The Western Campaigns — Persia, Rus, and the Near-Miss in Europe

The Khwarazmian Empire in 1218 was one of the great powers of the Islamic world. Its ruler, Shah Muhammad II, controlled Persia, Afghanistan, and much of Central Asia from his capital at Samarkand. He had a large professional army and a network of fortified cities. He was not, by any measure of the time, weak. What he lacked was strategic wisdom.

Genghis Khan's initial approach was commercial. He sent a large trading caravan to the Khwarazmian Empire in 1218. When the governor of the border city of Otrar massacred the caravan members and seized the goods — apparently with Shah Muhammad's knowledge — Genghis sent diplomatic envoys demanding explanation. Muhammad had the envoys killed. The response came in 1219.

The Khwarazmian campaign was the first demonstration of the Mongols at their most sophisticated. Genghis divided his forces and attacked on multiple axes simultaneously, appearing at cities the Khwarazmians believed were safely in their rear. Muhammad, unable to predict where the main blow would fall, refused to concentrate his army for a decisive battle and dispersed his forces behind city walls — precisely the wrong strategy against an adversary that excelled at sieges and psychological warfare. City after city fell. Samarkand, defended by a garrison of tens of thousands, surrendered in a matter of days. Merv, which resisted, was destroyed so thoroughly that medieval chroniclers claimed a million people were killed (modern historians consider this a gross exaggeration, but the scale of destruction was real). Muhammad fled, died on an island in the Caspian Sea, a fugitive in his own empire.

His son Jalal al-Din fought on and temporarily defeated the Mongols at the Battle of Parvan in 1221 — one of the rare Mongol defeats — but was overwhelmed shortly after at the Indus River and escaped into India. The Khwarazmian state effectively ceased to exist within two years.

The Rus campaign came next, in stages. A Mongol reconnaissance force under Jebe and Subutai had already penetrated as far as the Crimea in 1221–1223, defeating a combined Rus-Cuman force at the Battle of the Sit River. The full invasion came in 1237–1242, now under Batu Khan and Subutai. The Rus principalities, politically divided and unable to coordinate their defense, were dismantled one by one. Ryazan was destroyed in December 1237 after a three-day siege. Vladimir fell. Kiev, the ancient center of Rus civilization, was taken in 1240 and burned.

What followed was the European campaign that medieval Europe came to see as the apocalypse. In the spring of 1241, two Mongol armies moved simultaneously into Poland and Hungary. At Legnica in April 1241, a coalition of Polish, German, and Templar forces was annihilated. Two days later, at Mohi in Hungary, Subutai destroyed the Hungarian royal army in a battle of encirclement. The road to Vienna was open.

And then the Mongols stopped. In the winter of 1241–1242, they withdrew back east.

The reasons have been debated ever since. The death of the Great Khan Ögedei in December 1241 required Batu to return for the succession kurultai. There are also arguments that the western European geography — forested, wet, less suited to cavalry operations — presented logistical difficulties. Some historians argue the withdrawal was simply a redeployment, and Europe escaped full conquest more by accident than by military resistance. The European states that claimed to have repulsed the Mongols had not, in fact, defeated them in any pitched battle. They had been spared by events east of the Urals.

The Western Campaigns — Persia, Rus, and the Near-Miss in Europe

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