Genghis Khan (Temujin) is the greatest conqueror in the history of mankind, founder and great khan of the Mongol state.
The fate of Temujin, or Temujin, was rather difficult. He came from a noble Mongolian family who roamed with their herds along the banks of the Onon River (the territory of modern Mongolia). Born around 1155
When he was 9 years old, during the steppe civil strife, his father, Yesugeybahadur, was killed (poisoned). The family, having lost their protector and almost all livestock, had a chance to flee from their nomads. They barely survived the harsh winter in the wooded area.
Troubles did not stop pursuing Temujin - new enemies from the Taijiut tribe attacked the orphaned family and took the little Mongol prisoner, putting on a wooden slave collar.
The boy showed the firmness of his character, tempered by the hardships of childhood. Having broken the collar, Temujin was able to escape and return to his native tribe, which could not protect his family several years ago. The teenager became a zealous warrior: few of his relatives knew how to control a steppe horse so dexterously and accurately shoot from a bow, throw a lasso at full gallop and cut with a saber.
But the warriors of his tribe were struck by something else in Temujin - imperiousness, the desire to subjugate others. From those who stood under his banner, the young Mongolian commander demanded complete and unquestioning submission to his will. Disobedience was punishable only by death. He was as ruthless to the disobedient as to his blood enemies among the Mongols. Temujin was soon able to take revenge on all the offenders of his family.
He was not yet 20 years old when he began to unite the Mongol clans around him, gathering under his command a small detachment of soldiers. This was a very difficult matter, because the Mongol tribes constantly waged armed struggle among themselves, raiding neighboring nomad camps with the aim of taking possession of their herds and capturing people into slavery.
The steppe clans, and then the entire tribes of the Mongols, Temujin united around himself by force, and sometimes with the help of diplomacy. He married the daughter of one of the powerful neighbors, hoping for the support of his father-in-law's warriors in difficult times. But so far the young steppe leader had few allies and his own warriors, and he had to suffer failures.
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The hostile Merkit tribe once made a successful raid on Temujin's camp and was able to kidnap his wife. This was a great insult to the dignity of the Mongol commander. He redoubled his efforts to gather around him nomadic tribes and just a year later he was already in command of a significant cavalry army. With him, the future Genghis Khan inflicted a complete defeat on the numerous tribe of the Merkits, exterminating most of it and capturing their flocks, freeing his wife, who knew the fate of the captive.
The military successes of Temujin in the war against the Merkits attracted other Mongol tribes under his banner. Now they meekly gave their soldiers to the military leader. His army was growing all the time, and the territories of the vast Mongolian steppe were expanding, where now the nomads were subject to his rule.
Temujin constantly waged wars with the Mongol tribes, who refused to recognize his supreme power. At the same time, he was distinguished by perseverance and cruelty. So, he almost completely exterminated the Tatar tribe (this name in Europe was already called the Mongols, although as such the Tatars were destroyed by Genghis Khan in an internecine war).
Temujin was well versed in the tactics of war in the steppes. He unexpectedly attacked neighboring nomadic tribes and inevitably won. The survivors were offered the right to choose: either become his ally, or perish.
The leader Temujin fought his first big battle in 1193 in the Mongol steppes near Germany. At the head of 6,000 soldiers, he defeated the 10,000-strong army of his father-in-law Ung Khan, who began to contradict his son-in-law. The Khan army was commanded by the commander Sanguk, who, apparently, was very confident in the superiority of the tribal army entrusted to him. And therefore, he did not bother about reconnaissance or military outposts. Temujin caught the enemy by surprise in a mountain gorge and inflicted heavy damage on him.
By 1206, Temujin had become the strongest ruler in the steppes north of the Great Wall of China. That year is notable in his life in that at the kurultai (congress) of Mongolian feudal lords he was proclaimed a “great khan” over all Mongol tribes with the title “Genghis Khan” (from the Turkic “tengiz” - ocean, sea).
Under the name of Genghis Khan, Temujin entered world history. For the steppe Mongols, his title sounded like "general ruler", "real master", "precious ruler".
The first thing the great khan took care of was the Mongol army. Genghis Khan demanded that the leaders of the tribes, who recognized his supremacy, maintain permanent military detachments to protect the lands of the Mongols with their nomads and for campaigns on neighbors. The former slave no longer had open enemies among the Mongol tribes, and he began to prepare for wars of conquest.
To establish personal power and suppress any discontent in the country, Genghis Khan created a horse guard of 10,000 people. The best warriors from the Mongol tribes were recruited into it, and they enjoyed great privileges in the army of Genghis Khan. The guardsmen were his bodyguards. From among them, the ruler of the Mongol state appointed military leaders to the troops.
Genghis Khan's army was built according to the decimal system: tens, hundreds, thousands and tumens (they consisted of 10,000 soldiers). These military units were not only accounting units. A hundred and a thousand could perform independent combat missions. Tumen acted in the war already at the tactical level.
The command of the Mongolian army was also built according to the decimal system: the ten's manager, the centurion's, the thousand's manager, the temnik. For the highest positions - temniks - Genghis Khan appointed his sons and representatives of the tribal nobility from among those military leaders who by deed proved to him their loyalty and experience in military affairs. In the army of the Mongols, the strictest discipline was maintained along the entire command hierarchy. Any violation was severely punished.
The main branch of the army in Genghis Khan's army was the heavily armed cavalry of the Mongols proper. Her main weapons were a sword or saber, a pike and a bow with arrows. Initially, the Mongols protected their chest and head in battle with strong leather bibs and helmets. Over time, they acquired good protective equipment in the form of a variety of metal armor. Each Mongol warrior had at least two well-trained horses for the campaign and a large supply of arrows and arrowheads for them.
Light cavalry, and these were usually horse archers, consisted of warriors of the conquered steppe tribes. It was they who began the battles, bombarding the enemy with clouds of arrows and confusing his ranks. After that, the heavily armed cavalry of the Mongols themselves went on the attack in a dense mass. Their attack was more like a ramming blow than a dashing raid of Mongol horsemen.
Genghis Khan went down in military history as a great strategist and tactician of that time. For his commanders-temniks and other military leaders, he developed rules for the conduct of war and the organization of all military service. These rules were strictly enforced under the conditions of rigid centralization of military and state administration.
The strategy and tactics of Genghis Khan were characterized by: careful conduct of near and long-range reconnaissance, a surprise attack on any enemy, even noticeably inferior to him in strength, the desire to dismember the enemy forces in order to destroy them in parts afterwards. They widely and skillfully used ambushes and luring the enemy into them. Genghis Khan and his generals skillfully maneuvered large masses of cavalry on the battlefield. The pursuit of the fleeing enemy was conducted not with the aim of seizing more military booty, but with the aim of destroying it.
At the very beginning of his conquests, Genghis Khan did not always assemble an all-Mongolian cavalry army. Scouts and spies provided him with information about the new enemy, about the number, deployment and routes of movement of his troops. This made it possible for Genghis Khan to determine the number of troops needed to defeat the enemy and quickly respond to all his offensive actions.
But the greatness of Genghis Khan's military leadership was also in something else: he knew how to react swiftly to the actions of the opposing side, changing his tactics depending on the circumstances. So, faced for the first time with strong fortresses in China, Genghis Khan began to crush various types of throwing and siege machines of the same Chinese in the war. They were taken for the army disassembled and quickly assembled during the siege of a new city. When he needed mechanics or doctors, who were not among the Mongols, Genghis Khan discharged them from other countries or took them prisoner. In the latter case, military specialists became khan's slaves, who were kept in very good conditions.
Until the last days of his life, Genghis Khan strove to expand his truly enormous possessions to the maximum. Therefore, each time the Mongol army went further and further from the steppes of Mongolia.
First, the great conqueror of the Middle Ages decided to annex other nomadic peoples to his power. 1207 - he conquered vast areas north of the Selenga River and in the upper reaches of the Yenisei. The military forces (cavalry) of the conquered tribes were included in the all-Mongolian army.
Then it was the turn of the large Uyghur state in East Turkestan. 1209 - a huge army of the great khan invaded his territory and, seizing cities and blooming oases one after another, won a complete victory over the Uighurs. After this invasion, only heaps of ruins remained from many trading cities and villages of farmers.
The destruction of settlements in the occupied lands, the total extermination of recalcitrant tribes and fortified cities that tried to defend themselves with weapons in their hands, were characteristic features of Genghis Khan's conquests. The strategy of intimidation made it possible for him to successfully solve military problems and keep the conquered peoples in obedience.
1211 - Genghis Khan's cavalry army attacked North China. The Great Wall of China - the most grandiose defensive structure in the history of human civilization - did not become an obstacle for the conquerors. The Mongol cavalry defeated the troops of the new enemy who stood in its way. 1215 - the city of Beijing (Yanjing) was captured by cunning, which the Mongols subjected to a long siege.
In Northern China, the Mongols destroyed about 90 cities, the population of which resisted the army of the great Mongol khan. In this campaign, Genghis Khan adopted the engineering combat equipment of the Chinese - various throwing machines and battering rams on his horse troops. Chinese engineers trained the Mongols to use them and deliver them to besieged cities and fortresses.
1218 - The Mongols, continuing their conquests, captured the Korean Peninsula.
After hiking in North China and Korea, Genghis Khan turned his attention further west - towards the sunset. 1218 - the Mongol army invaded Central Asia and captured Khorezm. This time, Genghis Khan found a plausible pretext for the invasion - several Mongol merchants were killed in the border town of Khorezm. And so it was necessary to punish the country where the Mongols were treated “badly”.
With the appearance of the enemy on the borders of Khorezm, Khorezmshah Muhammad, at the head of a large army (numbers up to 200,000 people are called), set out on a campaign. A great battle took place at Karaku, which was distinguished by such persistence that by evening there was no winner on the battlefield. With the onset of darkness, the generals took their armies to marching camps.
The next day, the Khorezmshah Muhammad refused to continue the battle due to heavy losses, which amounted to almost half of the army he had assembled. Genghis Khan, for his part, also suffered heavy losses, retreated. But this was a military trick of the great commander.
The conquest of the huge Central Asian state of Khorezm continued. 1219 - 200,000 Mongolian troops under the command of the sons of Genghis Khan, Oktay and Zagatay, laid siege to the city of Otrar (the territory of modern Uzbekistan). The city was defended by a 60,000-strong garrison under the command of the brave Khorezm commander Gazer Khan.
The siege of Otrar with frequent attacks was carried out for four months. During this time, the number of its defenders was reduced by three times. Famine and disease began in the camp of the besieged, since it was especially bad with drinking water. In the end, the Mongols broke into the city, but could not take possession of the fortress citadel. Gazer Khan with the remnants of his warriors was able to hold out in it for another month. By order of the great khan, Otrar was destroyed, most of the inhabitants were killed, and some - artisans and young people - were taken into slavery.
1220, March - the Mongol army led by the great Mongol khan himself laid siege to one of the largest Central Asian cities - Bukhara. In it stood a 20-thousand army of the Khorezmshah, which, together with its commander, fled when the Mongols approached. The townspeople, not having the strength to fight, opened the fortress gates to the conquerors. Only the local ruler decided to defend himself, hiding in a fortress, which was set on fire and destroyed by the Mongols.
1220, June - Mongols led by Genghis Khan laid siege to another large Khorezm city - Samarkand. The city was defended by a 110-thousandth (the figure is greatly overstated) garrison under the command of the governor Alub Khan. His soldiers made frequent forays beyond the city walls, preventing the enemy from carrying out siege work. However, there were townspeople who, wishing to save their property and lives, opened the gates of Samarkand to the Mongols.
The army of the great khan burst into the city, and hot battles with the defenders of Samarkand began on its streets and squares. But the forces were unequal, and besides, Genghis Khan introduced more and more units into battle to replace those who were tired of fighting. Seeing that he could not hold Samarkand, Alub Khan, at the head of 1000 horsemen, was able to escape from the city and break through the blockade ring of the invaders. The surviving 30,000 Khorezm soldiers were killed by the Mongols.
The conquerors also met staunch resistance during the siege of the city of Khojent (modern Tajikistan). It was defended by a garrison headed by one of the best Khorezm commanders - the fearless Timur-Melik. When he realized that the garrison was no longer able to repel the attacks, he and some of the soldiers plunged into ships and sailed down the Yaksart River, pursued along the coast by the Mongol cavalry. However, after a fierce battle, Timur-Melik was able to break away from his pursuers. After his departure, the city of Khujand surrendered the next day to the mercy of the winner.
The army of Genghis Khan continued to capture the Khorezm cities one after another: Merv, Urgench … 1221 - they laid siege to the city of Bamiyan and after many months of struggle took it by storm. Genghis Khan, whose beloved grandson was killed during the siege, ordered not to spare either women or children. Therefore, the city with its entire population was completely destroyed.
After the fall of Khorezm and the conquest of Central Asia, Genghis Khan made a campaign in North-West India, capturing this large territory. But he did not go further to the south of Hindustan: he was constantly attracted by unknown countries at sunset.
The Great Khan, as usual, thoroughly worked out the route of a new campaign and sent his best commanders Jebe and Subedei far to the west at the head of their tumens and auxiliary troops of the conquered peoples. Their path passed through Iran, Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus. So the Mongols found themselves on the southern approaches to Russia, in the Don steppes.
In those days, the Polovtsian vezhi, which had long lost their military strength, roamed in the Wild Field. The Mongols defeated the Polovtsians without much difficulty, and they fled to the borderlands of the Russian lands. 1223 - commanders Jebe and Subadey defeated the united army of several Russian princes and Polovtsian khans in a battle on the Kalka River. After the victory won, the vanguard of the Mongolian army turned back.
In 1226-1227, Genghis Khan made a trip to the land of the Tanguts Si-Xia. He instructed one of his sons to continue the conquest of Chinese lands. The anti-Mongol uprising that began in the conquered North China caused great alarm in the great khan.
Genghis Khan died during his last campaign against the Tanguts, in 1227 the Mongols arranged a magnificent funeral for him and, having destroyed all the participants in these sad celebrations, were able to keep the location of Genghis Khan's grave in complete secrecy to this day …
A. Shishov