taken on December 25 after a 9-day siege. The small Ryazan squad could not resist the more than 60 thousand Mongol army.

Batu moved through Kolomna to Moscow. Near Kolomna, the Mongols defeated the army of the Vladimir prince (the prince himself and his squad were not in his ranks). Batu burned Moscow and went to Vladimir. On February 7, 1238, the city was taken after a four-day siege.

Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich tried to gather the forces of the northeastern Russian principalities. He stood with his army on the City River, not far from the fork in the roads to Novgorod and Beloozersk. On March 4, 1238, the Mongols suddenly appeared, passing through Tver and Yaroslavl, and struck the flank of the army of the Vladimir prince. Yuri Vladimirovich was killed, and his army was scattered.

The further path of the Mongols lay towards Novgorod. Batu's army took Torzhok. But at the Ignach Krest tract, 200 km from Novgorod, the Mongol army unexpectedly turned back. The reasons for this turn are not entirely clear today.

In the winter of 1239, Batu's army began a large campaign in Southwestern Rus' and Central Europe. From the Polovtsian steppes the Mongols advanced to Chernigov, which was taken and burned without much difficulty. Then Batu headed towards Kyiv. The Kyiv princes, who fought for the grand-ducal throne, left the city, taking away their squads. The city was defended by a small detachment led by Dmitry Tysyatsky with the support of the city militia. Using siege weapons, the Mongols destroyed the walls. In 1240 Kyiv fell.

In January 1241, Batu divided his army into three detachments. One detachment invaded Poland, another - Silesia and Moravia, a third - Hungary and Transylvania. The first two detachments took Sandomierz together and then split up. One took Łęczyca, and the other defeated the Polish army at Szydłowice on March 18, 1241, and then unsuccessfully besieged Breslau. Near Liegnitz, both detachments united again and were able to defeat the combined army of German and Polish knights. This battle took place on April 9 near the village of Wallstedt.

The Mongols then moved into Moravia. Here, the Bohemian boyar Yaroslav managed to defeat the detachment of the Mongol military leader Peta at Olmutz. In the Czech Republic, the Mongols were met by the combined troops of the Czech king and the dukes of Austria and Carinthia. Petya had to retreat.

The main forces of the Mongols, led by Batu, advanced in Hungary. On March 12, 1241, they managed to defeat the Hungarian detachments defending the Carpathian passes near the cities of Ungvar and Munkacs. King Béla IV of Hungary was in Pest with his army. Meanwhile, detachments of Mongols from all over Europe flocked to Hungary, since there was plenty of grass for their horses on the Hungarian Plain. At the end of June, Subede's detachment from Poland and Peta's detachment from Moravia arrived here. On March 16, 1241, the Mongol vanguards appeared near Pest. Here they were opposed by a united army of Hungarians, Croats, Austrians and French knights. Batu besieged Pest for two months, but did not dare to storm the strong fortress, defended by a large garrison, and retreated from the city.

The Hungarians and their allies pursued the Mongols for 6 days and reached the Shayo River. At night, the Mongol army suddenly crossed the river, pushing back the Hungarian detachment guarding the bridge. In the morning, the allies saw a large mass of Mongol cavalry on the coastal hills. The knights attacked the Mongols, but were repelled by horse archers backed up by stone-throwing machines. One of the Hungarian detachments was lured into ravines by a feigned retreat and destroyed there. Then the Mongols surrounded the camp of the allied troops and began to fire at it. King Bela's army began to retreat to the Danube. The Mongols organized a parallel pursuit. The Hungarians and their allies suffered heavy losses. The Mongols destroyed lagging units and single knights. On the shoulders of the retreating troops of Batu burst into Pest. The Mongols pursued the remnants of the Hungarian army in Croatia and Dalmatia.

King Bela took refuge on one of the islands near the Adriatic coast. The Mongols were unable to take the heavily fortified ports of Split and Dubrovnik and turned back. Batu, at the head of the bulk of the army, returned to the lower reaches of the Volga along the Danube valley and the Black Sea coast. The formal reason for the return was the need to take part in the kurultai, convened after the death of the Great Khan Udegey (he died on November 11, 1241). However, the real reason was the inability to maintain conquests in Central and Eastern Europe. Batu failed to take many fortresses and defeat the main forces of the European sovereigns, who were able to unite in the face of the Mongol danger. In the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, this was easier to do, since here the population density was much higher than in Rus', and, accordingly, the troops of individual feudal rulers needed to travel much shorter distances to connect with each other. In addition, in Southwestern Europe there were strong stone fortresses that the Mongols were unable to take. In Rus', most of the fortresses were wooden and, with rare exceptions, like Kozelsk, Batu’s army did not spend much time besieging them.

In 1243, Mongol troops, whose allies were Georgians and Armenians, defeated the army of the Seljuk Turks led by the Rum Sultan. In 1245, the Mongols reached Damascus, and in 1258 they captured Baghdad. In the territory from the Caucasus to Syria, Hulagu was created in 1256 by the Mongol a state virtually independent of Karakorum.

In 1235, Mongol raids began on the Song state. In 1251, when Mongke became Great Khan of the Mongols, military operations in southern China intensified. In 1252-1253, the neighboring Song state of Nanzhao was conquered on the territory of modern Yunnan Province. In 1257, Mongol troops occupied North Vietnam and the following year launched an attack on the Chinese city of Changsha, which was approached from the north by the army of the future great Khan Kublai Khan. But it was not possible to take Changsha, and the siege had to be lifted in 1260. Mongke, with the main forces of the Mongols, captured the rich province of Sichuan in the spring of 1258. The following year, he besieged the city of Hezhou, but died suddenly during the siege. On May 5, 1260, Kublai Kublai was proclaimed Great Khan, but the Hulaguids and the Golden Horde did not recognize his suzerainty. During the subsequent civil war, the united Mongol state actually disintegrated, although the rivals formally recognized the supremacy of Kublai Kublai. He retained control over Mongolia and Northern and Central China. Civil strife distracted the Mongols from the war with the Sunami. Only in 1267 did Kublai resume his raids on southern China, and at the end of 1271 he proclaimed himself emperor of the new Chinese Yuan dynasty.

In 1273, Mongol troops managed to capture the fortresses of Fancheng and Xianyang in Hubei Province. In January 1275, they were able to cross to the southern bank of the Yangtze River and take possession of the provinces of Anhui, Jiangsu, Jiangxi and Zhejiang. The Song infantry could not withstand the onslaught of the Mongol cavalry. On February 21, 1276, the last Sung emperor, the four-year-old boy Gong Di, abdicated the throne in favor of Kublai Kublai in the capital Ling'an, surrounded by enemies. Three years later, the resistance of the last Chinese troops in the provinces of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi was suppressed.

Kublai moved the capital of the empire to Khanbalik (Beijing). He also tried to conquer Korea, Vietnam and Burma. In 1282-1283, Mongol troops, supported by Chinese troops, captured Burma and placed garrisons in the country. The Yuan Empire maintained varying degrees of control over Burma until the 1330s. But the Mongols failed to establish long-term dominance in Vietnam. In the spring of 1287, under the onslaught of a 70,000-strong Mongol-Chinese army and a fleet of 500 ships, Vietnamese troops left Hanoi, but soon defeated the invaders and drove them out of the country. This was facilitated by the victory of the Vietnamese fleet. The Chinese fleet hastily dumped provisions into the sea and sailed to Hainan Island. The Mongol army, left without supplies, was forced to leave Indochina.

In 1292-1293 an attempt was made to conquer Java. A 20,000-strong expeditionary force arrived here on a thousand ships. He easily dealt with the troops of the Javanese princes, who were at war with each other. But the outbreak of guerrilla warfare forced the Yunan troops to retreat to the coast and then sail home with not very rich loot worth half a million copper coins. Earlier, in 1274 and 1281, naval expeditions against the Japanese islands failed due to typhoons.

In China, the Mongols made up only a small part of the population. In 1290, there were 58,835 thousand people in the Yuan Empire, of which no more than 2.5 million were Mongols. During the time of Genghis Khan, according to some estimates, there were no more than one million Mongols. The bulk of the Chinese, as well as ordinary community members - the Mongols, lived in extreme poverty. The dominant position was occupied by the Mongolian and Chinese aristocracy, which became close to it, as well as Muslim merchants - Uyghurs, Persians and Arabs. In 1351, an uprising of Chinese peasants and feudal lords, known as the “Red Turban Rebellion,” began in Northern China. At the same time, the ideological inspirer of the uprising, Han Shan-tung, was proclaimed a descendant of the emperors of the Song dynasty, and the commander of the army, Liu Fu-tung, was proclaimed a descendant of one of the Song generals. In his manifesto, Han Shan-tung stated: “I hid the jasper seal (one of the symbols of imperial power. - Author) behind the eastern sea, gathered a selected army in Japan, since poverty is extreme in Jingnan (China), and all the wealth has accumulated to the north from the Great Wall (i.e. in Mongolia - Author)."

In 1355, rebels revived the Song state. A significant part of the North Chinese feudal lords opposed the Song state and in 1357, with the support of the Mongols, created an army led by the Khitan commander Chahan Temur and the Chinese commander Li Si-ji. In 1358, when Liu Fu-tung's army besieged the Mongol capital Dadu, it was Chinese troops who saved the Mongols. But instead of Dadu, the rebels took the city of Bianliang, formerly Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin Empire, and made it their capital. However, by 1363, through the joint actions of the Mongol and those North Chinese troops that remained loyal to the Yuan dynasty, the uprising was suppressed.

In the same year, 1351, another uprising broke out in Southern China, prepared by the White Lotus secret society. They did not put forward the slogan of restoring the Song Dynasty to power, but created their own state of Tianwan in the Yangtze Valley. In 1360, one of the leaders of the uprising, Chen Yu-liang, instead of Tianwan, founded the new state of Han, which inherited the name of the ancient Chinese empire. In Central China, a rebellion broke out in 1352 near the city of Haozhou and was also led by the White Lotus Society. Among the rebels here, the former Buddhist monk Zhu Yuan-chang quickly stood out. Soon the detachment he led together with his father-in-law, the merchant Guo Tzu-hsing, already numbered 30 thousand people.

Unlike peasant detachments, Zhu Yuan-chang's army did not plunder the population, and representatives of all classes of society willingly joined it. In April 1356, the army of Zhu Yuan-chang (Guo Tzu-hsing had died by that time) captured Jiqing (Nanjing). Then she began to destroy or annex other rebel groups of Southern and Central China and oust the troops of the Mongol Yuan dynasty from there. Formally, Zhu Yuan-chang, like other participants in the uprising, recognized the emperor of the Song state, Han Ling-er, the son of Han Shan-tong, who died at the very beginning of the struggle, and received from him the title of commander-in-chief. In 1363, Zhu Yuan-chang's troops rescued Emperor Han Ling-er from Anfeng, besieged by the Mongols (Liu Fu-tong died during the siege). He moved his headquarters to the city of Chuzhou, which was under the control of Zhu Yuan-chang.

The civil strife that began among the generals of the Yuan dynasty in 1362 made the rebels' task easier. In 1367, the army of Chahan Temur and Li Si-ji was defeated by the troops of Zhu Yuan-chang. Having lost their Chinese allies, the Mongols were forced to leave China. The Mongolian Yuan dynasty in China was replaced by the Chinese Ming dynasty itself, whose first emperor in 1368 was Zhu Yuan-chang. Liberation from the Mongol yoke was a consequence of the creation of a unified Chinese state.

The 14th century was the century of decline of the Mongol states, which became increasingly fragmented and weakened militarily and economically. The Hulaguids were defeated by the Egyptian Mamluks in Syria at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 and Albistan in 1277. The new campaign of the Hulaguid Ilkhan Ghazan Khan, who converted to Islam, did not lead to the conquest of Syria. The Mamluks defeated the Mongols at Marj al-Suffar in 1303. The Ilkhan state was forced to abandon external expansion. Its fall occurred in 1353. The Hulaguid state, after an 18-year civil war, broke up into many small states with dynasties of Mongol, Turkic or Iranian origin. Most Mongols outside Mongolia and China converted to Islam in the 14th century and became close to the Turkic peoples.

In the 14th century, the Golden Horde, to which the Russian principalities were vassals, also weakened. By that time, the Mongols here mixed with the Kipchaks (Cumans). In Rus', as in the vast majority of other countries, the Mongols were called “Tatars.” In the 1350s, the power of the khans in the Golden Horde acquired a largely nominal character. Khan Birdibek could no longer hold the north of Iran and the steppe regions of Azerbaijan. After his death, the “Great Silence” began in the Golden Horde, as Russian chronicles called it: over 20 years, 20 khans emerged as contenders for the throne. During this civil strife, the temnik Mamai, married to Birdibek’s daughter, came to the fore, but did not himself belong to the Genghisids. The Golden Horde itself in 1361 actually split into two warring halves. Mamai retained control over the territories on the right bank of the Volga, and his opponents were the Mongol nobility of the capital of the Golden Horde, Sarai al-Jedida, on the left bank, where the puppet khans changed especially often.

In the same 1361, one of the richest uluses, Khorezm, was finally separated from the Golden Horde. The weakening state found it increasingly difficult to maintain control over the lands in Eastern Europe. In 1363, the Lithuanian prince Olgerd defeated the Tatar-Mongol army in the battle on the Blue Waters (a tributary of the Southern Bug). After this, the Lithuanian lands between the Dniester and the Dnieper were freed from the Golden Horde tribute.

Mamai was able to restore his control over Volga Bulgaria only in 1370, when, with the assistance of Russian troops, he installed his protege Muhammad Sultan there. During the civil wars, he captured Saray al-Jedid several times, but failed to hold it. In 1375, Khan Tokhtamysh, who came from the Kok Horde, which occupied the territory in the area of ​​the Syr Darya River, joined the struggle for the Golden Horde throne. In 1375, he captured Sarai al-Jedid and held it until 1378, when he transferred power to Prince Arabshah, who came with him from Kok-Orda.

On August 2, 1377, Arabshah (Arapsha in Russian chronicles) defeated the Russian army on the Piana River. It was commanded by the son of the Suzdal-Nizhny Novgorod prince Dmitry Konstantinovich, Prince Ivan Konstantinovich. Arapsha secretly approached the Russian camp when a mountain feast was in full swing there. Prince Ivan and his men thought that the enemy was far away, and took off their chain mail and helmets in order to properly relax. They never managed to get to the weapons lying on the carts and were almost all killed or, together with the prince, drowned in the river. After this victory, the Tatars plundered Nizhny Novgorod and the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod and Ryazan principalities.

In the winter of 1377/78, the Moscow prince Dmitry Ivanovich, the son-in-law of Dmitry Konstantinovich, made a campaign against the Mordovian princes, who were suspected of allowing Arapsha to pass through their lands to Piana. This already affected the territory subject to Mamai. In the summer of 1378, he sent an army to Rus' under the command of Murza Begich. On the territory of the Ryazan principality near the Vozha River on August 11, 1378, the army of the Moscow prince, reinforced by squads of the Pron, Ryazan and Polotsk princes, destroyed Begich’s army, and Murza himself died. After this, a clash with the main forces of Mamai became inevitable.

Historians have long noticed that the surviving sources describe the beginning of the Battle of Kulikovo in sufficient detail, but its culmination and finale are depicted in purely folkloric colors, so that it is not possible to establish the real course of events from these sources. It is not without reason that the most famous literary work of the Kulikovo cycle, “Zadonshchina,” basically repeats the more ancient epic “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” And in some ways, the course of the Battle of Kulikovo, both in chronicles and in epic tales, resembles the course of the battle that took place on the shores of Lake Peipsi between the army of Prince Alexander Nevsky and the Livonian knights. In the Battle of the Ice, a strong detachment of Russian troops also hit the enemy in the rear and caused them to flee in disarray. Then the Russians got not only rich booty, but also a considerable number of prisoners: 50 eminent knights, “deliberate commanders,” and an even larger number of less noble knights and ordinary soldiers, bollards. The number of participants in the Battle of Kulikovo was many times greater than the number of troops in the battle on Lake Peipsi. This means that the Russians should have captured not tens or hundreds of prisoners during the defeat of Mamai, but thousands. After all, Mamaev’s army included a lot of infantry, which, if defeated, had no chance of escaping from the Russian cavalry. Chronicles say that Mamai’s infantry consisted of “Besermens, and Armens, and Fryazis, Cherkasy, and Yasy, and Bourtasy.”

We will not now understand which nationalities are meant by Cherkasy, Yasy and Burtasy. In this case, we are interested in the Fryazi - the Genoese, because their participation in the battle is directly related to the further fate of the Tatar leader. As Karamzin notes, some peoples served Mamai “as subjects, others as mercenaries.” The Genoese, for example, had a long-standing treaty with the Golden Horde, according to which, in exchange for military assistance, the Genoese colonists and merchants were guaranteed the right to free trade in Crimea and personal safety. But it is difficult to imagine that both mercenaries and vassal subjects would fight for Mamai to the last drop of blood. Moreover, we remember how easily Mamaev’s army abandoned the failed commander and went over to Tokhtamysh. And what was the reason for those same Genoese to fear Russian captivity and prefer death on the battlefield to it? After all, they could well count on ransom from their rich compatriots. And what was the reason for Dmitry’s soldiers not to take prisoners? After all, they could get a considerable ransom for the prisoners or, having converted them into slaves, they could sell them on slave markets. And someone should be accepted into Russian service. However, not only chronicles and legends are silent about the prisoners, although they list in detail the booty captured from the Tatars. None of the known Russian genealogies can be traced back to people who could be considered captives of the Kulikovo field. Although the same Tatar Murzas, immigrants from the Caucasus and Genoese, both before and after 1380, often entered the Russian service, and this was reflected in the genealogies of the Russian nobility. Therefore, there were no prisoners in the Battle of Kulikovo? Why?

I think the only plausible explanation would be this. In fact, the Battle of Kulikovo took place as follows. At first, the Tatar army went on the attack and pushed back the Russian regiments. However, in the midst of the battle, Mamai received news of the appearance in his possessions of the army of Tokhtamysh, who had previously subjugated the eastern half of the Golden Horde. The chronicler of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery knows about the arrival of Tokhtamysh already at the end of September 1380. It is likely that this alarming news reached Mamaia even earlier, right on the day of the Battle of Kulikovo, September 8. If my assumption is correct, then everything falls into place. The movement of Tokhtamysh to the western, Mamaev part of the Golden Horde made the continuation of the Battle of Kulikovo meaningless for Mamai. Even a victory over the Russian army would have led to large losses for Mamaeva’s army and would have made it powerless to repel Tokhtamysh’s attack. There was no need to even think about a campaign against Rus'. Mamai saw the only way out was to withdraw the bulk of his troops from the battle as soon as possible and turn them against a formidable opponent. But getting out of the fight is not an easy task. The retreat of the main forces had to be covered by a rearguard. As such a rearguard, Mamai left all his infantry, which still had little chance of escaping Russian pursuit. And so that the infantry mercenaries would not be tempted to surrender prematurely when they realized the hopelessness of their situation, the commander gave them a fairly large detachment of cavalry. The presence of Tatar cavalry supported the illusion among the Genoese infantry that the battle was continuing according to the previous plan. The Tatars did not allow the infantry to surrender and did not surrender themselves, hoping to break through on horseback at the end of the battle. When all the infantry died, the rearguard cavalry was partly killed during the breakthrough, and partly managed to escape. That is why there were no prisoners on the Kulikovo Field.

True, for Dmitry Donskoy this victory turned out to be Pyrrhic. According to the most reliable data of the “first Russian historian” V.N. Tatishchev, the number of Russian army on the Kulikovo field was about 60 thousand people. The size of Mamai’s army can be determined based on the following considerations. In 1385, for a campaign against Tabriz, Tokhtamysh gathered an army of 90 thousand people from the entire territory of the Golden Horde. Mamai, who dominated only the western half of the state, obviously could mobilize about half as many people - up to 45 thousand soldiers. If we assume that in the Battle of Kulikovo both sides lost, say, 15 thousand, then Dmitry should have had 45 thousand soldiers left, while Tokhtamysh, who annexed Mamai’s army, had up to 75 thousand troops. That is why the khan managed to defeat the Russians and burn Moscow with relative ease two years later. In addition to the numerical superiority, it must be taken into account that the militia warriors were inferior in combat experience to the professional Horde warriors.

It was necessary to somehow explain Mamai’s miraculous retreat from the battlefield. So a legend appeared in the chronicles about an ambush regiment that supposedly decided the outcome of the Battle of Kulikovo.

But Mamai’s fate was already predetermined. The army that remained with him chose to go to the more successful Tokhtamysh. Mamai had no choice but to seek refuge in the Genoese Cafe. Here he really had to hide his name. However, Mamai’s Genoese recognized him and stabbed him to death in retaliation for the senseless death of his compatriots on the Kulikovo Field. And you shouldn’t particularly feel sorry for him. Mamai’s “evil end” was predetermined throughout his life. After all, the powerful temnik never did anything good. There was nothing in his life except predatory campaigns. Sooner or later, Mamai had to die from the sword of an opponent, from the dagger of one of his victims or offended accomplices.

In 1381, Tokhtamysh made a campaign against Iran, and in 1382 he decided to deal with Dmitry Donskoy. Khan demanded to pay tribute in the amount in which it existed before the start of the “great jam.” Having received a refusal, the Tatars invaded Russian lands and marched on Moscow. Prince Dmitry, aware of the overwhelming superiority of the enemy’s forces, did not dare to fight with Tokhtamysh in an open field or sit down with the main forces in a siege in Moscow. The victor Mamai retreated to Kostroma, maintaining a faint hope that, relying on the stone walls, the Moscow garrison would withstand the siege. But Tokhtamysh captured Moscow in just four days, either by attack or by deception. According to the chronicles, Muscovites allegedly believed the khan’s promises, supported by the assurances of the Suzdal princes who were under Tokhtamysh, that he would limit himself to only a small tribute and would not touch the city. Such naivety of Moscow residents seems completely unrealistic. In Rus' it was too well known what happens to a city where the Tatars entered. Rather, it should be assumed that the attack undertaken by Tokhtamysh, which, according to the chroniclers, was unsuccessful, actually ended in the capture of the city. The Tatars drove the defenders from the walls with a hail of arrows, and the garrison was probably too small to protect the entire perimeter of the city walls. In total, from 12 to 24 thousand people died in Moscow during the massacre carried out by the Tatars, and thousands more Muscovites were taken into slavery. Then Tokhta-mysh's army captured and plundered Vladimir, Pereyaslavl, Yuryev, Zvenigorod and Mozhaisk. On the way back to the Horde, the Tatars greatly devastated the lands of the Ryazan principality. Prince Dmitry was forced to agree to pay tribute in the same amount and went to the khan's headquarters to receive a label for the great reign.

Tokhtamysh temporarily strengthened the Golden Horde. But in 1391, Tamerlane (Timur) defeated the Golden Horde army in the battle across the Volga south of the Kama. In 1395, Tokhtamysh suffered an even more severe defeat from the “Iron Lame.” Timur's army invaded the lands of Tokhtamysh's ally, Moscow Prince Vasily I, besieged Yelets, but then turned back for an unknown reason. Vasily continued to collect Russian lands, and in the Horde, after the defeat of Tokhtamysh, civil strife arose, until at the very end of the 14th century the uluses united again under the rule of Timur’s protege Khan Shadibek. At the same time, actual power belonged to the temnik Edigei. In 1408, he made a campaign against Moscow, which stopped paying tribute after the defeat of Tokhtamysh. The Tatars did not take the capitals, having received the required ransom, but limited themselves to the destruction of Vladimir and some other cities. Then a new civil strife began in the Horde, ending with the death of Edigei in 1420. After this, the Golden Horde was no longer reborn as a single state. The Siberian, Kazan, Crimean and Astrakhan khanates and the Nogai Horde emerged from it.

The legal successor of the Golden Horde in relation to Rus' was the Great Horde, which occupied the territory between the Volga and Dniester, as well as part of the North Caucasus. The complete liberation of Rus' from Horde dependence was delayed by the internecine war between the successors of Prince Vasily I, who died in 1425. His son Vasily II, on the one hand, and the Zvenigorod-Galician prince Yuri Dmitrievich and his sons, on the other, fought for the grand-ducal table.

On July 7, 1445, the sons of the Kazan Khan Ulu-Mukhammed Mumutyak and Yegup destroyed the army of Vasily II in the battle of Suzdal. The Grand Duke himself was captured, from where he was released for a gigantic ransom at that time of 200 thousand rubles. This ransom also covered the arrears of tribute from previous years. Vasily II was forced to agree to further payment of tribute. The next year, 1446, Prince Dmitry Shemyaka, the son of Yuri Dmitrievich, captured Moscow and blinded Vasily. Later, however, Shemyaka was defeated, and Vasily II the Dark again became the Grand Duke in 1447. Civil strife in Rus' ended only with the death of Dmitry Shemyaka in 1453, from whom a synonym for judicial arbitrariness remained in the Russian language - the Shemyakin court.

During the civil strife, Rus' repeatedly became a victim of raids by various heirs of the Golden Horde. So, on July 2, 1451, the army of the Nogai prince Mazovsha burned most of Moscow, but was never able to capture the Kremlin. Soon after the end of the internecine war, the Tver, Nizhny Novgorod and Ryazan principalities recognized their dependence on Moscow.

By the end of 1477, the son of Vasily II, Ivan III, as a result of several campaigns, subjugated Novgorod the Great to Moscow. In the 1470s, he no longer paid the “exit” (tribute) to the Tatars, which caused the Khan of the Great Horde, Akhmat, to campaign against Rus' in 1480. On October 8, 1480, Akhmat’s army reached the bank of the Ugra River. On the other bank stood the army of Ivan III. The Tatars made an attempt to cross, but were repelled. However, the big battle never took place. Akhmat expected the approach of his ally - the Lithuanian prince and Polish king Casimir IV, but at that time he was forced to repel an attack on his possessions by the Crimean Khan Mengli Giray. Having stood near the Ugra until November 11 and suffering severely from frost and lack of fodder and food, the Horde army retreated home. At the beginning of 1481, Akhmat died in a battle with the Nogais.

The Mongol-Tatar yoke in Rus' was finally eliminated. This happened later than in all other countries captured by the Mongols. The reason for this delay lay in the relatively late acquisition of state unity around Moscow by Russia. The process of unification of Russian lands went in parallel with the collapse of the Golden Horde. Both of these processes reached a critical point and became irreversible only in the last quarter of the 15th century. Then the almost bloodless fall of the yoke took place

If you remove all the lies from history, this does not mean at all that only the truth will remain - as a result, there may be nothing left at all.

Stanislav Jerzy Lec

The Tatar-Mongol invasion began in 1237 with the invasion of Batu's cavalry into the Ryazan lands, and ended in 1242. The result of these events was a two-century yoke. This is what the textbooks say, but in reality the relationship between the Horde and Russia was much more complicated. In particular, the famous historian Gumilyov speaks about this. In this material we will briefly consider the issues of the invasion of the Mongol-Tatar army from the point of view of the generally accepted interpretation, and also consider controversial issues of this interpretation. Our task is not to offer fantasy on the topic of medieval society for the thousandth time, but to provide our readers with facts. And conclusions are everyone’s business.

Beginning of the invasion and background

For the first time, the troops of Rus' and the Horde met on May 31, 1223 in the battle of Kalka. The Russian troops were led by the Kiev prince Mstislav, and they were opposed by Subedey and Juba. The Russian army was not only defeated, it was actually destroyed. There are many reasons for this, but all of them are discussed in the article about the Battle of Kalka. Returning to the first invasion, it occurred in two stages:

• 1237-1238 - campaign against the eastern and northern lands of Rus'.
• 1239-1242 - a campaign against the southern lands, which led to the establishment of the yoke.

Invasion of 1237-1238

In 1236, the Mongols began another campaign against the Cumans. In this campaign they achieved great success and in the second half of 1237 they approached the borders of the Ryazan principality. The Asian cavalry was commanded by Khan Batu (Batu Khan), the grandson of Genghis Khan. He had 150 thousand people under his command. Subedey, who was familiar with the Russians from previous clashes, took part in the campaign with him.

Map of the Tatar-Mongol invasion

The invasion took place in the early winter of 1237. It is impossible to establish the exact date here, since it is unknown. Moreover, some historians say that the invasion took place not in winter, but in late autumn of the same year. With tremendous speed, the Mongol cavalry moved across the country, conquering one city after another:

• Ryazan fell at the end of December 1237. The siege lasted 6 days.
• Moscow - fell in January 1238. The siege lasted 4 days. This event was preceded by the battle of Kolomna, where Yuri Vsevolodovich and his army tried to stop the enemy, but was defeated.
• Vladimir - fell in February 1238. The siege lasted 8 days.

After the capture of Vladimir, virtually all the eastern and northern lands fell into the hands of Batu. He conquered one city after another (Tver, Yuryev, Suzdal, Pereslavl, Dmitrov). At the beginning of March, Torzhok fell, thereby opening the way for the Mongol army to the north, to Novgorod. But Batu made a different maneuver and instead of marching on Novgorod, he deployed his troops and went to storm Kozelsk. The siege lasted for 7 weeks, ending only when the Mongols resorted to cunning. They announced that they would accept the surrender of the Kozelsk garrison and release everyone alive. People believed and opened the gates of the fortress. Batu did not keep his word and gave the order to kill everyone. Thus ended the first campaign and the first invasion of the Tatar-Mongol army into Rus'.

Invasion of 1239-1242

After a break of one and a half years, in 1239 a new invasion of Rus' by the troops of Batu Khan began. This year based events took place in Pereyaslav and Chernigov. The sluggishness of Batu’s offensive is due to the fact that at that time he was actively fighting the Polovtsians, in particular in the Crimea.

Autumn 1240 Batu led his army to the walls of Kyiv. The ancient capital of Rus' could not resist for long. The city fell on December 6, 1240. Historians note the particular brutality with which the invaders behaved. Kyiv was almost completely destroyed. There is nothing left of the city.

Mongol conquests (13th century)

The Kyiv that we know today no longer has anything in common with the ancient capital (except for its geographical location). After these events, the army of invaders split:

• Some went to Vladimir-Volynsky.
• Some went to Galich.

Having captured these cities, the Mongols went on a European campaign, but it interests us little.

Consequences of the Tatar-Mongol invasion of Rus'

Historians describe the consequences of the invasion of the Asian army into Rus' unambiguously:

• The country was cut up and became completely dependent on the Golden Horde.
• Rus' began to annually pay tribute to the victors (money and people).
• The country has fallen into a stupor in terms of progress and development due to the unbearable yoke.

This list can be continued, but, in general, it all comes down to the fact that all the problems that existed in Rus' at that time were attributed to the yoke.

This is exactly what the Tatar-Mongol invasion seems to be, in short, from the point of view of official history and what we are told in textbooks. In contrast, we will consider Gumilyov’s arguments, and also ask a number of simple but very important questions for understanding the current issues and the fact that with the yoke, as with the Rus-Horde relations, everything is much more complex than is commonly said.

For example, it is absolutely incomprehensible and inexplicable how a nomadic people, who several decades ago lived in a tribal system, created a huge empire and conquered half the world. After all, when considering the invasion of Rus', we are considering only the tip of the iceberg. The Empire of the Golden Horde was much larger: from the Pacific Ocean to the Adriatic, from Vladimir to Burma. Giant countries were conquered: Rus', China, India... Neither before nor after has anyone been able to create a military machine that could conquer so many countries. But the Mongols were able...

To understand how difficult it was (if not to say impossible), let's look at the situation with China (so as not to be accused of looking for a conspiracy around Rus'). The population of China at the time of Genghis Khan was approximately 50 million people. No one conducted a census of the Mongols, but, for example, today this nation has 2 million people. If we take into account that the number of all peoples of the Middle Ages is increasing to the present day, then the Mongols were less than 2 million people (including women, old people and children). How were they able to conquer China with 50 million inhabitants? And then also India and Russia...

The strangeness of the geography of Batu’s movement

Let's return to the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Rus'. What were the goals of this trip? Historians talk about the desire to plunder the country and subjugate it. It also states that all these goals have been achieved. But this is not entirely true, because in ancient Rus' there were 3 richest cities:

• Kyiv is one of the largest cities in Europe and the ancient capital of Rus'. The city was conquered by the Mongols and destroyed.
• Novgorod is the largest trading city and the richest in the country (hence its special status). Didn't suffer from the invasion at all.
• Smolensk is also a trading city and was considered equal in wealth to Kyiv. The city also did not see the Mongol-Tatar army.

So it turns out that 2 of the 3 largest cities were not affected by the invasion at all. Moreover, if we consider plunder as a key aspect of Batu’s invasion of Rus', then the logic cannot be traced at all. Judge for yourself, Batu takes Torzhok (he spends 2 weeks on the assault). This is the poorest city, whose task is to protect Novgorod. But after this, the Mongols do not go to the North, which would be logical, but turn to the south. Why was it necessary to spend 2 weeks on Torzhok, which no one needs, in order to simply turn to the South? Historians give two explanations, logical at first glance:

• Near Torzhok, Batu lost many soldiers and was afraid to go to Novgorod. This explanation could well be considered logical if not for one “but”. Since Batu lost a lot of his army, then he needs to leave Rus' to replenish the army or take a break. But instead, the khan rushes to storm Kozelsk. There, by the way, the losses were huge and as a result the Mongols hastily left Rus'. But why they didn’t go to Novgorod is unclear.
• The Tatar-Mongols were afraid of the spring flooding of the rivers (this happened in March). Even in modern conditions, March in the north of Russia is not characterized by a mild climate and you can easily move around there. And if we talk about 1238, then that era is called by climatologists the Little Ice Age, when winters were much harsher than modern ones and in general the temperature was much lower (this is easy to check). That is, it turns out that in the era of global warming, Novgorod can be reached in March, but in the era of the Ice Age everyone was afraid of river floods.

With Smolensk, the situation is also paradoxical and inexplicable. Having taken Torzhok, Batu sets off to storm Kozelsk. This is a simple fortress, a small and very poor city. The Mongols stormed it for 7 weeks and lost thousands of people killed. Why was this done? There was no benefit from the capture of Kozelsk - there was no money in the city, and there were no food warehouses either. Why such sacrifices? But just 24 hours of cavalry movement from Kozelsk is Smolensk, the richest city in Rus', but the Mongols don’t even think about moving towards it.

Surprisingly, all these logical questions are simply ignored by official historians. Standard excuses are given, like, who knows these savages, this is what they decided for themselves. But this explanation does not stand up to criticism.

Nomads never howl in winter

There is one more remarkable fact that official history simply ignores, because... it is impossible to explain. Both Tatar-Mongol invasions took place in Rus' in winter (or began in late autumn). But these are nomads, and nomads begin to fight only in the spring in order to finish the battles before winter. After all, they travel on horses that need to be fed. Can you imagine how you can feed a Mongolian army of thousands in snowy Russia? Historians, of course, say that this is a trifle and that such issues should not even be considered, but the success of any operation directly depends on the support:

• Charles 12 was unable to provide support for his army - he lost Poltava and the Northern War.
• Napoleon was unable to organize supplies and left Russia with a half-starved army that was absolutely incapable of combat.
• Hitler, according to many historians, managed to establish support only by 60-70% - he lost the Second World War.

Now, understanding all this, let's look at what the Mongol army was like. It is noteworthy, but there is no definite figure for its quantitative composition. Historians give figures from 50 thousand to 400 thousand horsemen. For example, Karamzin talks about Batu’s 300 thousand army. Let's look at the provision of the army using this figure as an example. As you know, the Mongols always went on military campaigns with three horses: a riding horse (the rider moved on it), a pack horse (it carried the rider’s personal belongings and weapons) and a fighting horse (it went empty, so that it could go into battle fresh at any time). That is, 300 thousand people are 900 thousand horses. To this add the horses that transported ram guns (it is known for certain that the Mongols brought the guns assembled), horses that carried food for the army, carried additional weapons, etc. It turns out, according to the most conservative estimates, 1.1 million horses! Now imagine how to feed such a herd in a foreign country in a snowy winter (during the Little Ice Age)? There is no answer, because this cannot be done.

So how much army did Dad have?

It is noteworthy, but the closer to our time the study of the invasion of the Tatar-Mongol army occurs, the smaller the number is. For example, historian Vladimir Chivilikhin speaks of 30 thousand who moved separately, since they could not feed themselves in a single army. Some historians lower this figure even lower – to 15 thousand. And here we come across an insoluble contradiction:

• If there really were so many Mongols (200-400 thousand), then how could they feed themselves and their horses in the harsh Russian winter? The cities did not surrender to them peacefully in order to take food from them, most of the fortresses were burned.
• If there were really only 30-50 thousand Mongols, then how did they manage to conquer Rus'? After all, every principality fielded an army of about 50 thousand against Batu. If there really were so few Mongols and they acted independently, the remnants of the horde and Batu himself would have been buried near Vladimir. But in reality everything was different.

We invite the reader to look for conclusions and answers to these questions on their own. For our part, we did the most important thing - we pointed out facts that completely refute the official version of the Mongol-Tatar invasion. At the end of the article, I would like to note one more important fact that the whole world has recognized, including official history, but this fact is hushed up and is rarely published. The main document by which the yoke and invasion were studied for many years is the Laurentian Chronicle. But, as it turned out, the truth of this document raises big questions. Official history admitted that 3 pages of the chronicle (which speak of the beginning of the yoke and the beginning of the Mongol invasion of Rus') have been changed and are not original. I wonder how many more pages from Russian history have been changed in other chronicles, and what really happened? But it is almost impossible to answer this question...

Mongol conquests in 13

The Mongol conquests in the 13th century, a series of major wars of conquest and individual campaigns organized by Mongol feudal lords with the aim of seizing military booty, enslaving and robbing the peoples of Asia and East. Europe. The Mongol feudal lords, having created a military organization, involved the majority of the people in wars of conquest. The main strength of their army was the numerous and very mobile cavalry, consisting of nomadic Arats. The Mongol feudal lords also used the military forces of the conquered countries and their technical achievements (for example, siege weapons) in their campaigns. The army had a unified command, strong discipline, was well armed and in its fighting qualities surpassed the feudal militias of neighboring countries. Successes M. z. contributed to internal strife and betrayal of the ruling elite in many countries in Asia and Eastern Europe.

M. z. began after the formation of the Mongol early feudal state led by Genghis Khan (reigned 1206-27) and continued with minor interruptions until the end of the 13th century. In 1207-11 the peoples of Siberia and Eastern Turkestan were subjugated: Buryats, Yakuts, Oirots, Kyrgyz, Uighurs; Campaigns were launched against the Tangut state of Xi-Xia (finally defeated by 1227). In 1211, an attack began on the Jurchen state of Jin (Northern China). Mongol troops destroyed about 90 cities and took Beijing (Yanjing) in 1215. By 1217, all the lands to the north of the river were conquered. Yellow River. In 1218, Mongol rule. feudal lords spread to Semirechye.

In 1219 Mongol. an army of over 150 thousand people. led by Genghis Khan invaded Central Asia. Khorezmshah Muhammad dispersed his army among fortified cities, which made it easier for the Mongols to conquer their possessions. Mongol troops took Otrar, Khojent, Urgench and other cities. Bukhara and Samarkand surrendered without a fight. Muhammad fled and soon died on one of the islands of the Caspian Sea. In 1221, the conquest of Central Asia was completed with the capture of Khorezm. Military operations were transferred to the territory of modern Afghanistan, where the son of the Khorezmshah, Jalal ad-din, continued the fight. Genghis Khan pursued him to the river. Indus and defeated on November 24, 1221. By 1225 the main Mongol army left for Mongolia. Only the 30,000-strong detachment of the Mongol commanders Jebe and Subadei continued the war in the west.

Through Northern Iran, the Mongol detachment broke into Transcaucasia, devastated part of Georgia and Azerbaijan, entered the lands of the Alans along the shores of the Caspian Sea (1222) and, having defeated them, entered the Polovtsian steppes. In the battle on the river. Kalka On May 31, 1223, a Mongol detachment defeated the united Russian-Polovtsian army and pursued it to the river. Dnieper, and then retreated to the middle Volga, but, having suffered defeat in Volga-Kama Bulgaria, returned to Mongolia (1224). This was a deep reconnaissance raid of the Mongol cavalry, preparing a future campaign to the west.

After the kurultai of 1229, which elected Ogedei as the Great Khan, M. z.

went in two directions. In East, the conquest of Northern China was completed (1231-34) and the war with Korea began (1231-32). Most of Korea was conquered by 1273 after a series of large campaigns by the Mongol army (1236, 1254, 1255, 1259). In 1229 AD Yaik approached Subedei with a 30,000-strong army. Together with the army of Batu, the ruler of the Juchi ulus, he managed to oust the Saxons and Polovtsians from the Caspian steppes. In 1232, the Mongol army tried to invade Volga-Kama Bulgaria, but was repulsed. The Bashkirs also continued to fight the conquerors. The offensive to the west by the forces of one ulus, Jochi, failed.

At the kurultai of 1235, it was decided to send the military forces of other uluses “to help and reinforce Batu.” 14 Chinggisid khans took part in the campaign, the all-Mongol army reached 150 thousand people. In the fall of 1236, the Mongol army again invaded Volga-Kama Bulgaria and defeated it; in the spring and summer of 1237 it continued to fight the Alans, Cumans and peoples of the Middle Volga region, and in the fall it concentrated in the area of ​​modern Voronezh for a campaign against North-Eastern Rus'. At the beginning of the winter of 1237, Batu attacked the Ryazan principality and defeated the squads of local princes. On December 21, after a six-day assault, Ryazan fell. The heroism of the defenders of the Ryazan land is glorified in the legend about Evpatiy Kolovrat. In January 1238, near Kolomna, the Vladimir squads were defeated, trying to detain Batu at the borders of the Vladimir principality. The Mongol army destroyed Kolomna, Moscow and on February 4 besieged Vladimir. Grand Duke of Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich “with a small retinue” went beyond the Volga, to the river. Sit (a tributary of the Mologa), where he began to gather a new army. On February 5, a Mongol detachment ravaged Suzdal, and on February 7, after a fierce assault, Vladimir was taken. After this, Batu divided the army into several large detachments, which went along the main river routes to the north-east, north and north-west. and took 14 Russian cities in February 1238 (Rostov, Uglich, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Kashin, Ksnyatin, Gorodets, Galich-Mersky, Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, Yuryev, Dmitrov, Volok-Lamsky, Tver, Torzhok). On March 4, the army of the Mongol commander Burundai surrounded and destroyed the grand ducal regiments on the river. City; Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich also died in this battle. The entire area between the Oka and Volga rivers was devastated by the Mongols. A small detachment of Mongol cavalry carried out a raid on S. and returned without reaching 100 km to Novgorod. When retreating to the steppe, the Mongol army marched in a wide front of small detachments, in a “round-up,” once again subjecting the Russian lands to devastation. Kozelsk put up stubborn resistance to the enemy, which the Mongol army besieged for 7 weeks, suffering heavy losses.

In the Polovtsian steppes (summer 1238 - autumn 1240), the Mongol army waged a protracted war with the Polovtsians and Alans, made campaigns in the Crimea, in the Mordovian land, where an uprising arose against the conquerors, in Pereyaslavl-South and Chernigov (1239). In the autumn of 1240, the campaign against Southern Rus' began. At the end of December, after a multi-day assault, Kyiv fell. Mongol troops took and destroyed Vladimir-Volynsky, Galich and other cities. However, Danilov, Kremenets and Kholm repelled all attacks of the Mongol army. In the spring of 1241, the Mongol army, although significantly weakened by the heroic resistance of the Russian people and other peoples of Eastern Europe, nevertheless advanced further to the west.

Batu's main forces broke through the Carpathian passes into Hungary; the 60,000-strong army of King Bela IV was defeated in the Battle of Chaillot (April 11, 1241). The capital of Hungary, Pest, was taken and destroyed, a significant part of the country was devastated. Another Mongol detachment invaded Poland and defeated the militia of Polish and German princes near Legnica. Polish, Moravian and Slovak lands were devastated. Individual Mongol troops penetrated as far as Eastern Bohemia, but were repulsed by King Wenceslas I. At the end of 1241, all Mongol troops concentrated in Hungary, where the masses continued to fight the conquerors. Batu failed to gain a foothold in the Hungarian steppes for a further offensive, and he moved through Austria and Croatia to the Adriatic Sea. In the fall of 1242, after an unsuccessful siege of coastal fortresses, Batu began a retreat through Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria. The Mongol invasion of Central Europe is over.

M. z. were somewhat longer. in the west - in Asia Minor and the Middle East. After the conquest of Transcaucasia (1236), the Mongol army defeated the Rum Sultanate. In 1256, Hulagu conquered Iran and Mesopotamia, and in 1258 Baghdad, the capital of the Arab Caliphate, fell. Mongol troops penetrated Syria and prepared to invade Egypt, but in 1260 they were defeated by the Egyptian Sultan. M. z. on W. ended.

In the 2nd half of the 13th century. M. z. were aimed at countries in East and Southeast Asia. Mongol troops captured the countries surrounding the Southern Song Empire: the state of Dali (1252-53), Tibet (1253). In 1258, Mongol troops invaded Southern China from different directions, but the unexpected death of the Great Khan Mongke (1259) delayed the conquest of the Southern Song Empire. Southern China was conquered by the new Great Khan Kublai Khan in 1267-79. In 1281, the Mongol feudal lords tried to conquer Japan by sending 1,000 ships with an army of 100,000 to its shores, but the fleet was destroyed by a typhoon. Expansion in Southeast Asia did not bring success to the Mongol feudal lords, although they used the Chinese army and navy on campaigns. Mongol-Chinese troops after several campaigns (1277 - twice, 1282, 1287) occupied Burma, but were soon expelled (1291). Mongol-Chinese troops and navy repeatedly attacked Vietnam (1257, 1258, 1284, 1285, 1287-88), but were unable to conquer the Vietnamese people. The state of Tyampu (in southeast Indochina) also defended its independence. The attempt to win Fr. ended in complete failure. Java, although large forces were sent there (1000 ships with an army of 70 thousand).

M. z. ended with the campaign of 1300 in Burma. After this, the Mongol feudal lords stopped active military operations and moved on to the systematic exploitation of the conquered countries, using the Chinese management experience and the Chinese administration.

M. z. brought disaster to the peoples of Asia and Eastern Europe. They were accompanied by mass destruction of the population, devastation of vast territories, destruction of cities, and the decline of agricultural culture, especially in areas of irrigated agriculture. M. z. long delayed the socio-economic and cultural development of the countries that became part of the Mongolian feudal empire.

Lit.: Tatar-Mongols in Asia and Europe. Sat. Art., M., 1970; Bartold V.V., Turkestan in the era of the Mongol invasion, Soch., vol. 1, M., 1963; Kargalov V.V., Foreign policy factors in the development of feudal Rus'. Feudal Rus' and nomads, M., 1967; Grekov B.D., Yakubovsky A.Yu., The Golden Horde and its fall, M. - L., 1950; Merpert N. Ya., Pashuto V. T., Cherepnin L. V., Genghis Khan and his legacy, "History of the USSR", 1962, No. 5.

V. V. Kargalov.

Mongol conquests in the 13th century

Mongol troops, united by Genghis Khan, conquered neighboring peoples - the Yenisei Kirghiz, Buryats, Yakuts and Uyghurs, defeated the civilization of Primorye, and by 1215 conquered Northern China.

Mongol conquests in the 13th century

Here, Mongol commanders adopted siege equipment from Chinese engineers to storm fortresses. In 1218, Genghis Khan's commanders conquered Korea, and the next year an army of 200,000 attacked the cities of Khorezm. During two years of fighting, the agricultural areas of Semirechye were turned into pastures, most of the inhabitants were destroyed, and artisans were taken into slavery. In 1221, Genghis Khan conquered all of Central Asia. After this campaign, Genghis Khan divided his huge power into uluses.

In the spring of 1223 A 30,000-strong detachment of Mongols led by Jebe and Subedei, passing along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, invaded Transcaucasia. Having defeated the Armenian-Georgian army and devastated Georgia and Azerbaijan, the invaders broke through the Derbent Pass into the North Caucasus and defeated the Alans and Polovtsians.

The Mongol-Tatars were able to conquer states that were at the highest level of development because:

1) excellent organization of the army (decimal system)

2) borrowing military equipment from the Chinese

3) large number of troops

4) well-organized intelligence

5) harshness towards resisting cities (they destroyed rebellious cities, burned, destroyed, and the inhabitants were either taken captive (artisans, women, children) or exterminated). Consequently, the cities surrendered voluntarily.

6) psychological factors (use of sound elements).

Battle of Kalka (1223)

The Polovtsians, led by Khan Kotyan, centuries-old enemies of Rus', turned to the Russian princes for help against the Mongol-Tatars. On the initiative of Mstislav Mstislavich the Udaly (Galician prince, was married to the daughter of Khan Kotyan), at the congress of South Russian princes in Kyiv, it was decided to come to the aid of the Polovtsians. A large Russian army entered the steppe, led by the three strongest princes of Southern Rus': Mstislav Romanovich of Kyiv, Mstislav Svyatoslavich of Chernigov and Mstislav Mstislavovich of Galitsky. In the lower reaches of the Dnieper it united with the Polovtsian forces. On May 31, 1223, not far from the Sea of ​​Azov, on the Kalka River, a battle took place in which the Russian-Polovtsian army, as a result of uncoordinated actions and intra-princely disputes, was defeated: While the squads of Mstislav the Udal, Daniil of Volyn and some other princes, with the support of the Polovtsian cavalry, rushed against the enemy, Mstislav of Kiev stood with his forces on one of the hills and did not participate in the battle. The Mongols managed to withstand the blow and then went on the offensive. The Polovtsy were the first to be defeated, fleeing from the battlefield. This put the Galician and Volyn armies in a difficult situation. The Mongols broke the resistance of the Russians.

Now it was the turn of the most powerful part of the Russian army - the Kyiv army. The Mongols failed in their attempt to take the Russian camp by storm, and then they resorted to cunning. Jebe and Subede promised Mstislav of Kyiv and other princes peace and passage of their troops to their homeland. When the princes opened their camp and left it, the Mongols rushed at the Russian squads. All Russian soldiers were captured.

During the battle on Kalka, 6 princes died, only every tenth of the warriors returned. The Kiev army alone lost about 10 thousand people. This defeat turned out to be one of the most difficult in history for Rus'.

Batu's invasion of Rus'

In 1227, the founder of the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan, died. The ulus of the eldest son of Jochi, who died in the same year as his father, reached the grandson of the conqueror - Batu Khan (Batu). It is this ulus, located west of the river. The Irtysh was supposed to become the main springboard for the conquest to the West.

In 1235, at the next kurultai of the Mongol nobility in Karakorum, a decision was made on an all-Mongol campaign to Europe. The strength of the Jochi ulus alone was not enough. Therefore, troops of other Chinggisids were sent to help Batu. Batu himself was placed at the head of the campaign, and the experienced commander Subedei was appointed as an adviser.

The offensive began in the fall of 1236, and a year later the Mongol conquerors conquered Volga Bulgaria, as well as the Polovtsian hordes roaming between the Volga and Don rivers.

Late autumn 1237 Batu's main forces concentrated in the upper reaches of the river. Voronezh for the invasion of North-Eastern Rus'. In Rus' they knew about the terrible danger, but princely strife prevented them from uniting forces to repel a strong and treacherous enemy. There was no unified command. City fortifications were erected to defend neighboring Russian principalities, and not from steppe nomads. The princely cavalry squads were not inferior to the Mongol noyons and nukers in terms of armament and fighting qualities. But the bulk of the Russian army was the militia - urban and rural warriors, inferior to the Mongols in weapons and combat skills.

The defeat of Ryazan

The first principality to be mercilessly devastated was the Ryazan land. The sovereign Russian princes had nothing to oppose to this invasion. Princely feuds did not allow united forces to be deployed against Batu; the Vladimir and Chernigov princes refused to help Ryazan. Approaching the Ryazan land, Batu demanded from the Ryazan princes a tenth “of everything that is in your land.”

In the hope of reaching an agreement with Batu, the Ryazan prince sent an embassy to him with rich gifts, which was headed by the prince's son Fedor. Having accepted the gifts, the khan put forward humiliating and arrogant demands: in addition to the huge tribute, he should give the prince’s sisters and daughters as wives to the Mongolian nobility. And for himself personally, he set his sights on the beautiful Eupraksinya, Fedor’s wife. The prince responded with a decisive refusal and, together with the ambassadors, was sentenced to painful execution. And the princess, together with her little son, so as not to fall to the conquerors, threw herself down from the bell tower. The Ryazan army went against Batu, and “met him near the Ryazan borders.” The battle was very difficult, twelve times the Russian squad came out of the encirclement, “one Ryazan man fought with a thousand, and two with darkness (ten thousand),” as the chronicle writes about this battle. But Batu had a great superiority in strength, and the Ryazan people suffered heavy losses. It was the turn of the fall of Ryazan. Ryazan held out for five days, on the sixth day, on the morning of December 21, it was taken. The entire city was destroyed and all the inhabitants were exterminated. The Mongol-Tatars left only ashes behind them. The Ryazan prince and his family also died. The surviving inhabitants of the Ryazan land gathered a squad (about 1,700 people), led by Evpatiy Kolovrat. They caught up with the enemy in Suzdal and began to wage guerrilla warfare against him, inflicting heavy losses on the Mongols.

The defeat of the Vladimir principality

Having ravaged the Ryazan land, in January 1238. Mongol invaders defeated the Grand Duke's guard regiment of the Vladimir-Suzdal land near Kolomna, led by the son of the Grand Duke Vsevolod Yuryevich.

The population of Moscow, led by governor Philip Nyanka, offered strong resistance to the enemy for 5 days. After being captured by the Mongols, Moscow was burned and its inhabitants were killed.

Then the Mongols captured Suzdal and a number of other cities.

On February 4, 1238, Batu besieged Vladimir. His troops covered the distance from Kolomna to Vladimir (300 km) in a month. On the fourth day of the siege, the invaders broke into the city through gaps in the fortress wall next to the Golden Gate. The princely family and the remnants of the troops locked themselves in the Assumption Cathedral. The Mongols surrounded the cathedral with trees and set it on fire. After the capture of Vladimir, the hordes of conquerors scattered throughout the Vladimir-Suzdal land, plundering and destroying everything in their path. (14 cities were destroyed)

March 4, 1238 beyond the Volga, on the river. City, a battle took place between the main forces of North-Eastern Rus' led by the Grand Duke of Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich and the Mongol invaders. The Russian army was defeated, and the Grand Duke himself died.

After the capture of the “suburb” of Novgorod land - Torzhok, the road to North-Western Rus' opened before the conquerors. However, the approach of the spring thaw and significant human losses forced the Mongols, not reaching Veliky Novgorod about 100 versts, to turn back to the Polovtsian sepia. On the way, they defeated Kursk and the small town of Kozelsk on the river. Zhizdre. The defenders of Kozelsk offered fierce resistance to the enemy, defending themselves for seven weeks. After its capture in May 1238. Batu ordered this “evil city” to be wiped off the face of the earth, and the remaining inhabitants to be exterminated without exception.

Summer 1238 Batu spent time in the Don steppes, restoring the strength of his army. However, already in the fall, his troops again devastated the Ryazan land, capturing Gorkhovets, Murom and several other cities. In the spring of the next year, 1239, Batu’s troops defeated the Pereyaslav principality, and in the fall the Chernigov-Seversk land was devastated.

Invasion of Southwestern Rus'

In the autumn of 1240 Mongol armies moved to conquer Western Europe through Southern Rus'. In September they crossed the Dnieper and surrounded Kyiv. After a long siege on December 6, 1240. the city fell. The South Russian princes were never able to organize a united defense of their lands. Winter 1240 - 1241 Mongolian tumens captured almost all the cities of Southern Rus', with the exception of Kholm, Kamenets and Danilov.

Batu's campaign against Europe

After the defeat of Rus', the Mongol hordes moved towards Europe. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Balkan countries were devastated. The Mongols reached the borders of the German Empire and reached the Adriatic Sea. However, at the end of 1242 they suffered a series of setbacks in the Czech Republic and Hungary. From distant Karakorum came news of the death of the great Khan Ogedei, the son of Genghis Khan. This was a convenient excuse to stop the difficult hike. Batu turned his troops back to the east. The decisive world-historical role in saving European civilization from the Mongol hordes was played by the heroic struggle against them by the Russians and other peoples of our country, who took the first blow of the invaders. In fierce battles in Rus', the best part of the Mongol army died. The Mongols lost their offensive power. They could not help but take into account the liberation struggle that unfolded in the rear of their troops. A. S. Pushkin rightly wrote: “Russia had a great destiny: its vast plains absorbed the power of the Mongols and stopped their invasion at the very edge of Europe... the resulting enlightenment was saved by torn Russia.”

Upon his return in 1243. Batu formed the westernmost ulus - the state of the Golden Horde with its capital Sarai-Batu. The state created by Batu occupied a vast territory: from the Siberian rivers Irtysh and Ob in the east to the Carpathians and Danube in the West and from the Caspian steppes and Caucasus Mountains in the south to the black soil strip and the upper reaches of the Volga and Kama in the north.

At the beginning of the 13th century. In the steppes of Central Asia, a strong Mongol state emerged, with the formation of which began a period of Mongol conquests. This entailed consequences that had world-historical significance. Having affected all the countries of Asia and many countries of Europe, the Mongol conquests left a deep mark on their subsequent history, as well as on the history of the Mongol people themselves.

Name "Mongols"

By the beginning of the 11th century. the largest part of present-day Mongolia was already occupied by Mongol-speaking tribal associations. They partly displaced the Turkic nomads who had previously lived there from the territory of Mongolia, and partly assimilated them. The Mongol tribes spoke different dialects of the same language, later called Mongolian, but did not yet have a common name. By the name of the powerful tribal union of the Tatars, neighboring peoples called “Tatars” and other Mongolian tribes, only in contrast to the Tatars themselves, otherwise “white Tatars,” they called the rest of the Mongols “black Tatars.” The name "Mongols" until the beginning of the 13th century. was not yet known, and its origin is still not fully understood. Officially, this name was adopted only after the creation of a united Mongolian state under Genghis Khan (1206-1227), when it was necessary to give all the Mongolian tribes that formed a single nation a common name. It was not immediately adopted by the Mongols themselves. Until the 50s of the 13th century. Persian, Arab, Armenian, Georgian and Russian authors called all Mongols in the old way - Tatars.

The social system of the Mongols at the end of the 12th - beginning of the 13th century.

By the end of the XII - beginning of the XIII century. The Mongols occupied a vast territory from Baikal and Amur in the east to the headwaters of the Irtysh and Yenisei in the west, from the Great Wall of China in the south to the borders of Southern Siberia in the north. The largest tribal alliances of the Mongols, which played the most important role in subsequent events, were the Tatars, Taizhiuts, Keraits, Naimans and Merkits. Some of the Mongol tribes (the "forest tribes") lived in the forested areas of the northern part of the country, while another, larger part of the tribes and their associations (the "steppe tribes") lived in the steppes.

The main types of production activity of the forest tribes were hunting and fishing, and the steppe tribes were nomadic animal husbandry. In terms of the level of their socio-economic and cultural development, the forest Mongols stood much lower than the steppe Mongols, being at an earlier stage of the decomposition of the primitive communal system. But over time, they increasingly switched to breeding domestic animals. The increase in the number of herds inevitably led to the fact that the forest Mongols left the forests and became nomadic livestock breeders.

The steppe Mongols raised large and small cattle, as well as horses. Each clan, each tribe had its own, more or less firmly assigned to them, nomadic areas, within the boundaries of which a change of pastures took place. The nomads lived in felt yurts and ate mainly meat and dairy products. Livestock constituted the main exchange fund, at the expense of which agricultural products and crafts that were not available to the Mongols, but necessary for them, were purchased from their neighbors. The Mongols themselves made for their needs, in addition to felt, belts and ropes, carts and dishes, saddles and harnesses, axes and saws, wooden frames of yurts, weapons, etc. Trade of the Mongols was in the hands of Uighur and Muslim merchants, immigrants from Eastern Turkestan and Central Asia.

Its writing until the 13th century. The Mongols didn’t have it yet. But among the Naimans, the most cultured of the Mongolian tribes, the Uyghur script was used. The religion of the bulk of the Mongols by the beginning of the 13th century. Shamanism remained. The “eternal blue sky” was worshiped as the main deity. The Mongols also revered the deity of the earth, various spirits and ancestors. The noble elite of the Kerait tribe at the beginning of the 11th century. accepted Nestorian Christianity. Buddhism and Christianity were also widespread among the Naiman. Both of these religions spread to Mongolia through the Uyghurs.

In the past, during the era of the dominance of the primitive communal system, when livestock and pastures were the collective property of the clan community, the Mongols roamed as a whole clan, and in camps they usually settled in a ring around the yurt of the head of the clan. Such a camp was called a kuren. But the transformation of the main wealth of nomads - livestock - into private property led to an increase in property inequality. Under these conditions, the method of nomadism by all kurens became an obstacle to the further enrichment of the wealthy elite of nomadic cattle breeders. Owning large herds, they needed a larger pasture area and more frequent migrations than poor people who owned a small number of livestock. The place of the previous method of nomadism was taken by the ail (ail - large family).

The Mongols even before the 13th century. Early feudal relations developed. Already in the 12th century. in every Mongol tribe there was a powerful layer of nomadic nobility - noyons. The khans who headed the tribes, from simple tribal leaders, became kings who expressed and defended the interests of the feudalizing nomadic nobility. Even after the herds became private property, lands and pastures were considered the collective property of the tribe for a long time. But by the beginning of the 13th century. this main means of production was actually at the disposal of the nobility, who formed the class of feudal lords. Having seized into their own hands the right to dispose of nomads and distribute pastures, the nobility made a lot of direct producers dependent on them, forcing them to perform various kinds of duties and turning them into dependent people - arats. Already at that time, the Mongolian nobility practiced distributing their herds to the Arats for grazing, entrusting them with responsibility for the safety of livestock and for the delivery of livestock products. This is how the working rent was born. The mass of nomads (Kharachu - “rabble”, Harayasun - “black bone”) actually turned into feudal dependent people.

The largest role in the formation and development of feudalism in Mongolia was played by nukerism (nuker - friend, comrade), which apparently began to take shape in the 10th-11th centuries. Nukers were originally armed warriors in the service of the khans, and later became their vassals. Relying on the nukers, the noyons strengthened their power and suppressed the resistance of ordinary nomads. For his service, the nuker received a certain reward from the khan - khubi (part, share, share) in the form of a certain number of dependent Arat families and territory for their nomadism. By its nature, the khubi was an award similar in type to a benefice. Slaves occupied a significant place in the life of Mongolian society. The Noyons often waged wars because of them, turning all those captured into slaves. Slaves were used as household servants, servants, as "court" craftsmen if they were artisans, and also to herd livestock. But slaves did not play a decisive role in social production. The main direct producer was the arat, who ran his own small livestock farm.

The external forms of the primitive communal system were preserved for a long time, just as the division into tribes and clans was preserved. Tribal militias were built for battle according to clan, with hereditary noyons at their head. A woman in a family and clan enjoyed significant freedom and certain rights. Marriages within the clan were strictly prohibited. Bride kidnapping was widespread.

Prerequisites for the formation of the Mongolian state

End of the 12th century was a period of intense struggle within clans and tribes, as well as between tribal associations led by the nobility. At the heart of this struggle were the interests of the strengthened and wealthy families of the nobility, who owned vast herds, a large number of slaves and feudally dependent people. Persian historian of the early 14th century. Rashid ad-din, speaking about this time, notes that the Mongol tribes before “never had a powerful despot-sovereign who would be the ruler of all tribes: each tribe had some kind of sovereign and prince, and most of the time they were with each other.” they fought with each other, were at enmity, bickered and competed, robbed each other.”

Associations of tribes of Naimans, Keraits, Taichjiuts and others constantly attacked each other in order to seize pastures and military booty: livestock, slaves and other wealth. As a result of wars between tribal associations, the defeated tribe became dependent on the victorious one, and the nobility of the defeated tribe fell into the position of vassals of the khan and the nobility of the victorious tribe. In the process of a long struggle for dominance, relatively large associations of tribes, or uluses, were formed, headed by khans, supported by numerous squads of nukers. Such tribal associations attacked not only their neighbors inside Mongolia, but also neighboring peoples, mainly China, penetrating into its border regions. At the beginning of the 13th century. the mixed-tribal nobility rallied around the leader of the steppe Mongols, Temujin, who received the name Genghis Khan.

Formation of the Mongolian state. Genghis Khan

Temujin was apparently born in 1155. His father, Yesugei baatur ( Mongolian baatur, Turkic bahadur (hence the Russian hero) is one of the titles of the Mongolian nobility.) came from the Borjigin clan of the Taichjiut tribe and was a wealthy noyon. With his death in 1164, the ulus he created in the Onon River valley also crumbled. Various tribal groups that were part of the ulus abandoned the family of the deceased baatur. The nukers also dispersed.

For a number of years, Yesugei’s family wandered, eking out a miserable existence. In the end, Temujin managed to find support from Van Khan, the head of the Keraits. Under the patronage of Wang Khan, Temujin began to gradually accumulate strength. Nukers began to flock to him. With them, Temujin made a number of successful attacks on his neighbors and, increasing his wealth, made them dependent on himself. Talking about the crushing blow that Temujin dealt in 1201 to the militia of the leader of the steppe Mongols Jamuga, the Mongol chronicle of the first half of the 13th century. - “The Secret Legend” conveys an interesting episode that depicts the class face of Temujin. When Jamuga's militia was scattered, five Arats captured him, tied him up and handed him over to Temuchin, hoping to earn the mercy of the winner. Temujin said, “Is it conceivable to leave alive the Arats who raised their hands against their natural khan?” And he ordered them to be executed along with their families in front of Jamuga. Only after this was Jamuga himself executed.

As a result of the wars, Temujin's ulus continued to expand, becoming at least equal in strength to Van Khan's ulus. Soon a rivalry arose between them, which developed into open hostility. A battle took place that brought victory to Temujin. In the fall of 1202, as a result of a bloody battle between the militias of Temujin and Dayan Khan of Naiman, Dayan Khan’s army was defeated, and he himself was killed. The victory over Dayan Khan made Temujin the only contender for power in all of Mongolia. In 1206, a khural (or khuraldan - congress, meeting) was held on the banks of the Onon River, which brought together the leaders of all tribal groups of Mongolia. The Khural proclaimed Temujin the Great Khan of Mongolia, giving him the name of Genghis Khan ( The meaning of this name or title is still unclear.). Since then, the Great Khan has also been called Kaan. Until that time, the Mongols called the Chinese emperor this way. Thus the process of formation of the Mongolian state was completed.

The political system of Mongolia at the beginning of the 13th century.

Having become the Great Khan, Genghis Khan continued to strengthen the order corresponding to the interests of the nobility, which needed to strengthen its power over the mass of arats and in successful wars of conquest to further expand the sphere of feudal exploitation and direct robbery of foreign countries Tumena (darkness), “thousands”, “ “hundreds” and “tens” were counted not only as military units, but also as administrative units, i.e., associations of villages that could field 10,000, 1,000, 100 and 10 warriors in the militia, respectively (these figures were conditional and approximate). On the condition of performing military service to the Great Khan, each group of ails was given ownership of tenth, hundredth and thousandth noyons and noyons of tumens (temniks). Tumen was, therefore, the largest feudal possession, which included smaller possessions - “thousands”, “hundreds” and “tens” (i.e. branches and tribes of individual Mongol tribes). Noyons of thousands, hundreds and tens were nominated from the nobility of these tribes, tribes and clans.

The right to dispose of pasture lands and migrations and power over the arats completely belonged to the thousand and other noyons. Their titles and their “thousands”, “hundreds” and “tens” were inherited by their descendants, but they could also be taken away from them by the Great Khan for misconduct or negligence in service. The Noyons gave their herds on a working rent basis for grazing by the Arats. The Arats also carried out military service in the militias of their noyons. Genghis Khan, on pain of death, forbade the Arats to move without permission from one dozen to another, from one hundred to another, etc. In fact, this meant attaching the Arats to their masters and nomads. The attachment of arats was given the force of law. It is clearly mentioned in the collection of laws of Genghis Khan - the “Great Yasa”. Yasa (“Law”) is imbued with the spirit of protecting the interests of the nomadic nobility and its supreme representative - the Great Khan; this is a real serfdom charter, only outwardly covered by patriarchal customs. This was the state of Genghis Khan, within which the process of formation of the Mongolian people took place.

Mongol conquests

With the formation of the Mongol state, a period of Mongol conquests began. Many peoples saw the conquerors on their lands - the Khitans and Jurchens, the Tanguts and the Chinese, the Koreans and Tibetans, the Tajiks and Khorezmians, the Turks and Persians, the Indians and the peoples of Transcaucasia, the Russians and Poles, the Hungarians, Croats, etc. Later, under the successors of Genghis Khan, The ships of the conquerors approached the shores of Japan, Java and Sumatra. A destructive tornado swept over the cultural countries of the Middle Ages.

What was the reason for the Mongol conquests? The source of income for the khans, noyons and nukers was not only the feudal exploitation of the arats, but also, no less, predatory wars with neighboring uluses and tribes. When the wars inside Mongolia stopped, the nobility took the path of external wars of conquest. In the interests of the nobility, Genghis Khan waged continuous wars. The iron discipline, organization and exceptional mobility of the mounted Mongol militias, which were equipped with the military equipment of the Chinese and other cultural peoples, gave the troops of Genghis Khan a significant advantage over the sedentary feudal militias of sedentary peoples. But this was not what played the main role. The relative weakness of the states that became the object of the conquests of the Mongol nobility was of decisive importance. This weakness was caused by feudal fragmentation in many countries, the lack of unity in them, and in some cases, the fear of rulers to arm the masses.

The predatory invasions of nomads into various agricultural countries of Asia were usually devastating. The invasion of the Mongol troops was characterized, in addition, by the methods introduced by Genghis Khan and his commanders of the organized devastation of cultural lands, the mass extermination of elements of the population capable of resistance, terror and intimidation of civilians.

During the siege of cities, mercy was given to the population only in case of immediate surrender. If the city offered resistance, then after occupying it, Genghis Khan’s commanders first of all drove all the inhabitants into the field, so that it would be more convenient for the conquerors to plunder the city and take out everything valuable. Then all the warriors were killed, and the artisans and their families, as well as young women and girls, were taken into slavery. Healthy young men were taken into the convoy and for siege work.

It often happened that Genghis Khan’s generals exterminated not only the inhabitants of cities, but also the population of adjacent rural areas. This was done in cases where the conquerors for some reason feared the possibility of an uprising in this area. If there were not enough soldiers for this massacre, slaves who followed the army were forced to participate in it. After the “general massacre” in the city of Merv (Central Asia), taken by the Mongols in 1221, the count of those killed lasted 13 days.

This terrorist system was used only under Genghis Khan and his immediate successors. Wars of the Mongols in the second half of the 13th and 14th centuries. were no longer any different from the usual feudal wars waged by Asian states. But as a result of the use of such methods for several decades, Yanjing and Bukhara, Termez and Merv, Urgench and Herat, Rey and Ani, Baghdad and Kyiv - the largest centers of civilization at that time - lay in ruins. The blooming gardens of Khorezm and Khorasan disappeared. With such diligence and with such difficulty, the irrigation system created by the peoples of Central Asia, Iran, Iraq and other countries was destroyed. The hooves of numerous horses trampled the cultivated fields of these countries. Once densely populated and cultural areas have become depopulated. “There has not been a more terrible catastrophe for humanity since the creation of the world, and there will be nothing like it until the end of time and the Last Judgment,” this is how one of his contemporaries, the Arab historian Ibn al-Athir, described this time.

Craftsmen enslaved were first taken to Mongolia, and later began to be exploited locally, in large workshops owned by the khan, princes or nobles, taking away all their products from these craftsmen and giving meager wages in return. Such workshops were created in all conquered countries. Slave labor was also used in the cattle-breeding farms of the nobility.

The wars of Genghis Khan and the Genghisids brought enormous wealth to the nobility, but they did not enrich Mongolia and the Mongolian people. On the contrary, as a result of these wars, Mongolia lost a lot of blooming youth and was bled dry. A significant part of the Mongolian nobility with the arats under their control moved outside Mongolia to the conquered countries. In 1271, even the residence of the Great Khan was moved to Northern China. In the conquered countries, representatives of the Mongol nomadic nobility took possession of lands cultivated by settled peasants. The system of heredity of military ranks was established everywhere. Continuing to wander with the tribes under their control and not living on their estates, the Mongol nobility received rent from the rural population in products. Sedentary peasants were subjected to much more brutal exploitation than the nomadic arats, who, since they constituted the main contingent of ordinary soldiers in the feudal militias, were dangerously driven to ruin.

Conquest of Northern China and other states

In 1207, Genghis Khan sent his eldest son Jochi to conquer the tribes living north of the Selenga River and in the Yenisei valley. There is reason to believe that the main goal of this campaign was to capture areas rich in iron-making industries, which the conquerors needed to make weapons. Jochi carried out the plan of conquest outlined by Genghis Khan. In the same 1207, the conquerors encountered the Tangut state of Xi-Xia (in the current province of Gansu), whose ruler undertook to pay tribute to Genghis Khan. In 1209 The Uyghur country in East Turkestan submitted to Genghis Khan. However, Genghis Khan's main attention at this time was directed towards China. In 1211, the main Mongol forces led by Genghis Khan came out against the Jurchens, who then owned the northern part of China (the state of Jin).

The Jurchens, being themselves conquerors, alien to the Chinese people and hated by them, were unable to resist the Mongols. By 1215, a significant part of the territory of the Jin state passed into the hands of the Mongols. The conquerors occupied, plundered and burned its capital - the Chinese city of Yanjing (modern Beijing). Having appointed one of his military leaders, Muhuli, as the ruler of the regions of China taken away from the Jurchens, Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia with huge booty. During this war, Genghis Khan became acquainted with Chinese heavy battering and stone-throwing weapons. Realizing the importance of these tools for further conquests, he organized their production, using craftsmen exported from China and enslaved for this purpose.

Conquest of Central Asia and the Xi-Xia state

Having finished the war in Northern China, Genghis Khan sent his troops west - towards Khorezm, the largest state in Central Asia at that time. Having previously defeated the ephemeral state of Kuchluk of Naiman, Dayan Khan's nephew (1218), Genghis Khan's troops began the conquest of Central Asia (in 1219). In 1220, the conquerors captured Bukhara and Samarkand and the Khorezm state fell. Khorezmshah Muhammad fled to Iran and hid on an island in the Caspian Sea, where he soon died. Mongol troops, pursuing his son Jalal-ad-din, penetrated into North-West India, but here they encountered strong resistance, which stopped their advance into the interior of India. In 1221, the conquest of Central Asia - ravaged and devastated, with cities and oases turned into ruins and deserts - was completed.

At the same time, one of the groups of Mongol troops, led by the military leaders Chzhebe (Jebe) and Subetey, rounded the Caspian Sea from the south, invaded Georgia and Azerbaijan, plundering and destroying everything in its path. Then Zhebe and Subetei penetrated the North Caucasus, from where they moved to the southern Russian steppes. Having defeated first the Alans (Ossetians), and then the Kipchaks (Cumans), who roamed these steppes, the Mongol conquerors entered the Crimea, where they captured the city of Sudak. In 1223, a battle took place on the Kalka River between the Mongol conquerors and the militia of the Russian princes. The lack of unity between the latter, as well as the betrayal of the Polovtsians who participated in this battle, was the reason for the defeat of the Russian army. However, the Mongol troops, having suffered heavy losses in killed and wounded, were unable to continue the march to the north and moved east, against the Bulgarians living on the Volga. Not achieving success there either, they turned back. After this, together with his sons Chagatasm, Ogedei and Tolui, Chinggis Khan set out from Central Asia on his way back to Mongolia, where he arrived in the fall of 1225. A year later, in 1226, Chinggis Khan made his last campaign, this time with the goal of finally destroying the Tangutskor state of Xi-Xia. Within a year, this goal was achieved. In 1227, Xi-Xia ceased to exist, and the surviving population was turned into slaves. In the same year, returning from this campaign, Genghis Khan died. In 1229, a khural was held, which was attended by the sons of Genghis Khan, his closest relatives and associates. His third son, Ogedei, who had been designated for this post by Genghis Khan even earlier, was elected Great Khan. According to the will of Genghis Khan, other sons were allocated special uluses. At the same time, the khural outlined a plan for new conquests, the central place in which was occupied by the subjugation of the part of the territory of Northern China that remained under the rule of the Jurchens.

In 1231, Mongol troops led by Ogedei and Tolui again invaded Northern China. The Mongols approached the city of Vyan (modern Kaifeng), where the Jurchen sovereigns moved after the loss of Yanjing. The siege of the city of Vyan was unsuccessful for the Mongols. The war dragged on. The Mongol rulers began to look for allies. They turned to the emperor of the Southern Song dynasty, which ruled in Southern China, with a proposal to take part in the war against the Jurchens, promising to transfer the province of Henan to him in return. The South Song emperor agreed to this proposal, hoping, with the help of the Mongol Khan, to defeat his old enemies - the Jurchens. Song troops attacked the Jurchens from the south, the Mongols acted from the northwest.

The city of Vyan was captured by Mongol troops. After this, the Jurchen strongholds one after another passed into the hands of the conquerors. In 1234, the city of Caizhou was captured. The Jurchen ruler committed suicide. The Jurchen state ceased to exist. Its entire territory fell into the hands of the conquerors, who at the same time deceived the Song emperor by not giving him the promised province of Henan.

Invasion of Rus' and Western countries

In 1236, a new campaign of conquest began to the west, where a large army was sent, consisting not only of Mongol troops, but also of troops of conquered peoples. Vatu, the son of Jochi, was placed at the head of this army. Having conquered the Kipchaks and Volga Bulgarians, the conquerors in the winter of 1237 moved against Rus'. In the winter campaign of 1237/38 they captured and plundered Ryazan, Kolomna, Moscow and Vladimir. In the Battle of the City River, the main forces of the Russian princes were defeated.

The Mongol troops, having suffered heavy losses in battles against the Russian principalities, needed a respite. This explains the break in their military operations, which lasted about a year and a half. In the winter of 1239 the war resumed. The conquerors invaded the southern Russian lands, crossed the Dnieper, took and plundered Kyiv. In 1241, the Mongol forces split into two groups. One, under the command of Batu and Subatei, headed for Hungary, the other invaded Poland. Having devastated Poland and Silesia, the Mongols defeated the militias of the Polish and German princes in a battle near Liegnitz. And although the Mongol army invaded Hungary and reached almost Venice, the losses suffered weakened the Mongols so much that their further advance into the interior of Europe became impossible and they turned back.

Ogedei died in 1241. After a five-year struggle for the khan's throne, a khural gathered in 1246 and elected Ogedei's son Guyuk as the Great Khan of Mongolia. But Guyuk did not reign for long, he died in 1248. A new struggle for the khan’s throne began, which lasted until 1251, when the next khural elevated Tolui’s son, Mongke, to the throne.

Conquests in Western Asia and China

Under the great Khan Mongke Kaan, Mongol conquests continued in both the west and the east. The conquering armies, led by Mongke's brother Hulagu, invaded Iran and from there went to Mesopotamia. In 1258 they took Baghdad, ending the Abbasid Caliphate. Further advance of the Mongols in this direction was stopped by Egyptian troops, who defeated them (1260). In the east, the Mongols, led by another of Mongke's brothers, Kublai Kublai, invaded the Chinese province of Sichuan and penetrated further south into Dali. From here detachments were sent to conquer Tibet and Indo-China. At the same time, Khubilai began a war to take control of Hubei province.

By this time, the territory of the Mongol state had reached its greatest size. Its main part consisted of Mongolia itself, Manchuria and Northern China. There were two capitals here - Karakorum on Orkhon and Kaiping in Chahar province. It was a native yurt ( Yurt - in this meaning is the same as ulus - “destiny”.) (domain) of the great khans. The regions of Altai with the center in Tarbagatai constituted the ulus of the descendants of Ogedei. The ulus of Chagatai's descendants included all of Central Asia east of the Amu Darya, Semirechye, present-day Xinjiang and the Tien Shan regions. In 1308-1311 The ulus of Ogedei merged with this ulus. The ulus of Genghis Khan's eldest son, Jochi, lay to the west of the Irtysh and included the Volga region, the North Caucasus, Crimea, Khorezm, the lower reaches of the Syr Darya and Irtysh. The ulus of Jochi (Kypchak Khanate) was called the Golden Horde in Russian chronicles, and this name is firmly established established itself in literature. The western part of Central Asia (west of the Amu Darya), Iran, Iraq and Transcaucasia (since 1256) made up the ulus of Hulagu, son of Tolui, often called in literature the state of the Ilkhans, or Hulaguids.

Battle of Liegnitz. Miniature from the Life of Jadwiga of Silesia. 1353

The beginning of the collapse of the Mongol Empire

In 1259, the Great Khan Mongke died. His death temporarily interrupted Khubilai's campaign of conquest in the Southern Song Empire. Kublai neglected the rule of “Yasa” of Genghis Khan, according to which the great khan had to be elected without fail at khurals with the obligatory participation of all members of the reigning house. Kublai gathered his associates in Kaiping in 1260, who proclaimed him great khan. At the same time, another part of the Mongol nobility gathered in Karakorum and placed Khubilai's younger brother, Arigbuga, on the throne. There were two great khans in Mongolia. An armed struggle began between them, ending 4 years later with the defeat of Arigbuga. Kublai Khan became the Great Khan of Mongolia. But by this time the Mongolian state had already become different. The western uluses fell away from it. Since the reign of Kublai Kublai, the state of the Ilkhans and the Golden Horde have become virtually independent states. Without interfering in the affairs of the Great Khan, they did not allow him to interfere in their affairs. When later the khans of the three western uluses converted to Islam (at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries), they even nominally ceased to recognize the power of the great khan, who had become an “infidel” for them.

In the XIV century. the bulk of the Mongols who moved to the western uluses mixed with the Old Uzbeks, Kipchaks, Oguzes and Azerbaijanis and began to speak the languages ​​of the Turkic system; Only in Kaitag, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, did the Mongolian language survive until the 17th century, and in Afghanistan until the 19th century. The term "Tatars", which originally referred to the Mongols, came to mean the Turkic-speaking nomads of the Golden Horde. That is why, since the 60s of the 13th century. the history of the uluses of the Hulaguids, Juchids and Chagataids ceases to be the history of the Mongol state. The paths of historical development of these uluses diverged, and the history of each of them developed separately.

Conquest of southern China and formation of the Yuan Empire

Khubilai came to terms with the fact that the western uluses actually fell away from Mongolia, and did not even try to return them under his rule. He directed all his attention to the final conquest of China. The implementation of Khubilai's plans was facilitated by the civil strife that tore apart the Southern Song Empire. In 1271, Khubilai moved his capital from Mongolia to Yanjing. Despite the stubborn resistance of the people of Southern China and many military units led by military leaders devoted to their country, the Mongol conquerors gradually approached the sea borders of Southern China. By 1276, the conquest of the Southern Sung Empire by the Mongols was completed. All of China ended up in the hands of Mongol feudal lords. Even before this, the power of the Mongols was recognized by the Korean state of Koryo. The last major military enterprise of the Mongol conquerors was an attempt to subjugate Japan. In 1281, Kublai sent a huge fleet of several thousand ships to Japan. However, the Mongols were unable to conquer Japan. Their fleet was caught in a typhoon, from which few ships managed to escape. Their attempts to gain a foothold in Indo-China did not bring success to the Mongols either.

As a result of the conquests, China, Mongolia and Manchuria became part of the Mongol Empire. Political dominance in this power belonged to the Mongol feudal lords, led by the grandson of Genghis Khan, the Great Khan Kublai Khan, who at the same time became the Emperor of China. He and his descendants ruled over China and the Chinese people for almost a century (until 1368). Kublai gave his dynasty the name Yuan, which became the designation not only of the Chinese possessions of the Mongols, but also of the entire empire of the Mongol feudal lords. The name was Chinese. In the ancient book of China “I Ching”, which interprets questions of existence, it is said: “Great Beginning Qian is the source of all things”, “Perfect Beginning Kun is the life of all things!” The concept of "beginning" in these two sayings is conveyed by the word "Yuan", and this word became the name of the Mongol empire. The capital of the empire was the city of Yanjing, the former capital of the Jurchen state, which received the name Dadu (“Great City”). Its Mongolian name is Khanbalik.

Mongol Empire and Papacy

The Mongol conquests attracted the close attention of the papacy, which tried to use the Mongol khans to implement their plans in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The first to make an attempt to establish contact with the Mongol khans was Pope Innocent IV. He sent a monk of the Franciscan Order, Giovanni Plano Carpini, to the Great Khan, who in 1245 reached the headquarters of Batu Khan, and from there went to Karakorum, where he arrived in 1246. Plano Carpini received an audience with the Great Khan Guyuk, to whom he presented the pope’s message . The papal ambassador achieved nothing but an arrogant answer.

In 1253, the French king Louis IX, closely associated with the church, sent William of Rubruk, a monk of the Franciscan Order, to the Mongols. The envoy of the French king, who had just completed the (seventh) crusade against Egypt, which ended in the complete defeat of the French crusader army, had to find out about the possibility of an alliance between the “most Christian” king and the Mongol khans against the Egyptian sultans. Rubruk from Constantinople traveled to Sudak, and from there through the Golden Horde and Central Asia headed to Karakorum, where he arrived in 1254. Mongke, who was then the Great Khan, received the ambassador of the French king, but demanded that the latter submit to his authority. In 1255 Rubruk returned to Europe.

The next attempt to establish contact with the Mongols was made by Pope Boniface VIII, who sent the monk Giovanni Monte Corvino to them. In 1294 Corvino arrived in Yanjing. Khubilai allowed him to live in the capital and build a Catholic church there. Corvino translated the New Testament into Mongolian and remained in China until the end of his life. The Mongols, in turn, made attempts to establish relations with the papacy. The most famous of these attempts was the embassy of Rabbav Sauma, a Nestorian monk of Uighur origin, sent by Ilkhan Arghun to the Pope. The purpose of the embassy was to prepare an alliance with the sovereigns of Western Christian countries for joint action in Syria and Palestine against Egypt, whose resistance stopped the aggressive movement of the Mongols. Sauma visited not only Rome, but also Genoa, as well as France (1287-1288). Sauma's embassy did not bring results, but the description of this journey served in the East as a source of information about the countries and peoples of the distant West.

Mongol army. Miniature from the "Collection of Chronicles" of Rashid ad-din. 1301-1314

Mongol Empire in the 40-60s of the 13th century.

Under Genghis Khan, the apparatus of governing the Mongol state was very simple. He had a number of Uyghur scribes who handled his personal correspondence. Subsequently, a number of officials from China, mainly from the Khitans and Jurchens, came to serve the Mongolian feudal lords, bringing with them many of the skills of the Chinese administration.

Genghis Khan bequeathed to his successors “Yasu” - a series of instructions that they were to follow in the affairs of governing the empire. According to these instructions, the management of finances and the management of military and civil affairs lay with four dignitaries. Under Genghis Khan's successor Ogedei, a population census was carried out for the first time in the empire, tax rates were established and postal services were organized. Until the reign of Khubilai, the language of official correspondence in the empire was the Uyghur language, which had its own written language. Since at this time they began to switch to the Mongolian language, which did not yet have its own written language, Kublai ordered one of his close associates, the Tibetan Pagba, a Buddhist monk, to develop a Mongolian script based on the Tibetan alphabet. Pagba fulfilled this order, and in 1269 a decree was issued on the transition to the Mongolian alphabet.

Genghis Khan and his successors were equally patronizing towards all religions and ministers of religious cults. But Khubilai gave preference to one of the Buddhist sects, the so-called “red caps” - the Sakya sect, which developed in Tibet in the 11th century. Khubilai's adviser on religious affairs was Pagba, the head of the Red Caps sect.

Despite the gigantic destruction caused by the wars of conquest of the Mongol feudal lords, trade relations between the countries and peoples that became part of the empire did not stop. The development of trade was also facilitated by the construction of roads and postal services by the Mongols. The conquerors needed good roads and well-established postal services for mainly military-strategic reasons. But these roads were also widely used by merchants. Along with new routes, ancient caravan routes were also maintained. One of them went from Central Asia along the northern slopes of the Tien Shan to Mongolia, to the Karakorum, and from there to Yanjing. The other ran from southern Siberia along the northern slopes of the Sayan Mountains to the Karakoram and Yanjing.

Wholesale caravan trade between the countries of Western and Central Asia and China was in the hands of Muslim merchants, mainly Persians and Tajiks, united in companies. The members of these powerful companies were called urtak. They sent caravans with hundreds, even thousands of people and pack animals. Genghis Khan already patronized this trade, and then his policy was continued by Ogedei and his successors - the great khans, as well as the ulus khans. Not content with the income from duties, the khans and large feudal lords themselves invested in trade, and the urtaks gave them their share of the income in goods. Khubilai and his successors took active measures to increase river and sea transport in China, being interested in this in connection with the growing needs for food, which was delivered to them from southern and central China. Under Khubilai, the reconstruction of the Great Chinese Canal system began. However, trade in the Mongol Empire was predominantly of a transit nature, and therefore it had little influence on the development of the productive forces of those countries through which trade routes passed, and, in particular, on the development of productive forces in Mongolia itself.

Almost without issuing metal money, Khubilai sought to transfer all monetary circulation to paper notes. By limiting the printing and issuance of paper money, he achieved the transformation of this money into a fairly stable currency. After the actual collapse of the Mongol Empire, trade between Western and Central Asia with China greatly decreased. But in the Chinese part of the empire, overseas trade continued to develop as before. It followed the old trade route: from the Persian Gulf along the coast of Hindustan to the eastern coast of Indo-China, and from there to the ports of Southeast China. Trade was carried out by Arab, Persian and Indian merchants. Their ships filled the harbors of Canton, Yangzhou, Hangzhou and Quanzhou. Maritime trade was also carried out with the countries of the Malay Peninsula, as well as with Java and Sumatra. The Philippines were also included in the orbit of this trade. Of course, the successful development of trade in the Yuan Empire cannot be attributed to the activities of the Mongol khans. The Mongol rulers of China were only interested in obtaining trade duties in their favor.

This was the Mongol Empire. It included many tribes and nationalities that differed greatly in their level of socio-economic development. Possessing special languages ​​and a special culture, they were all forcibly included in the Mongol state. Such an artificial unification could not be durable. The enslaved peoples waged a heroic struggle for liberation against the conquerors and ultimately regained their independence. The unified Mongol Empire lasted only 4 decades (until 1260), after which it broke up into virtually independent uluses.

Mongolia after the fall of power of the Mongol khans in China

During the reign of the Chinggisids (Yuan dynasty) in China, Mongolia proper became only a viceroyalty for the heir to the throne. But after the expulsion of the Mongol khans from China and the establishment of the Ming Empire there (1368), Kaan Togon-Timur fled with his troops to Mongolia. As a result of the wars of conquest of the XIII-XIV centuries. Mongolia lost a significant part of its population, who were cut off from their homeland and dissolved among other peoples. The values ​​captured in the form of military booty enriched only nomadic feudal lords, which did not affect the growth of productive forces in the country. After the restoration of the Chinese state, the economy of Mongolia was in a very difficult situation. Mongolia found itself cut off from the Chinese market - the only market where the Mongols could sell the products of their pastoral nomadic economy and where they could purchase the agricultural and craft products they needed.

The basis of the economy of Mongolia in the XIV-XV centuries. nomadic extensive cattle breeding remained. The arats wandered in small groups of ails, moving from place to place in search of pastures for livestock within a certain area that was the possession of one or another feudal lord, whose serfs these arats were. The feudal lords distributed their cattle to the Arats for grazing or used them on their farms as shepherds, milkers, and shearers. Along with the working rent, there was also a food rent: the arat gave its owner annually several heads of cattle, a certain amount of milk, felt, etc.

In the XIV-XV centuries. in Mongolia there was a process of further development of the feudal hierarchy. At the head was a Khan from the Chinggisids, below him stood the Chinggisid princes (taishi), below them were the middle and small feudal lords. The hereditary possessions of large feudal lords were now called uluses, or tumens, regardless of the number of feudal militia they fielded. Each ulus was divided into otoks, that is, large groups of ails, united by the fact that they occupied a common territory for their nomads and were headed by a hereditary ruler, who was a vassal of the owner of the ulus. Since individual regions of Mongolia were economically independent from each other, in the second half of the 14th and 15th centuries. large uluses began to strive for political independence. The authority and real power of the Mongol Khan fell more and more. Various feudal cliques elevated and overthrew first one or another khan, but always from the Genghisids. At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries. Long internecine wars began between the feudal lords of Eastern and Western Mongolia. In 1434, after the victory of the Oirat tribe (from Western Mongolia) over the Eastern Mongols (Khalkha Mongols), Daisun Khan of the Oirat found himself the ruler of all of Mongolia. But soon new civil strife began, and the country again fell apart into a number of virtually independent possessions (1455).

In the 15th century The history of Mongolia was characterized, on the one hand, as said, by incessant feudal strife, on the other hand, by frequent wars with the Ming Empire, and either the Mongol feudal lords attacked the border regions of China, or Chinese troops invaded Mongolia. In 1449, the feudal lord Essen-taishin, who actually ruled Mongolia on behalf of Daisun Khan, defeated the troops of the Ming Empire, capturing Emperor Yingzong himself. Mongol feudal lords in the 15th century. waged all these wars with China no longer for the sake of conquering territories, as before, but mainly in order to obtain from the Ming Empire the opening of markets for barter trade in the border regions of China and, since this trade was under state control, the establishment of higher prices for horses and cattle driven by Mongol feudal lords. The above-mentioned Essen-taishin, during negotiations with representatives of the Ming Empire, reproached them: “Why did you reduce the prices of horses and often sell worthless, damaged silk?” Chinese representatives justified themselves by saying that prices for horses had dropped because the Mongols brought in more and more of them every year. The Mongols delivered horses, livestock, furs, and horsehair to markets along the border, and Chinese merchants brought cotton and silk fabrics, cooking pots and other household items, grain, etc.

Internal civil strife and external wars ruined the Arat households, which pushed the Arats to fight their oppressors. The class struggle taking place in Mongolia is evidenced, for example, by the following fact: one of the Mongol feudal lords in the 40s of the 15th century. complained to the Ming emperor that 1,500 Arat families left him without permission for China. The Ming emperor returned them back to the “rightful owners.”