Ögedei Khan - The Mongol Leader Who Ravaged Asia & Europe #sponsored

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During the 13th century,

an unrelenting and unstoppable force swept through Asia and then Europe.

It was the Mongol Horde under the leadership of the fearsome Genghaskhan, or Jangghaskhan,

if you feel like being more accurate.

As one of the mightiest conquerors in history,

Genghaskhan created an empire the size of

which the world had never seen

or even thought possible.

But Genghaskhan died in 1227,

decades before his kingdom reached the peak of its power.

It was up to his descendants to continue his conquering ways

and ensure the glory of the Mongol Empire.

And first up was his son and heir, Ogadeay.

Ogade, also spelled ode, ogodai, and a few other variations,

was born circa 1186 AD, somewhere in the Kamag Mongols,

which was the mysterious tribal confederation

that lived on the Mongolian plateau

and preceded the Mongol Empire.

We're going to have to keep it vague here since as a nomadic people,

the Mongols are not exactly a fountain of knowledge.

It would be wrong to say that they did not keep any records.

However, it is true

that they did not keep a lot of records

and that most of the stuff we know about them comes from secondary sources,

usually in the form of other cultures

that had the misfortune of encountering the Mongol juggernaut.

To say that Ogade lived in his daddy's shadow would be the understatement of

the century.

After all, his father was none other than Genghaskhan,

one of history's most predigious and ruthless conquerors.

Few names inspire more fear

and dread throughout the world during the 13th century than

that of Genghaskhan.

Especially if you heard that he was coming your way.

As the founder and first Kagan or emperor of the Mongol Empire,

Gangghaskhan took the Mongols from a bunch of tribes in the steps of Central

Asia and unleashed a wave of destruction upon the world the likes of

which it had never seen on the way towards creating the largest contiguous land

empire in history,

second only to the British Empire.

Obviously, when that is the kind of family legacy you have to live up

to,

you have your work seriously cut out for you.

Of course, being the son of the Kagun did have its benefits.

When he came of age, Ogadeay was given a large swath of land,

a vast army, and the best tutoring in the ways of war.

He knew that it would not be long before he would have to prove

his worth in battle,

just like his older brothers.

For Ogade, that time came around 1211 AD when he was in his mid20s.

His father was still fighting with theQin and Western Shia dynasties in China.

Clearly, whatever Ogade did was enough to impress the old man, though,

because when it came time to designate an heir, Genghis chose him.

Despite the fact that Ogade was the third of four sons

that the Mongol leader had with his Katun

or queen consort,

Perte.

Genghis died of uncertain causes in 1227 AD while campaigning in Western Shia.

Although he had expressed his desire for Ogade to succeed him

as the great Khan,

something like this was not done lightly

and the official procedure had to take place at a great council known

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Gathering everyone in the same room together took some time,

which was why Ogade did not actually become the new Kagun until 2 years

later.

In the meantime, his youngest brother to Louie served as regent,

although he mainly filled the role of a civil administrator

and was never considered a Kagun himself.

When it came time for the Coral Thai,

Ogodai was elected as the new great Khan without too much fuss.

Only four men could have claimed to succeed Genghis.

Ogadeay's oldest brother, Joi, had already died around the same time as Genghis,

and the two remaining ones, Chagatai and Tthui,

were both willing to fulfill their father's wishes.

Therefore, in 1229, Ogade Khan assumed command of the most vicious

and relentless army known to man.

And with it, he intended to do the same thing his father did every

night.

Try to take over the world.

When Genghaskhan died, he was in the middle of a prolonged

and extremely bloody conflict with aqin dynasty in North China.

So unsurprisingly, Ogadeay continued his father's war when he became great Khan.

He launched new offenses against the Chinese, trying to capture their new capital,

which theQin Emperor had relocated to Kiang.

However, none of these initial skirmishes went his way.

Actually, his forces suffered one of their most lopsided defeats ever at the Battle

of Da Chang Yuan in 1229 where 400 Chinese cavalry men led by a

monk named Wan Yan Chen bested a Mongol army of 8,000 soldiers.

In fact, Chen was

so impressive in his efforts

that his later death at the Battle of Sanfang Mountain prompted a show of

respect from the Mongol generals who hoped

that one day he would be reincarnated on their side.

His foot was broken, but he didn't surrender.

His mouth was cut up to the ear.

He bled but shouted until death he didn't yield.

The great generals discussed the matter,

then poured wine and mar's milk on the ground for ritual and celebrated him,

saying, "Great men, when you are born another day, you must come to us."

Despite the initial setbacks, Ogadeay persevered.

And after a few years of fighting, the tide turned in his favor.

He received help from the Song Dynasty who were enemies of theQin state

and saw this war

as the perfect opportunity to settle some old scores

and regain some of the territories

that they had previously seated to their neighbors to the north.

With their assistance, Ogade reached theQin capital of Kiang in 1232

and laid siege to it.

He then left the battlefield to dedicate his attention to other affairs,

placing the fate of the military campaign in the extremely capable hands of his

general Subetai.

Like his father, Ogade fought on several fronts at once,

trusting his highest ranking generals to handle matters when he was not there.

In fact, from here on,

he mainly adopted a hands-off approach to his military campaigns.

Everyone, including Ogade himself,

knew that he wasn't the sharpest military mind in the world.

Genghis likely chose him

as his heir because he possessed good leadership qualities like intelligence,

charisma, and composure, not because he was the second coming of Alexander the Great.

That's what generals were for.

He communicated with them through an innovative system called the Yam,

a network of relay stations throughout the empire

that allowed messengers to travel for days on end,

stopping along the way for supplies

and fresh horses before passing the message onto a rested rider,

which sounds an awful lot like the postal system

when it first started here in the US,

doesn't it?

So, the Mongols had a postal system.

The Mongols were famed for their riding prowess,

and it was said that they could do everything on horseback, including eating,

going to the bathroom, and even sleeping.

The system wasn't completely original, though.

The Aimemened Empire did something similar over 1,500 years earlier.

But it was incredibly effective, as these skilled riders could cover in days,

distances that others would travel in weeks.

Genghis first introduced this system to the Mongols,

but Ogodai Khan greatly expanded it

and used it to stay in constant communication with his generals throughout his everinccreasing

empire.

And speaking of generals,

Ogade used many of the military commanders who had already proven their worth to

his father.

And chief among them was Seabatai,

who was without a shadow of a doubt one of the greatest military strategists

in history.

And a shameless plug incoming.

If you don't believe us,

you can check out the bio we did on him a few years back,

hosted by my predecessor, the esteemed Simon Whistler.

Of course, surrounded by a powerful

and determined enemy with no reinforcements on the way,

the siege of Kiang could only end one way for theQ dynasty.

It took over a year,

but famine and disease ultimately forced the Chinese to either surrender

or face a slow,

agonizing death behind their impregnable city walls.

TheQin Emperor A Jang managed to escape Kiang

and fled to the city of Kaihou,

leaving the defense of the capital in the hands of a general named Chi

Liu.

The general however knew when he was staring defeat right in the face.

So he surrendered to the invading army.

Afterward, with the help of the Song Dynasty,

who was still thirsting for revenge against theQin state,

the Mongol forces laid siege to Kaiho next.

There was nowhere else to run this time.

This was the last stand.

Following a much shorter siege,

Sabatai breached the walls of the city

and Emperor Ahjang committed suicide to avoid being captured.

Like many others who bore witness to the wrath of Khan,

theQin dynasty had fallen

and its lands were divided between the Mongols

and the Song Dynasty for now.

While part of Ogadeay's army was busy with theQin dynasty,

he sent another contingent to deal with another one of his father's lingering conflicts,

that against the Kurasmian Empire.

Even for a conqueror as ferocious and bloodthirsty as Genghaskhan,

his campaign against Kurasmia had been particularly gruesome,

laying complete waste to some of the biggest cities inside the empire

and killing all of the inhabitants.

At the beginning of the 13th century,

Kurasmio was the dominant force in central Asia.

But it took Genghis just two years to completely subdue it.

The Corasmian leader at the time, Sha Muhammad II,

fled his kingdom and died circa 1220 somewhere near the Caspian Sea.

His eldest son and heir, Jalal Alin,

tried to mount a comeback with less than stellar results.

However, following Genghis' death,

Aldine did manage to score a victory at Damon against another one of Ogadeay's

trusted generals,

Chicagon.

However, all this did was prolong the inevitable.

This was a minor setback for Ogade Khan,

which showed him that he simply needed to throw more men at the problem

until it went away.

So, he did.

Ogade reinforced Charmon with a new army of 30,000 to 50,000 soldiers

and let him loose upon the Middle East.

With fresh forces, the general added substantially to the already gargantuan Mongol Empire.

He didn't even go after Jalal Aldine first.

He knew that Aldine was already struggling to establish a foothold in the area

and was fighting with the Aubid dynasty to maintain control over his little kingdom.

Whenever Charmon was ready, the last Kurasmian Sha would be ripe for the picking.

Until then, though, the Mongol general focused his attention on Persia and Coruscant,

two regions that had long been supporters of the Kurasmian Empire.

As expected, the Mongol fury had been swift and merciless.

And in just one year,

they were both under Ogadeay's control with just the fortified city of Isvahan acting

as the lone hold out.

But once again, having an overwhelming numbers advantage meant

that the Mongol general could simply leave a contingent of his army to lay

siege on the stronghold

and just keep going with the rest of his campaign.

He knew that maybe not today or tomorrow,

but eventually the city would either surrender or starve.

As the last act of a desperate man,

Jalal Odin tried to appeal to the men who were once his enemies,

the Aubid dynasty, the Saljuk Turks, and the opposite caliphate.

His sales pitch was basically, "Help me to defeat the Mongols now or otherwise,

the same thing will happen to you."

These were indeed prophetic words, but nobody heeded them.

The Mongols were a new and uncertain threat,

but Quarismania had been a thorn in their side for a long time,

and they were actually glad to finally see them gone.

No aid was forthcoming.

As Charmon predicted, when it finally came time for him to deal with the

hold out of Corismanian forces in 1231,

they fell with little resistance.

As far as Jalal Aldine was concerned,

he retreated into the mountains and was ostensibly killed by bandits that same year.

The mission was done,

but the Mongols were not the kind to pack up

and go home when they still had a perfectly good army

and lands left to plunder.

Therefore, Chicagon traveled into the southern Caucases where he spent the next several years

fighting with Georgia and Armenia,

bringing them under the Mongol banner.

Since his generals seemed to have the fighting well in hand,

Ogade Khan was free to dedicate himself to some of the more mundane matters

of running an empire,

trade, taxes, and the like.

One of his most trusted adviserss, Yauchi,

is actually credited with developing most of the administrative policies enacted during Ogadeay's reign.

Specifically, Chisai convinced Ogade that in the long run,

it was better to tax the people he had conquered instead of simply taking

whatever he wanted and killing those who tried to oppose him.

To that end, Ogodai divided his massive empire into smaller administrative divisions

and installed regional governors called Durkachi to oversee them

and to make sure

that the tax money made its way to the big boss.

Furthermore, Ogade continued to develop another idea originally introduced by his father,

that of a state partnered merchant association called the OrtH.

Even a wararmongering empire like the Mongols still recognized the value of a healthy

trade network.

So they instituted a system

that not only protected

but even encouraged the merchants under their watch.

Basically merchants who were a part of the Orta were given passports

that allowed them to travel safely along the Silk Road

and even use the relay stations from the Yam network.

They were given tax breaks and later on even had access to lowinterest loans.

All of this was well and good.

The money was starting to flow.

But where was it going exactly?

The nomadic Mongols spent most of their time in camps,

living in portable tents called yurts.

If Ogadeay was planning on lugging around his empire's entire treasury with him,

he was going to need the world's largest piggy bank.

Wisely, he concluded that you cannot run one of the grandest empires in history

out of a traveling tent.

You needed a permanent capital to act as your center of power.

So instead, Okade did something uncharacteristic of the Mongols.

He built a city, Karakorum.

Well, technically it was Genghis who founded Carakorum circa 1220,

but it was only a yurt town in his day.

One of several found on the nomadic route

that the great Khan used to travel throughout his empire.

It was Ogade Khan who decided to transform Carakorum into a proper city by

adding fixed housing,

temples, walls, gates, and even a palace.

In just a few decades,

Carakorum became one of the great seats of power in all of Asia.

Modern archaeologists even came up with a new term to describe cities like Carakorum,

implanted urbanization.

Because every builder, craftsman, and artisan,

and every single piece of material used to construct it,

everything except for the mud used in bricks,

was forcefully brought in from someplace else.

Now that Ogade had put his fiscal and administrative affairs in order,

he could go back to what he loved best, unpitting, brutal conquest.

Fortunately for him and unfortunately for everyone else,

there were still places in Asia

that were not under the Mongol yoke just yet.

First up was Korea or Coro as the kingdom was known back then.

It was the same old song and dance.

In 1231, Ogade commanded one of his generals to round up an army

and go conquer Korea for him like it was a shiny new toy he

wanted to play with

or something.

He received aid from a powerful coro commander named Hung Bahwan,

who decided he wanted to be on the winning team

and swap jerseys before the start of the game.

Despite one moment of glory during the siege of Kuju,

Coro was no match for the Mongol might

and the capital of Kong fell later

that same year,

forcing them to sue for peace and become a vassel.

With Coro subdued, the Mongol Empire included almost all of East Asia with just

one exception,

the Song Empire, which still controlled a large chunk of Eastern China.

The Song Dynasty were the ones who helped the Mongols conquer theQin state.

But such actions mattered little in the pursuit of glory for the Horde.

So in 1235, the Mongols crossed into Song territory and launched an invasion.

But the latter would not go down without a fight.

In fact, it took the Mongol Empire almost half a century to wipe out

the Song Dynasty,

decades after Ogade Khan was dead.

It is possible that the great Khan could have rushed the process along,

but he reserved a giant chunk of his army for another purpose.

Ogade Khan had another target in his sights, Europe.

In 1235, the bulk of the Mongol forces started making their way toward Europe.

It was all hands on deck for this one.

All except Ogade, who still sat back and kicked his feet up in Garakorum,

awaiting news of his latest triumphs.

His nephew, Batukan, or Patan, was nominally in charge of this campaign,

although General Sabatai developed most of their plans of attack.

Their first target was Kapan Roose,

the federation that controlled the borderlands between Asia and Europe.

The Mongols had already fought and bested Kapan Rouses once under Genghaskhan,

but then retreated without any permanent gains.

This time they persevered until they subjugated all of the RS's principalities.

Riazan suffered the worst fate during the invasion.

As the first Russian city to be besieged by Mongol forces,

Batu wanted to set an example of what happened to those who refused to

surrender and pay tribute.

He laid siege to Riazison in December 1237.

And although the siege lasted only 5 days, it was absolutely devastating.

By this point, the Mongols had developed strong artillery

and a few days of continuous shelling was enough to breach the Russian defenses.

Riazan asked for help,

but all the neighboring principalities were looking out for themselves

as the Mongols suspected the Russian states still did not comprehend the true extent

of the danger they were in

and were hoping to weather the storm alone.

But Riazan showed everyone that this was not going to happen.

Most of the population was put to death,

including the entire royal family while the city itself was burned to the ground.

Many other cities fell after Ria, Vladimir, Moscow, Suzdel, Rosttov, and a dozen others,

culminating with the capture of Kiev in December 1240.

Russia had fallen more or less,

and a small contingent was left to suppress any lingering opposition.

And while the bulk of the Mongol horde advanced deeper into Europe,

Poland and Hungary felt the brunt of their wrath.

Although no kingdom in Eastern or Central Europe managed to escape unscathed,

similar to their campaign in Russia,

the Mongol army wanted to divide

and conquer and use their lightning quick attacks to prevent the European forces from

uniting.

That's why Subatai split off a divisionary force of 20,000 soldiers

and sent them to stop Poland from reinforcing Hungary.

The smaller army was just meant to keep Poland busy,

but in fact it destroyed the Polish forces in half a year,

culminating with their victory at the Battle of Lenika on April 9th, 1241.

As an added bonus,

King Wes loss I of Bohemia was about to provide aid.

But when he heard of Poland's defeat,

he instead chose to retreat

and secure as many reinforcements for himself

as he could,

worried about his own kingdom.

It always worked in the Mongols favor

when their opponents chose to look out for number one instead of banding together.

and all signs pointed towards Hungary falling like the rest.

By early 1242, the horde had already scored several decisive victories,

including the battle of the Soyo River.

The kingdom had been devastated and left at the mercy of the Mongol Empire.

It seemed like there was no stopping them

and that all of Europe was theirs for the taking.

But then something happened.

In the spring of 1242, the Mongols withdrew from Europe.

They had all the advantages they could want and yet they simply left.

What could have happened to make them all give up on their plans for

European domination?

It turns out they had received word that Ogadeay was dead.

The great Khan had died the previous year on December 11th,

1241 at the age of 56.

The exact cause of death is uncertain,

although it was most likely brought on by Ogadeay's unquenchable thirst for booze.

Either that or he was poisoned.

We can never truly rule out poison, can we?

As it happened when Genghis died,

a corral tai was convened

and all of his close-blood relatives had to attend to sort out the issue

of deciding the next Kong.

Initially, Ogadeay wanted his son Kochu to be his heir,

but he died while fighting the Song Dynasty.

Then, Ogadeay appointed Kochu's son, Shyman.

But it seems this was not a popular move.

After all, Ogadeay was no Genghis,

so his choice was seen more as a suggestion rather than a final decision.

A suggestion that was promptly ignored until the new great Khan was elected.

Ogadeay's wife Torjene acted

as regent and she wanted her son with Ogade Gauk to become the new

Kagan.

Others wanted Monae the oldest son of Tlui to lead them.

It was a tense situation

that needed 5 years to get resolved

and caused instability to the empire

which until that point seemed unstoppable.

It wasn't until Kubla Khan assumed leadership a couple decades later

that he managed to get the Mongols back on track toward world domination.

And if you want to see how that turned out,

we have a bio on Kubla ready and waiting for you.

I hope you learned something today.

And if you enjoyed today's video, be sure to deploy your likes,

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and share this video with someone who loves learning about historical figures.

I'm Eric Malikite, and we'll see you next time.