A History of the Crusades-Vol 3 (40 page)

When William of Rubruck arrived at the
Court of the Great Khan, in the Last days of 1253, he found a government very
different from that which had entertained King Louis’s previous envoy, Andrew
of Longjumeau. When Guyuk, son of Ogodai, died in 1248, his widow, Oghul
Qaimish, acted as regent for her young sons, Qucha, Naqu and Qughu. But she was
an inept ruler, given to avarice and to sorcery; and none of her sons showed
promise of greater ability. Their cousin, Shiremon, whom his grandfather Ogodai
had destined for the succession, continually plotted against them. But more
formidable opposition came from an alliance between Batu, the viceroy of the
West and the Princess Sorghaqtani, the widow of Jenghiz’s youngest son, Tului.
Sorghaqtani, a Kerait by birth and, like all her race, a devout Nestorian
Christian, was highly respected for her wisdom and her incorruptibility. Ogodai
had wished to marry her after her husband’s death to his son Guyuk; but she
tactfully refused, preferring to devote herself to the education of her four
remarkable sons, Mongka, Kubilai, Hulagu and Ariqboga. When Guyuk carried out
an inspection of the finances of the Imperial family, she and her sons alone
were proved to have acted always with perfect scrupulousness. Batu, whose feud
with Guyuk had never been healed, had a great admiration for her. Knowing that
his own title to the throne would always be weakened by doubts about his father
Juji’s legitimacy, he joined her in advocating the claims of Mongka. He came to
Mongolia and, as senior prince of the House, summoned a Kuriltay, which, on 1
July 1251, elected Mongka as supreme Khan. Despite Sorghaqtani’s genuine
attempts to placate them, Ogodai’s grandsons refused to attend the Kuriltay,
but plotted to attack its members when they would be inebriated at the feasts that
followed the inauguration ceremony. The plot miscarried; and after a year of
desultory civil war Mongka triumphed over all his rivals and was installed as
Supreme Khan at Karakorum. The Regent Oghul Qaimish and the mother of Shiremon
were convicted of sorcery and drowned. The princes of the House of Ogodai were
sent into exile.

With Mongka’s accession the Mongols
revived their policy of expansion. The great princes returned to their
governments. The eastern provinces were entrusted to Mongka’s second brother,
Kubilai, who set energetically and methodically about the conquest of all
China. He became a convert of Buddhism; and his wars and his treatment of the
conquered were remarkable for their humanity and forbearance. Mongka and his
youngest brother, Ariqboga, remained in Mongolia, keeping watchful control of
the whole vast empire. The heirs of Jagatai, in Turkestan, began tentative
efforts to extend their power across the Pamirs into India. Batu moved his
headquarters to the lower reaches of the Volga, so as to dominate his vassal
princes in Russia, and founded there the Khanate called Kipchak by Moslem
writers, and by the Mongols and the Russians the Golden Horde. The government
of Persia passed to Mongka’s third brother, Hulagu; and it was to his frontier
and to Kubilai’s in the east that the main efforts of the Mongols were now
directed.

1254: Armenian Alliance with the Mongols

Of the states that bordered the
Mediterranean, it was the Armenian kingdom in Cilicia that first realized the
importance of the Mongol advance. The Armenians had witnessed with interest the
collapse of the Seldjuk army in 1243 before a Mongol expedition led by a
provincial governor. They could estimate how irresistible the Imperial army
would be. King Hethoum had wisely sent a deferential message to Baichu in 1243.
But the Mongols had then retired; and Kaikhosrau recovered his lost Anatolian
territory and began once more to press upon Armenia, aided by a rebel Armenian
prince, Constantine of Lampron. Hethoum calculated that the Mongols would come
back and that they could be of value to all Asiatic Christendom, and in
particular to himself. In 1247 he sent his brother, the Constable Sempad, on an
embassy to the Court of the Great Khan. Sempad arrived at Karakorum in 1248,
not long before Guyuk’s death. Guyuk received him with cordiality and, on
hearing that Hethoum was ready to regard himself as a vassal, promised to send
help for the Armenians to recapture towns taken from them by the Seldjuks.
Sempad returned home with a diploma from the Great Khan guaranteeing the
integrity of Hethoum’s dominions. But Guyuk’s death held up any immediate
action. In 1254, hearing of the accession of a new vigorous Khan, King Hethoum
set out for Karakorum.

Karakorum was now the diplomatic centre of
the world. When Louis IX’s ambassador, William of Rubruck, arrived there in
1254, he found embassies from the Greek Emperor, from the Caliph, from the King
of Delhi and from the Seldjuk Sultan, as well as emirs from the Jezireh and
from Kurdistan and princes from Russia, all waiting upon the Khan. There were
several Europeans settled there, including a jeweller from Paris with a
Hungarian wife and an Alsatian woman married to a Russian architect. There was
neither racial nor religious discrimination at the Court. The supreme posts in
the army and the government were reserved to members of the Imperial family,
but there were ministers and provincial governors from almost every Asiatic
nation. Mongka himself followed the faith of his fathers, Shamanism, but he
attended Christian, Buddhist and Moslem ceremonies indiscriminately. He held
that there was one God, who could be worshipped as anyone pleased. The chief religious
influence was that of the Nestorian Christians, to whom Mongka showed especial
favour in memory of his mother Sorghaqtani, who had always remained loyal to
her faith, though she was broad-minded enough to endow a Moslem theological
college at Bokhara. His principal Empress, Kutuktai, and many other of his
wives also were Nestorians. William of Rubruck professed himself much shocked
by the ignorance and debauchery of the Nestorian ecclesiastics and considered
their services to be little more than drunken orgies. One Sunday he saw the
Empress return reeling from High Mass. When his affairs went badly he was
inclined to lay the blame upon the rivalry of this heretic hierarchy.

1254: William of Rubruck at Karakorum

His embassy, indeed, was not an entire
success. He had travelled by way of Batu’s capital on the Volga, where he found
that Batu’s son, Sartaq, though probably not actually a Christian, was
particularly well disposed towards the Christians. Batu sent him on to
Mongolia. He travelled at the government’s expense along the great trade-road,
in comfort and security, though occasionally whole days passed without a single
house being seen. He arrived at the end of December 1253, at the Great Khan’s
encampment, a few miles south of Karakorum. Mongka received him in audience on
4 January; and soon afterwards he moved with the Court to Karakorum itself. He
found the Mongol government already determined to attack the Moslems of western
Asia, and ready to discuss common action. But there was one impassable
difficulty. The Supreme Khan could not admit the existence of any sovereign
prince in the world other than himself. His foreign policy was fundamentally
simple. His friends were already his vassals; his enemies were to be eliminated
or reduced to vassaldom. All that William could obtain was the quite sincere
promise that the Christians should receive ample aid so long as their rulers
came to pay homage to the suzerain of the world. The King of France could not
treat on such terms. William left Karakorum in August 1254, having learned,
like many subsequent ambassadors to the Courts of further Asia, that Oriental
monarchs understand neither the usages nor the principles of Western diplomacy.
He travelled back through central Asia to the Court of Batu, and thence over
the Caucasus and Seldjuk Anatolia to Armenia and so to Acre. Everywhere he was
treated with the respect due to an envoy accredited to the Supreme Khan.

King Hethoum arrived at Karakorum shortly
after William’s departure. He had come of his own accord as a vassal; and as
the other foreign visitors were either vassals who had been summoned against
their wills or representatives of kings who arrogantly claimed independence, he
was shown especial favour. At his formal reception by Mongka on 13 September
1254, he was given a document confirming that his person and his kingdom should
be inviolate, and he was treated as the Khan’s chief Christian adviser on
matters concerning western Asia. Mongka promised him to free all Christian
churches and monasteries from taxation. He announced that his brother Hulagu,
who was already established in Persia, had been ordered to capture Baghdad and
to destroy the power of the Caliphate, and he undertook that if all the
Christian Powers would co-operate with him he would recover Jerusalem itself
for the Christians. Hethoum left Karakorum on 1 November, laden with gifts and
delighted by the success of his efforts. He journeyed home by way of Turkestan
and Persia, where he paid his respects to Hulagu, and was back in Armenia the
following July.

Hethoum’s optimism was natural, but a
little excessive. The Mongols were certainly eager to control or else to
destroy the Caliphate. They had already so many Moslem subjects that it was
essential for them to dominate the chief religious institution in the Moslem
world. They had no particular animosity against Islam as a religion. Similarly,
though they favoured Christianity more than any other faith, they had no
intention of permitting any independent Christian state. If Jerusalem was to be
restored to the Christians, it would be restored under the Mongol Empire. It is
interesting to speculate what might have happened had the Mongol ambitions for
western Asia been realized. It is possible that a great Christian Khanate might
have been formed and might have in time devolved from the central power in
Mongolia. But Saint Louis’s dream that the Mongols would become dutiful sons of
the Roman Church was unthinkable; nor would the Christian establishments in
western Asia have kept any independence. A Mongol triumph might have served the
interests of Christendom as a whole; but the Franks of Outremer, who were aware
of the Great Khan’s attitude towards Christian princes, cannot be entirely
blamed for preferring the Moslems, whom they knew, to this strange, fierce and
arrogant people from the distant deserts, whose record in eastern Europe had not
been encouraging. Hethoum’s attempt to build up a great Christian alliance to
aid the Mongols was well received by the native Christians; and Bohemond of Antioch,
who was under his father-in-law’s influence, gave his adhesion. But the Franks
of Asia held aloof.

1256: The Mongol Army moves Westward

In January 1256, a huge Mongol army
crossed the river Oxus, under the command of the Great Khan’s brother Hulagu.
Like his brother Kubilai, Hulagu was better educated than most of the Mongol
princes. He had a taste for learned men and himself dabbled in philosophy and
alchemy. Like Kubilai, he was attracted by Buddhism, but he never himself gave
up his ancestral Shamanism, and he lacked Kubilai’s humanitarianism. He
suffered from epileptic fits, and they may have affected his temper, which was
unreliable. He was as savage towards the conquered as any of his predecessors.
But the Christians had no reason to complain of him; for the most powerful
influence at his Court was that of his principal wife, Dokuz Khatun. This
remarkable lady was a Kerait princess, the granddaughter of Toghrul Khan and
cousin, therefore, of Hulagu’s mother. She was a passionate Nestorian, who made
no secret of her dislike of Islam and her eagerness to help Christians of every
sect.

Hulagu’s first objective was the Assassin
headquarters in Persia. Till the sect was destroyed an orderly government would
be impossible; and the sectaries had especially offended the Mongols by
murdering Jagatai, the second son of Jenghiz Khan. The next objective was
Baghdad; then the Mongol army would proceed to Syria. Everything was planned
with care. The roads across Turkestan and Persia were repaired and bridges
built. Carts were requisitioned to bring siege-machines from China. Pastures
were cleared of their herds so that the grass might be plentiful for the Mongol
horses. With Hulagu were Dokuz Khatun and two of his other wives, and his two
elder sons. The house of Jagatai was represented by his grandson, Nigudar. From
the Golden Horde Batu sent three of his nephews, who travelled down the west
shore of the Caspian and joined the army in Persia. Every tribe of the Mongol
confederacy provided one-fifth of its fighting men, and there were a thousand
Chinese archers, skilled at hurling fire-laden arrows from their cross-bows. An
army had been sent nearly three years before to prepare the way, under Hulagu’s
most trusted general, the Nestorian Kitbuqa, a Naiman by race, who was said to
be descended from one of the Three Wise Men from the East. Kitbuqa
re-established Mongol authority over the main towns of the Iranian plateau and
had captured some of the lesser Assassin strongholds before Hulagu’s arrival.

1257: Annihilation of the Assassins in Persia

The Grand Master of the Assassins, Rukn
ad-Din Khurshah, vainly tried to avert the danger by diplomatic intrigues and
diversions. Hulagu entered Persia and moved slowly and relentlessly through
Demavend and Abbassabad into the valleys of the Assassins. When the huge army
appeared before Alamut and began the close investment of the citadel, Rukn
ad-Din yielded. In December he came in person to Hulagu’s tent and made his
submission. The governor of the castle refused to obey his orders to surrender
it, but it was taken by storm a few days later. Rukn ad-Din was promised his
life by Hulagu, but he asked to be sent to Karakorum hoping to obtain better
terms from the Great Khan Mongka. When he arrived there, Mongka refused to see
him, saying that it had been wrong to tire out good horses on such a fruitless
mission. Two Assassin fortresses still held out against the Mongols, Girdkuh
and Lembeser. Rukn ad-Din was told to go home and arrange for their surrender.
On the way he was put to death with his suite. Orders were sent at the same
time to Hulagu that the whole sect must be exterminated. A number of the Grand
Master’s kin were sent to Jagatai’s daughter, Salghan Khatun, that she might
herself avenge her father’s death. Others were collected on the excuse of a
census and massacred in their thousands. By the end of 1257 only a few refugees
were left in the Persian mountains. The Assassins in Syria were as yet out of
the Mongols’ reach; but they foresaw their fate.