by Ted Stewart
^23. See Kennedy, Great Arab Conquests, 169–99.
^24. See ibid., 225–95.
^25. See ibid., 214–15, 222–23.
^26. Quoted in Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 953.
^27. For information about the conquest of Spain and Portugal, see ibid., 953–54; Kennedy, Great Arab Conquests, 308–19.
^28. For a discussion of the reasons for the success of the Arab armies and the conversion motivation and process, see Kennedy, Great Arab Conquests, 366–76.
^29. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 954.
^30. Ibid., 964.
^31. Quoted in Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles, 155.
^32. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 961.
^33. Quoted in Nicolle, Poitiers, 20.
^34. For a full account of the invasion of France and the Battle of Poitiers, see Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles, 148–58; Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 964–67; Kennedy, Great Arab Conquests, 319–23; and Nicolle, Poitiers, 1–88.
^35. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 964. See also Durant, Age of Faith, 461, wherein Durant says that Charles Martel “saved Europe for Christianity by turning back the Moslems at Tours.”
Chapter 5
The Mongol Horde Turns Back
Part of Genghis Khan’s strategy was calculated massacre: if a city resisted his armies, once it fell to him—and they always fell— he had all the inhabitants slaughtered. The chroniclers’ reports of the numbers of dead are staggering.
Robert Cowley in What If
Five hundred years after the Muslim army had been driven from southern France, another army marched on Europe, this one more savage and dangerous than any that had ever been witnessed on the continent before.
This raging army left nothing but devastation in its wake. Whole cities were destroyed, every man, woman, and child beheaded, their bloody skulls stacked in huge piles outside the city walls. Entire cultures and peoples—some of them highly advanced—were wiped off the earth, their history and societies reduced to the point that they were never heard from again. Indeed, the destructive power of this brutal army would be felt throughout Asia and Eastern Europe for the next seven hundred years, to the point that some modern-day nations are still dealing with its devastating impacts.
Such was the power of the Mongol horde.
In 1236, after raging through China and eastern Asia, the Mongols set their eyes on Europe.
The timing couldn’t have been any worse, for the world was at a crossroads that it had never approached before. The Dark Ages were receding. Advances in science, technology, art, agriculture, and law were slowly working their way into the light. More important, the embryonic ideas of individual freedom and representative government were just beginning to take hold, with some European leaders beginning to concede to their people the essential elements of free will.
At this critical time, the threat of civilization devolving into chaos rose once again.
The Mongol army raged in from the Mongolian steppes. Throughout all of Eurasia, city after city fell. With the approach of the vicious army, the future of Western civilization hung in the balance, the outcome anything but assured.
But to understand the grave threat that the Mongol army presented, we must first understand the nature of the Mongol treatment of its conquered peoples and the condition of Europe as its invasion began.
Gurganj (Capital City of the Kingdom of Khwarizm) Central Asia AD 1221
What had started as a modest settlement along the western bank of the Amu Darya River had grown into the most beautiful city in the entire kingdom. Dating back to the fourth century BC, when the city was nothing but a small square of mud homes, it had spread south and then west until it covered a large tract of the broad plain.
Thick ramparts with four beautiful gates kept the city safe, the massive Gate of Peace the most beautiful of them all. Across the bridge, the Garden of Amusements lay just outside the city walls. Canals ran up to each gate but then stopped, there being no room inside the crowded city for them to continue any farther. The great palace of Ma’mun stood next to the Hajjaj gate, its blue-tiled dome reflecting the morning light. Inside the highly fortified city, residential neighborhoods took up most of the space. Interspersed among the rock and brick houses were a magnificent mosque, several lesser palaces, three minarets, and a considerable library. Perhaps most surprising of all the structures were the five large and lively schools, nearly unheard-of for a city of this size.
If anything showed where the people of Khwarizm had placed their faith, it was the presence of the schools.
For generations, the kingdom of Khwarizm had been isolated, surrounded by mountains and rolling steppes. But over the past hundred years it had reemerged as a player in world trade. Having tasted greatness under the Persian Empire, it was striving to touch greatness once again.
But the Mongols were about to ensure that would never be the case.
He was an old man, almost seventy, with three wives, fourteen children, a small patch of land outside the city walls, and a rock home inside. His name was Al-Marwazi. White hair. White beard. Thin frame, with long fingers and a solemn face. Trained as an astronomer, he had achieved a certain degree of fame, but he was a teacher, not a fighter, and certainly not trained in the art of war. It didn’t matter. Like everyone else in the city, he was focused on just one thing: this day, the next few hours.
If the city were going to survive, it would be only because of what he and his fellow citizens did right now.
He looked down the line of soldiers waiting atop the city wall. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands, maybe. The archers were nearest the ramparts, their weapons ready. Behind them, more archers, then infantry and bulwark defenders. Some of the men, himself among them, were much too old. And there were far too many boys among the fighters. But again, it didn’t matter, not with the danger that was riding toward them from the steppes.
Al-Marwazi stared over the plain and considered the events that had brought the Mongols to their land.
Earlier, the Mongol king had sent a caravan to the city under the guise of soliciting trade. Everyone knew the Mongol traders were really spies sent to scout the best way to attack. Not wanting to give them information, the sultan had ordered them killed.
Then they had prepared for war, for the Khwarizmi were not fools. Most of them knew that, caravan or no, an invasion was inevitable. And the pessimists had been proven right. Within months, the khan’s army had moved through the kingdom, destroying every city and small town in its path. The capital was the only urban center of any significance that hadn’t already fallen under the Mongol hand.
Being at the back end of the trail of destruction, the people of Khwarizm understood what was headed their way. That was why they were so frightened. Some of the refugees from previous engagements had made their way to the capital, telling of entire cities razed, thousands of beheaded bodies stacked outside the city walls, everything of any value taken, including a frightening number of slaves.
So it was that Al-Marwazi stood upon the walls and watched in terror as the violent Mongol army drew near.
They were a few miles in the distance still, but they were coming, their horses kicking up a trail of dust that betrayed their progress. There were no infantry, only riders, each of them armed for war. Beside each mounted warrior, other horses were herded along the way.
They were coming much more slowly than he would have thought, and Al-Marwazi squinted into the distance. A thousand archers moved forward along the wall, getting ready to stop the assault by sending down the rains of hell.
Looking at the billowing cloud of dust, he knew the archers wouldn’t be enough.
He expected to hear the thunder from the horses, but the Mongols had tied rags around their hooves to muff
le the sound of the attack. Why they did it, he didn’t know. A night or surprise attack, maybe, but not this, a daylight frontal assault. It was just one of many things about the Mongols that he didn’t understand.
“Archers!” the military commander cried as the invaders drew closer.
He listened as the thousand archers mounted arrows beside their bows, then turned to watch the army trekking across the dusty plain.
Something caught his eye: a mass of movement running wildly before the horses. Riders on each side kept herding it back into line. He lifted his hand to shade the morning sun. It took a few seconds before he realized what he was seeing.
Hundreds of naked children were being herded before the coming horde!
Al-Marwazi took a sudden breath of utter fear, then clenched his hands, his fist growing tight around his cankered sword.
The Mongols were herding children!
A cry of rage and horror rose from atop the city walls.
A thousand children before the army!
He had to fight the bile down.
They were using children—Khwarizmi children taken from the outer province—herding them before their army to protect them from the arrows that would soon come raining down.
He turned in terror toward the archers, almost falling to his knees. They stood there, their arrows drawn. But not one released an arrow as the Mongols drew ever nearer.
He swallowed hard, his mind racing, drops of sweat dripping into his eyes.
Al-Marwazi had anticipated a day of terror.
But he had never imagined this!
The Dark Days of Europe
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe descended into a long night of instability and darkness—that era known as the Dark Ages.
In AD 410, Rome was a thriving city of over a million people. By AD 560, it had largely been abandoned, crumbling to a struggling village of a few thousand souls. The beautiful Colosseum had been damaged by earthquake and fire, and would soon be looted for its iron and stone; same for the mighty Forum, as well as all of the other beautiful structures that had made Rome the magnificent city it once had been.
The glory days of the Empire had faded to a distant memory. Gone were the Roman legions that had protected the borders and assured security. Gone were the uniform legal system and empire-wide economy. Gone were the unity, security, and prosperity that the Empire had provided. And the decay of the Empire wasn’t limited to the cities. Throughout the countryside, much of the farmland had been abandoned and was returning to nature. The celebrated Roman roads and highway system fell into disrepair. With the destruction of the transportation system, trade and communication suffered.
Rome wasn’t the only city forsaken. Urban life throughout the continent had been almost entirely abandoned. Without the capacity to secure sufficient food supplies, and without any protection from the barbarians, the major cities in Europe could not sustain themselves. By the tenth century, there were probably only a dozen or so towns in all of Europe, none of them with a population of more than ten thousand people.1 Without the support of major cities, safety could be found only in small, often isolated communities centered on a local baron (in England known as a lord) or a monastery.
Barons and bishops had to be self-sufficient, for the communities that surrounded them were typically made up of only fifty to five hundred families, hardly enough to call a kingdom, and rarely enough to defend themselves. Because these rural barons and bishops had their own laws and their own armies (such as they were), it wasn’t surprising that the most influential and unifying power within the whole of Europe became the church.
In an arrangement that came to be known as feudalism, small farmers, known as serfs, aligned themselves with a local baron, relying upon him and his knights for protection.2 Though they were not slaves, these serfs were forced to surrender much of their freedom for protection, a necessary evil in such a hostile world.
The local kings were at the top of the social ladder. But the ladder wasn’t very tall. Because they had no standing army, the kings were dependent upon the barons to supply mounted knights, as well as serfs for their infantry. This forced them to negotiate from a position of beggary, and the reality was that they had little real power. The entire continent was riddled with strife, for it was presumed that any other baron’s fiefdom was subject to taking if one had the means of doing so. For these and other reasons, war was a constant of the feudal age, every baron claiming “the right of private war,” every king “free to embark at any time upon . . . robbery of another ruler’s land,” until “there was scarce a day in the twelfth century when some part of what is now France was not at war.”3
And though the church deplored this constant state of war, there was one military campaign that it did support. As discussed in the previous chapter, Islamic armies seized the Holy Land from the Christian Byzantine Empire in 637 or 638. Although Jerusalem was occupied by Muslim forces, it remained a holy city to all Christian Europe. In 1095, Pope Urban II called for Christendom to reclaim the city.
One year later, under the rather uninspired leadership of Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, several hundred thousand commoners set out to retake the Holy Land. Their knowledge of geography and war was not impressive. After mistaking several European cities for Jerusalem, they finally stumbled into Asia, where they were slaughtered by the Turks. Despite this disheartening start, at the urging of successive popes, other Crusades were undertaken. Two hundred years of mortal combat followed until, by 1291, European leaders had sponsored a total of eight individual Crusades. Some of them were successful; most were not. When the city of Acre (now Akko) was recaptured by the Saracens in 1291, the last of the major European strongholds in the Middle East was extinguished.4
Even though they did not ultimately accomplish their goal of reclaiming the Holy Land, the Crusades still helped to propel the Europeans forward, many scholars suggest, mainly because they initiated contact with the advanced cultures of Islam. Some contend this is absurd.5
Either way, there is no doubt that the era of the Crusades, as well as the five hundred years that preceded them, were some of the most difficult times the people of Europe had been called upon to endure. But as the next century began to unfold, things were starting to change.
After all of the suffering, the Dark Ages were giving way to the light.
The Dawn of a New Age
Throughout the Europe of the thirteenth century, the various kings began to consolidate their power and organize their people into potent and functioning kingdoms. For example, by 1250, the king of France had established a kingdom of influence and authority. Fifty years later, the French monarch was actually powerful enough to stand up to the pope.
For a variety of reasons, feudalism was on the wane. The feudal barons grew weaker. Trade and commerce, as well as banking and industry, were accelerating. Currency was being normalized, a development that aided many commercial endeavors. Economies were growing.
The reemergence of the cities had also begun. By 1200, Paris was the largest city north of the Alps, with a population of one hundred thousand. Other cities with populations of fifty thousand included Douai in northern France and Ghent in modern-day Belgium. London had a population of twenty thousand. The growth of these cities further led to the weakening of the feudal barons, their role as protectors becoming less and less necessary.
Agriculture, too, was going through major changes. The heavy plow was brought into common use. Three-field crop rotation became the norm, the rotation of winter wheat, rye, peas, lentils, and beans significantly increasing production while at the same time keeping the land more fertile. Forests were being cleared, swamps were being drained, and additional lands were being tilled. Fewer people went hungry. Starvation from a local drought or other small-scale natural disaster became less common. Health increased, especially among the young
, even if only slightly, as diets were improved.
With more productive crops and better communications, shipping, and roads, opportunities for trading the fruits of a farmer’s labors were significantly increased.
For the first time, common people had the opportunity of accumulating a certain degree of wealth: a few animals, scattered pieces of simple furniture, cooking utensils, work tools, maybe even a few pieces of silver. This greater individual wealth also fueled commercial activities.
Science stepped out of the overwhelming shadow of superstition. As the feudal barons grew weaker, more powerful monarchs rose in their place, men who had the reach and resources to bring a semblance of stability to the lands that they ruled.
As one noted historian has said in describing the crucial twelfth and thirteenth centuries:
While political power centralized during the 12th and 13th centuries, the energies and talents of Europe were gathering in one of civilization’s great bursts of development. Stimulated by commerce, a surge took place in art, technology, building, learning, exploration by land and sea, universities, cities, banking and credit, and every sphere that enriched life and widened horizons. Those 200 years were the High Middle Ages, a period that brought into use the compass and mechanical clock, the spinning wheel and treadle loom, the windmill and watermill; a period when Marco Polo traveled to China and Thomas Aquinas set himself to organize knowledge, when universities were established . . . ; . . . Roger Bacon delved into experimental science . . . ; . . . while the soaring cathedrals rose arch upon arch, triumphs of creativity, technology, and faith.6
Europe was positioned to emerge from the dark days of the early Middle Ages. And all of these developments were the result of, and the cause for, greater personal freedom and recognition of legal rights.
The age of arbitrary rule and tyranny was truly under siege. Personal freedom and liberty were being experienced in the birthplaces of capitalism—small towns in Italy and northern Europe.
