MASSACRES

When Genghis Khan attempts the conquest of the world (1209), the Mongol population numbers between 400 000 and 600 000 inhabitants, among which 200 000 are warriors. Together, all the countries targeted for conquest can muster a global population of more than 200 millions inhabitants (which is then 400 times the total number of inhabitants in Mongolia). The Mongols are a tiny minority and their army is almost always outnumbered when facing the various enemies on countless battlefields.

The fact that their enemies are much more numerous triggers an inferiority complex among the Mongols, and the panic fear that their armies may be drowned some day in the multitude of the conquered populations. The only solution to make these conquered populations less dangerous, would be to decrease their numbers; and the only way to achieve that would be to massacre an important part of each of them.

Northern China (Kin) with more than 50 million inhabitants and especially the Khwarezm empire that includes perhaps as many as 100 millions are dangerous countries for the Mongols by the mere size of their population. In fifteen years, there will be 18 million killed in Tibet (Si-Hia) and in the Kin empire (Northern China). The Western campaign will result in 15 million dead in Muslim countries. On the whole, 35 to 40 million people will be exterminated during Genghis Khan's lifetime. If we add to this the subsequent conquests made by his successors (in particular the conquest of Southern China (the Sungs) by Kublai Khan) and by non-genghiskhanid Mongols like Tamerlane (Timur), the foundation of the Mongol empire will have cost the lives of 60 to 100 million people.

Genghis Khan's principle was that every man who submits to his rule will be spared, but anyone who should refuse and oppose him by force of arms or dissension will be annihilated. In the same manner, he has all cities that resisted him transformed into a pile of rubble. Rich provinces are turned into deserts when strong possibilities of rebellion are detected. All these cruelties have a purpose: military necessity, retaliation, terrorization. Human life has no special value for him, and he destroys it like we exterminate rats when they become harmful or even a mere nuisance, as a matter of course and the logical thing to do.

The first massacre worth reporting is no doubt the slaughter of the Tatar people! All males taller than the axle of a wagon are put to death. The rest is reduced to slavery. This extermination of the male population of the Tatar country is carried out very systematically, in Mongol fashion.

As a Khan's principle, it was custom to spare the lives of people that could prove useful: scientists, artists, technicians. Sometimes, women and children were also spared, then to be reduced to slavery.

During the first campaign against Northern China, 90 fortified and stoutly defended cities in the region of Ho-Pei are pillaged and burned in less than six months (autumn-Winter 1213-1214). Only a few cities are spared because their garrison surrendered quickly, all the others are razed to the ground. However, the Khan still refuses to try an assault on Peking yet, then he realizes that because its population is too numerous, he couldn't possibly keep this huge city for long if he took it by chance; no more than he could conquer a state of 50 million inhabitants in such a short period of time. It will take another year to seize and secure Peking (April 1215).

In the meantime, Genghis Khan withdraws and rides back home to Mongolia in the spring of 1214. For a while though, a question holds him back at the border: what was he going to do with the tens of thousands of prisoners that he had used as diggers and excavators for earthwork?

Those were useful for siegewarfare, but now? They were bringing with them germs, sicknesses, dangers of epidemic. They were in no condition to cross the Gobi desert. It was not possible to send them back home either, then they knew too much about the military art and the nature of the Mongols and could become dangerous adversaries as soldiers of the Kin emperor. Afterwards, what was a Chinaman's life worth? Besides, their great number was in itself a threat to the army. They are all exterminated as soon as they have crossed the Great Wall and reached the Kin-Yong Pass.

Mukhuli received the order from Genghis Khan to break the Chinese resistance that had begun to emerge. During the fall-winter 1215, he took more than 800 cities and villages; some of them destroyed, the others spared and left under indigenous leadership. Massacres and destruction of cities are justified in that case because a partisan war was on the verge of breaking out; it would have been a long, painful, tedious war of attrition against the Chinese masses. To prevent freedom fighters and guerrilla to hide in a forest, it is necessary to burn down that forest. To prevent them to hide in the midst of a population, it must be exterminated.

This is the Mongol way of thinking: flawlessly logical, but perhaps slightly inhumane. These massacres are the more justified, then after the loss of 18 million dead (one third of the population), Northern China was still able to organize a new resistance, and even to mount a series of attacks. Its armies moved back into the provinces they had lost and started to defeat and drive back Mongol detachments and Chinese allied troops. They put garrisons back in all cities that had been conquered earlier by Mukhuli. <<If the extermination of one third of the population is insufficient in the case of China to break any resistance, maybe after one half has been killed, they will finally keep quiet. Otherwise, it will be necessary to kill 75%, 80%, even 90%>>. Those might have been the thoughts of the Mongols, facing unruly China.

When the heirs of Genghis Khan will complete the conquest of Northern China in 1234, the province of Honan will be ravaged and sucked to such an extent that even the Mongols will have to start eating human flesh to survive. Famine breaks out at Kai-Fong-Fu and Chinese start to kill each other and eat one another, but the spreading of the plague is really what breaks the city's last resistance. Although the poorest people are simply buried with their shirt on, the victims of this epidemic require no less than 900000 coffins. The last million survivors still in the city when it falls are spared because of the personal intervention of Yelu-Tchutsai.

The Western campaign was no doubt the most prolific in massacres. Samarkand, for example, was a city of half a million inhabitants, with rich marketplaces, big libraries, magnificent palaces and an army of 100000 men. It was the cultural and political centre of the Eastern Muslim world. After the fall of the city, the outer walls were demolished. 50000 families were spared, as well as 30000 artists and handicraftsmen. Young men were taken for earthwork or sent to serve in the army. The rest was massacred.

The Kangli mercenaries that formed an important part of the garrison thought that, because they were Turks, they would be treated as fellow-countrymen. They went to the Mongol camp with luggage and with their families. This was a miscalculation though, then Genghis Khan held betrayal in detestation. He had them all killed, then one can never trust traitors. Here is how the execution of the 30000 Kangli Turks was carried out. The men have to show unarmed and in close order (in rows) before the Khan to have their hairs cut so that they look like the other Mongols. The Turks do as they are told. Behind each of them stand a Mongol holding a razor. At a signal, all 30000 men lose a little more than their hairs, they have their head cut off!

At Signak, the entire population (200000 people) is put to the sword. The towns and villages that offer any resistance are taken and destroyed. When the inhabitants of Zaveh shout insults from the top of their high walls, Subutaï makes them pay for this verbal abuse by taking the city after a three days' assault. The whole population is massacred and they set fire to the remaining ruins.

The capital city of Khwarezm, Urgendj, was the stage of an horrible massacre. The Mongols had lost an important part of their army in front of the city during the many battles and engagements. Ogodaï ordered an all-out assault. It had been useless to try to divert the flow of the Amu Daria stream, then the inhabitants had dug a sufficient number of wells. Both sides showed the same determination and hatred. The Khwarezmians had succeeded in cutting the retreat of a detachment of 3000 Mongols: they had been slaughtered to the last man. Ogodaï ordered to fill up the moats, and while a rain of Naphta pots in flames was falling on the city, the Mongols climbed up the walls. The Khwarezmians resisted furiously. The city had to be taken street by street, sometimes one house at a time. A savage struggle took place in the streets of the city that lasted for seven days, then the resistance crumbled. The survivors were pushed out in the open country and slaughtered in bulk or massacred by arrows and the scimitar. All that had any value was removed from the city, then the victors set these ruins on fire and diverted the flow of the river to flood everything, submerging the city so that anything alive in basements and tunnels was drowned (April 1221).

All cities that resisted, like Damghan and Semnan, were plundered by Subutai's army which then moved on to attack Reï. In front of Reï an army of 30000 men stands ready to oppose the advance of the Mongols: it is soon defeated and dispersed. The inhabitants of the city are divided: some want to surrender, the others want to organize the resistance. Both parties are killing each other in the streets. When Subutaï enters the city and catch sight of the carnage, he decides to have all the survivors killed. How could he trust the inhabitants of a city where brothers and fellow-countrymen kill each other like that? From the royal city of Reï, only smoldering ruins remain.

The leading citizens of Termez (near Balkh) having refused to open the city gates, an assault on the eleventh day sealed the fate of its inhabitants. They were pushed outside of the walls, divided among the companies and massacred.

The Mongol monarch, for fear that the city of Balkh could become a nest of resistance for his enemies, got the entire population out of the city under the false pretext of an official count (census) and had everyone killed. All fortified cities of the region that resisted were taken one after the other and always using the same stratagem: they used a multitude of prisoners to fight in the first rows: those who falled back or refused were killed instantly.

After the fall of Nessa, the Mongols forced the inhabitants to leave the city and gathered them together outside on the plain. They ordered them to help one another tie their hands behind their backs. These unfortunate people obeyed without thinking what they were doing. If they would have scattered and made a run for it in the direction of the hills nearby, most of them would have survived. When they were all immobilized, the Mongols surroundered them and killed everybody. Men, women, children: no one was spared. The number of dead rose to seventy thousand. An armed detachment marched on Sebzevar, a city located one hundred kilometers West of Nichapur, and took it after a three days' fight. There also, the entire population was slaughtered, numbering close to seventy thousand people.

And then happened what Genghis Khan had foreseen, an uprising broke out in the entire country. Islam was rising to fight. News came from everywhere of murdered officials, civil servants killed, governors assassinated. All people put in place by the Mongols and their supporters were massacred, isolated outposts attacked, rebellion in the cities. Genghis Khan sent his youngest son Tului in the Khorassan with a single standing order: exterminate. It was a struggle to the death between 100000 armed Mongols and an hostile world: fanatical, cruel, endowed with a savage bravery, but also undisciplined and disunited. The Mongol army grew with each conquered place, with each fortress taken and destroyed. There was no need to leave garrisons behind, then everywhere they left only ruins devoid of life and human beings. From cities of 70000 and 100000 inhabitants, nothing remained. Not even a cat or dog could be found alive. The Mongol avalanche broke all resistance and this extermination war was carried out on all fronts.

Tului arrived in front of Merv with an army of seventy thousand men, made up in part of conscript troops from the conquered provinces. Two attempts at breaking the siege by a sortie having failed, the besieged offered to surrender (on February 25, 1221). Tului ordered the population to come out of Merv with its most precious belongings. All soldiers of the garrison were decapitated, then it was the turn of the civil population. Men, women and children were separated. They were scattered among the troops and almost all of them slaughtered. Only 400 handicraftsmen were spared and a few children destined to be sold as slaves. It is said that one million three hundred thousand corpses were counted in thirteen days. This number is perhaps largely exaggerated by the Muslim chronicle though.

Tului had sent his brother-in-law Tokutchar with the vanguard of his army. They marched on Nishapur but Tokutchar was killed during the siege. Tului went in person in front of the city to lead the attack (and avenge his in-law). It was taken and occupied on the 10th of April 1221. Tokutchar's widow and her escort of ten thousand warriors massacred indistinctly all they saw. The killing lasted four days. Even the cats and dogs were killed.

During the sack of Merv, many inhabitants had saved their lives in lying down among the dead. For more safety, Tului ordered to decapitate all corpses. They built pyramids with men's heads, women heads or children heads. The destruction of the city lasted for fifteen days. Tului spared only 400 qualified handicraftsmen destined to work in Mongolia. He didn't receive bearers of the flag of truce as soon as any resistance had been offered to his advancing armies. According to the number perhaps largely exaggerated given by a Muslim historian, 1747000 people were massacred in Nishapur.

Mutugen, the son of Djagataï and grandson of Genghis Khan, was killed by an arrow at the siege of Bamyan.  Impatient to avenge him, Genghis Khan took part himself in the storm of the city. He gave orders that no living beings should be spared: humans or animals. Everyone was massacred, no prisoners taken. The child was killed in the womb of his mother. No booty was taken, everything was destroyed. No living creature was to inhabit this place anymore, which was given the name cursed city.

In the spring of 1222, Ogodaï went to punish Ghazni. He ordered all inhabitants out of the city under the pretext of conducting a census. They were all slaughtered to the last man, with the exception of course of qualified handicraftsmen. Ghazni was methodically destroyed.

Just once, at Herat, did Tului spared the inhabitants of the city, with the exception however of 12000 men who had resisted. He was ill inspired in this, then a revolt broke out shortly thereafter, and the governors and administrators left in place were massacred. Genghis Khan sent a new army against them, which was reinforced by 50000 men of neighbouring militias. The entire population was put to the sword. During an entire week the Mongols did nothing else but kill, pillage, burn and demolish. After the Mongol army had left, those of the inhabitants who had survived the slaughter by hiding in natural caves nearby, reappeared among the ruins. The Mongols, who suspected that much, sent 2000 warriors back to see if anything alive would come out of these ruins. The detachment found 3000 people still alive, who were duly executed on the spot. From this city of one million inhabitants, of which the garrison numbered as much as 100000 men, the chronicle says that no more than 16 survivors remained.

The sack of Merv, however methodical that it had seemed to be conducted, had nevertheless let certain city districts almost intact. Since the departure of Tului and his army, the site had been rapidly repeopled and the outer wall rebuilt. The Persian prefect that the Mongols had left had been put to death. But the Mongol vengeance was not long to come. A brigade of 5000 men came to massacre all inhabitants and finish the demolition of all districts still standing. Balkh was also victim of a second and more complete destruction, of a new and more total massacre.

Afghanistan and the Khorassan were now out of condition to revolt again. The small, well organized minority had won the victory. The entire country was covered with ruins. Islamic fanaticism had found its match in the Mongol fury. To defeat Islam, it had been necessary to destroy cities, dams and embankments, to cut irrigation canals, to burn crops and seeds, to cut or saw fruit-trees at the base, to fell the protective tree curtains protecting cultivated lands and local farming against the invasion of desert sand storms. Millenary ploughing, cultivation and arable lands are reduced to steppes in that way, orchards are laid defenceless against incoming sand storms. The many oasis of the Arabo-Persian civilization become a dry steppe. This deliberate destruction of the soil can be called <<the death of the earth>>: a cosmic catastrophe.

The other massacres worth mentioning are respectively those of Kazwin, Maragha and Hamadan. At Kazwin the inhabitants defended themselves in the streets, with knives and anything they could find, killing many Mongols. But this resistance couldn't save them from a general massacre where more than 40000 people perished. Maragha was taken on the 30th March 1221, the population slaughtered, and what could not be taken away was burned. The population of Hamadan was courageous and fought well. On the day of the final assault, they resisted street by street. Naturally, the Mongols responded by a general massacre and by burning down the whole city.

A close examination or weighing up of the <<massacre>> phenomenon in the Mongol conquest shows that it all amounts here to a fierce struggle of the nomads against the hydra of sedentary civilization. From Bukhara in flames, only the mosque will remain standing and survive the disaster. Rich people are tortured until they reveal the location of their treasures. Women are the prey of the Mongol horsemen. The prisoners who cannot bear the shame of seeing the rape and ravage of their wives and daughters throw themselves on the swords of their guards.

The Mongol armies drive away thousands of prisoners in front of them to help storm the next city. Those who dragged by the ropes, cannot keep up with the pace of the horses, are slaughtered or left to die on the road, of thirst and starvation. The Mongols do not even spare the children in their mother's womb. Sometimes, the army receives strict orders to kill even the cats and dogs. During the storm of a city, someone noticed that a prisoner woman swallows a pearl to save it from the Mongol's greed. They cut her belly open to find the jewel. The corpses accumulate to form putrid mountains. At Merv, some old priests took two weeks to count the dead bodies. Dangerous sources of epidemic are created that way: the plague and typhus fever killed the rare survivors who had escaped the general massacre in hiding underground.

The canalizations and trenches for irrigation, which needed a constant care, are abandoned and go to ruin and decay. Droughts and sandstorms come over the country. It is the victory of the steppe over the civilization. The dream of the nomadic world comes true. In that way, the Khan recognizes that only the steppe could be a sure foundation for the lasting domination of his small people. The best way to defeat settlers and the sedentary civilization is to <<kill the soil>>.

At the end of the Western campaign, the army used a hundred thousand prisoners to reap enormous quantities of rice and gather in supplies for many months, for the safe return in Mongolia. Those one hundred thousand prisoners are then massacred in a single day, then they are not necessary anymore.

The last military campaign of Genghis Khan, the one against Tangut or Tibet (Si Hia) was no less bloody than the others. First Su-Tcheou was taken and destroyed, then Kan-Tcheou fell but was spared. The Khan who feels ill wants to crush his enemy before he dies. On this guilty people, he unleashes his soldiers with an order of the day without mercy.

The decisive battle takes place on the frozen waters of the Hoang-Ho river. It costs the lives of 300000 men. All the dead bodies have their head cut off and huge pyramids of skulls are erected. The total count of victims is made as follows: each thousandth corpse is raised upside-down and tied by the legs to a picket. This is very convenient and you can see it from far away. You only have to count the pickets to know how many thousands lay there. The population of the Hia is exterminated on the grave of Genghis Khan. The inhabitants of the capital-city go to hiding in the nearby mountains, but in vain. Hardly two per cent will survive. The fields are covered with human bones. The king of Hia, Li-Hien, is massacred with the entire population of Ning-Hia.

The descendants of Genghis will not forsake the habits of their fathers. For example, during the invasion of Eastern Europe, 100000 Hungarians are killed in the plains of Mohi. But the most ambitious project was without a doubt the one aiming at massacring all sedentary populations of Asia, that is an estimated total of about 85 million people distributed on vast territories: Tibet, China of the Kins, Sung China and Korea. It was best to exterminate these useless populations in the eyes of the Mongols, people who didn't know how to take care of a herd or to transhume and ride with them. The best was to burn the crops, destroy all cities and let the land lie fallow to give it back its dignity as a steppe. The project was seriously considered by the generals of the Khan: to kill all settlers and city dwellers to the last man in order to turn all the lands into pasture-ground, but the Chinese councillor Ye-liu Tchutsaï opposed it.

If one asks: why all those massacres?, the only answer that comes to mind is military necessity. The coming of the Mongol horsemen was generally not followed by rebellion (except in the Khwarezm and especially the Khorassan), because the revolts were crushed beforehand by a terror without precedent. Such massacres, when 98% of the population of certain regions is exterminated, leave a lasting impression. When only 2% of the population is left alive, terror works and the survivors have no inclination to revolt anymore.

Furthermore, during a military campaign, depopulation is sometimes the most convenient mean of securing the rear. There is no need to leave behind an occupation army in a depopulated land. The great novelty is to be able to control a territory without ever having to occupy it.

Partisan war against the occupier is impossible. You cannot harass the occupier, then there is no occupation. This kind of remote control (the Mongol armies are stationed far away from the rare conquered cities that have been left intact) renders all modern techniques of urban guerrilla warfare or jungle warfare completely inefficient against the Mongols.
 

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