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While the main Mongol army under Genghis ravaged the eastern part of the Khwarezmian Empire,
his loyal generals Subutai and Jebe were pursuing Shah Mohammed II.
This expedition eventually strayed from its goals and achieved much more than expected,
opening up even more lands to Mongol carnage.
Subutai and Jebe's expedition would later be considered one of the most daring military campaigns in history.
After Mongol generals Subutai and Jebe and their 20,000 warriors failed to catch up to the Khwarazmian Shah,
they spent the winter of 1220 in Iran and Azerbaijan,
raiding and looting while preventing the Western Khwarazmian forces from assisting Jalal ad-din to the east.
Here they conceived the idea of conducting the most audacious reconnaissance in force in history.
In 1221 the army first entered the Kingdom of Georgia,
where they pillaged the countryside for supplies.
King George IV, seeing his lands ravaged by the invaders,
assembled an army, which included many knights who had pledged to join the Fifth Crusade.
In the ensuing battle at Sagimi, Subutai feinted a retreat
which lured the slower heavily armored cavalry away from their infantry
before he encircled and massacred them.
The Mongols then returned to Azerbaijan and Iran and burned and pillaged a few more cities.
In a few months, Georgia was invaded by Subutai yet again.
George IV attempted to stop the invaders near Tbilisi,
but his army was ambushed yet again.
These battles weakened Georgia and allowed the Mongols to pass through the Caucasus Mountains.
Subutai pushed his forces through the mountains during the winter.
His troops took heavy casualties and were exhausted.
When they descended from the mountains,
their army was met by a coalition of the local Lezgins, Alans, Kipchaks and Volga Bulgarians.
The enemy army had more than 50,000 troops.
At first the Mongols charged, but were repelled.
The coalition decided to hold their ground and wait for the Mongols to die of starvation.
Low on supplies and unable to outmaneuver his opponent,
Subutai secretly sent bribes to the Kipchaks, who made up most of the force,
appealing to them as fellow nomads.
In the middle of the following night, the Kipchaks left and headed home.
Subutai immediately charged the remaining troops and defeated them.
However, he didn't stop there and ordered his horsemen to chase after the Kipchaks
who were slowed by the baggage train of treasures they had received.
The Mongols slaughtered them as well and then razed the wealthy city of Astrakhan on the Volga River.
Finding themselves on familiar flat terrain with plenty of villages to pillage,
Jebe and Subutai now parted their forces.
Jebe travelled towards the Dnieper River while Subutai moved south to the Crimea.
Subutai and the local Venetian trading post entered an alliance and the Mongol general
promised to destroy any non-Venetian colonies in the area.
Indeed he attacked and razed Soldaia and in return
the Venetians provided the Mongols with information about the kingdoms of Europe.
Meanwhile, the surviving Kipchaks fled and informed the Rus' princes of their plight.
The area of modern Russia and Ukraine was controlled by a number of Rus' principalities.
They united into one alliance to defend against the Mongols.
With the addition of the Kipchak forces,
this alliance had a combined force of around 60,000 troops,
mainly cavalry.
The Mongols united into one army also
and then sent ambassadors to the Rus' Princes,
telling them to stay out of the conflict as it didn't involve them
and the Mongol quarrel was with the Kipchaks alone.
But the Princes broke the golden rule:
they killed the envoys.
The allied army caught up to the Mongols on the banks of the Dnieper River and tried to encircle them.
Subutai sacrificed a rearguard of 1,000 men, who held the enemy
while the rest of the army crossed the river and retreated east.
The Russians now discussed how to follow up this minor victory.
Some urge to pursue the Mongols while others argued to hold the frontier,
but it was the vengeful Kipchaks who tipped the scales
and the Princes decided to chase the Mongols.
Each Prince marched separately from the others miles apart.
For nine days, the Mongols retreated just ahead of their pursuers.
They used hit-and-run tactics while leaving behind loot, prisoners and livestock
giving the Russians a sense that they were winning.
However, this was a trap.
By the end of the ninth day, the Kipchak vanguard was way ahead of the rest of the army
and smashed against the Mongols.
Subutai ordered a retreat,
crossing the small Kalka River with the Kipchaks hot on their tail
and the Russian Princes lagging behind even more.
With all the pieces in place, Subutai sent his heavy lancers charging against the unprepared Kipchaks from the front,
while his horse archers attacked the Rus' with arrows to further slow their advance.
Under cover of arrows, the heavy lancers kept plowing with ever-growing momentum
against the unorganized Rus'
who were charging at them one Prince at a time.
Every Rus' who was not slain during the initial impact
was funneled by the arrow fire into a narrow corridor,
which forced them to smash against the forces behind them creating a domino effect.
The battlefield became the most chaotic at the river itself.
The only army with the resemblance of a formation was that of Mstislav of Kiev
who had previously advised caution.
He rallied his 10,000 and many of those who were retreating to meet the charging Mongols.
Baggage trains were arranged into a fortified circle on high ground
to become a beacon for the fleeing soldiers.
The Mongols soon surrounded this position.
Here Mstislav held out for three terrible days
while being showered with whistling arrows and bombarded with smoke bombs.
The defenders were left with no water and had to accept the Mongol offer of a peaceful surrender.
But as soon as they left the protection of their camp, they were attacked.
The Allies were surrounded on all sides, except for a small gap,
intentionally left open giving hope to many who took this chance to escape.
Subutai laid this trap as he preferred to have those men
be killed in smaller groups by the faster horse archers who picked them off one by one.
Only 1 in 10 warriors in the allied army managed to avoid death or capture.
As for Mstislav of Kiev and the Rus' nobles,
they were tied up and placed beneath a wooden platform
on which the Mongol generals feasted while the Russians were crushed beneath them.
Subutai then passed through the other side of the Caspian Sea,
defeating even more Kipchaks and Volga Bulgars on the way back to Mongolia.
While the Mongols didn't conquer new land on this grand expedition,
they gained knowledge about the landscape, the people and their armies.
Upon returning from the Great Raid,
Subutai wasted no time resting as he was assigned a new mission:
punishing the vassal kingdom of Xi Xia for not contributing to the Mongol campaigns.
Genghis Khan never tolerated betrayal and so he mustered a colossal force,
only this time the Mongols knew the territory and the art of the siege.
The kingdom quickly fell and the emperor was murdered.
However, before the invasion began
Genghis fell from his horse and injured his shoulder.
He quickly developed a high fever and was advised to go back to Mongolia and rest,
but the Great Khan pushed forward.
Life is full of irony.
And the Xi Xia would be the very first and the very last people conquered by Genghis.
On August 18th 1227 at the age of 66, Genghis Khan passed away.
Genghis' empire endured after his death through a series of laws he developed
and the capable children he had raised.
He had tried multiple times to deal with the looming question of succession.
Before the campaign in Khwarezm
he gathered his four sons in a tent and prepared to break another Mongol tradition,
according to which when a father died, his domain was inherited by the youngest son
while the herd was divided between the rest.
Genghis Khan however urged his sons to maintain the unity of the Empire
they helped him build and asked Jochi to take the floor and speak his mind.
Before he could say a word
Chagatai, who rumors claimed was the real firstborn to Genghis,
insulted him saying that he was not one of them and that he would never follow him as Great Khan.
Genghis decided the best way to keep the Empire intact was to give each son lands
where they could settle and rule as long as they respected the Great Khan.
The third son Ogedei would be the one to ascend to the throne.
Jochi was promised Persia and Europe.
Chagatai was given Central Asia.
Ogedei would get China,
while the youngest Tolui would take care of Mongolia.
And so this family dispute over the Empire of one man led to lines being drawn all over the known world,
creating a division which put the Mongol legacy in danger.
While creating this documentary
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from Professor Kenneth W. Harl provided by the sponsor of this video, The Great Courses Plus.
This very detailed thirty-six part series covers the history of the nomadic peoples.
From the Huns to the Pechenegs, from the Scytians to the Bulgars with
multiple episodes on the heroes of this video, the Mongols.
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