The Squall from the East

Image: The Mongol Mounted Archer 

Courtesy: http://www.aeroartinc.com/mongol-warrior-firing-bow-from-saddle.html

After many weeks of hard labor, I'm happy to announce that I have finished writing the first chapter of Unit III.

As you already know, the chapter is titled "The Squall from the East" and it focuses on the Mongol advance of Central Europe in 1241-42 as part of the extensive western campaign. As a result, Prince Batu managed to extend his appanage and in due time cut out his own empire, the Golden Horde, from the Mongol unified state.

I paid special attention to such unsolved issues as the withdrawal of the Tartar army and the outcome of the power struggle between the descendants of Chinggis Khan.

This is the first page of the long chapter:

If Latin Europe hadn't been filled to the brim with its own woes, it wouldn’t have disregarded the latest developments in the Far East.

There, on the far side of the inhabited world, the emerging superpower, which had managed to unite diverse groups of pastoral nomads, launched a sequence of military campaigns, swallowing neighbor states one by one.

All of a sudden, the “devil’s horsemen” broke into Eastern Europe. The Russian chronicler found it difficult to identify unfamiliar assailants who had scared the Rus’ traditional rivals, the Cumans, out of their wits, coercing them into a strained alliance with their adversaries in a futile effort to halt the incomprehensible fit of the wrath of the third party. The learned cleric was not aware of the intruders’ origin, religion, or vernacular: “unknown tribe came, which no one exactly knows, who they are, nor whence they came out, nor what their language is, nor of what race they are, nor what their faith is.” (1)

However, their name would run ahead of their galloping steeds. The well-versed people dubbed them Tartars-in tune with the legendary denizens of hell.

Fifteen years later, while the same invaders were making their second incursion and the mortal threat was already hanging upon the entire population of the Rus' principalities, the same writer added two macabre features to their group portrait: their overwhelming quantities: “came in countless numbers like locusts” (2) and their ruthlessness: “cutting down everybody like grass.” (3)  

The monastic author reviewed the outcome of a thoroughly-planned Mongol campaign carried out by a well-greased military machine. The winners exercised the mass slaughter of the civilian population without distinction of age, rank, or sex. Those who stayed alive were subjected to heinous humiliation, like raping girls in the presence of their mothers.  Being unable to comprehend this outburst of rage against innocent people, the monk explains the event in terms of an ecological disaster (the invasion of insects) or as an apocalyptic incident (the retribution for sins).

The same year the bell tolled for the Latin Christendom. The head of the terrible Assassins and the Crusaders’ bitter enemy, nicknamed “the old man of the mountain”, sent ambassadors to the French and English kings, urging them to weld an alliance to suppress “the fury of the Tartars.” The Saracen envoys elaborated that the leader of these rascals claimed to have received the divine mandate to conquer any race that opposed his will. He was the self-proclaimed God’s messenger “sent to subdue the nations who rebelled against him.”

To lay it on thick, the Muslim representatives described the Mongol s as the "monstrous and inhuman race of men" that built up a reputation of “incomparable archers” but stained it by eating raw meat, sucking blood, and practicing cannibalism. They broke through the Caspian Mountains and spread like a pandemic: “sent as a plague on mankind.” (4)