Legacy: Genghis Khan

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0:29Hello, Empire listeners. We are jumping in here because we'd love to tell you about one of our fellow Goalhanger shows. Legacy, hosted by historian Peter Frankman, who once made a memorable appearance on Empire Telling Anita Off, is on with the fabulous Afua Hirsch. We must get on the show and have yet to get on. Can I just say, yeah, that was wonderful. And I think Peter, if memory serves, said you were talking nonsense. He would never. He would never. You know he would and has on numerous occasions. This is an amazing podcast which delves into the lives of some of the most incredible people to have ever lived and asks if they have the reputation they deserve.

1:08And so far, they've covered some big ones. Cleopatra, Gorbachev, Winston Churchill, absolute giants of history whose legacies still impact us today. and there's more to come. And this season, they're looking into the life of one of the most extraordinary leaders of all time, Genghis Khan, the leader of the Mongol horde and the empire, which stretched from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan, from Siberia to Southeast Asia. Mongol lands encompassed modern day Korea, China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, parts of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Moldova and Poland, among other territories.

1:45and at its peak ruled over an estimated 110 million people. Just let that sink in for one second. 110 million people. And let me tell you, in this series you're in for a real treat. Peter, who really is a friend of our podcast, really is. Frank Kamanka, one of our best friends. Love him. And he's also an expert in Mongolian history. So you couldn't be in better hands at all with these two hosts. We're about to play you a clip from episode four of the series. the Mongols are creeping towards Hungary and the Hungarians. Well, I mean, afraid is an understatement. And just to let you know, this clip does contain mentions of rape, violence and murder.

2:23As does most of Mongol history, we should say. February 1241, Varad, Hungary. Master Roger races through the city streets in panic, cold air stinging his lungs. He can still see the peasant dropping to his knees. two arrows embedded in his back, his final words rasped out through a blood-filled throat. The Mongols are coming. Inside the church, his sandals slap against the bell tower's stone steps. With trembling hands, he pulls on the ropes, peeling out a warning to the unsuspecting city. Frantically, he scans the horizon. To his horror, he sees a dark mass forming on a hilltop. For weeks, news of the Mongols' westward invasion has trickled in.

3:14The devastating pitched battles in Poland, mass rape and murder in Moldova. Now the barbarian hordes are on their doorstep. Below him, people spill into the streets. Leaning from the tower, he bellows, The Tatars are here! Lead to the woods! Save yourselves! As word spreads, he hears the cries of fear. The Mongols' reputation precedes them. From his vantage point, Master Roger now sees a column of riders tearing through the valley. Soon he can make out horses covered in armor, warriors carrying bows and shields, their helmets glinting in the light. As they reach the city, he hears their blood-curdling shrieks, followed by the terrified screams of their victims.

4:00They surge through the streets, cutting down men and falling on women. He stumbles from the church and heads in the direction of the forest. Everywhere, the ground vibrates from the hoofbeats of stampeding horses. Dust and chaos is all around him. An arrow shatters against a wall, inches from his head. He breaks into a run, too afraid to look back, and can only pray to God the barbarians don't find him.

4:31Master Roger was a real person. He really was a Hungarian-based Italian churchman of the time, who documented the events of the Mongol invasion. He wrote, they were a wild people. They inhumanely raped the virgins of the poor and defiled the bed of the powerful whenever they had the chance. It's terrifying. These people who've come seemingly from nowhere, they look different, they're dressed in different ways, they're on different kinds of horses, different size of horses, and they move with huge speed. Also ahead of them comes these rumours and stories about massive destruction. And I think people are not sure what to believe, whether this is just exaggeration.

5:12Surely there can't have been churches that have been set on fire with people inside them. There can't be cities that have been completely demolished. But there's enough knowledge to know that there's reality underpinning the anxieties with this sort of cloud of disaster coming towards Europe. It must have felt like the apocalypse. These people coming with incredible violence, inflicting total defeat. And they would not stop until they had won. And it was clear that Europeans were completely unprepared for this onslaught. And you just look at the experiences in battle as well, that they had a completely different approach to warfare.

5:49I mean, we heard in earlier episodes about their remarkable horsemanship, their incredible ability to kill on horseback, their precision with arrows. And they're fighting these knights with their really heavy, cumbersome armour who have a completely different style of battle. And it's quite clear that they are not prepared to fight this new and unknown enemy. So the Mongols advance into Poland and Hungary. And as you mentioned, in April 1241, they inflict a crushing defeat on the allied army near Legnitz in Silesia. King Bela IV narrowly escapes from the battlefield, but his army doesn't. so they're slaughtered at the Battle of Mohi.

6:27But he then escapes down to Dalmatia. He gets to Trogi, where he goes to stay with the Domi family, with some of my ancestors, and then has to be chased through the coastline while the Mongols follow through in hot pursuit, sacking, split, reaching as far as Scutari in Albania before being ordered home. And that arrival of the Mongols in Europe is shattering in terms of what it is that it does for European self-confidence, and also about what happens later with European travellers wanting to go and head out eastwards. And John of Plannacarpini, William Robrook, and the most famous one, of course, being Marco Polo, going to travel to go and find out what are these worlds that live to our east?

7:11How much more sophisticated are they? How do people live? What do they believe in? And also, in some cases, can they also be converted? In the 1240s, for example, one of these envoys meets the great Khan and is given a letter to take back to the Pope, which says, all the lands in the world have been conquered by the Mongols. You should come in person, it says to the Pope, with all the princes and serve us. If you don't do so, the great Khan warns, I shall make you my enemy. When the Pope asks the Mongol ruler to become Christian, again, he gets a reply saying, how do you know whom God absolves and to whom he shows mercy?

7:47All the lands from the rising to the setting sun are subject to me. So that kind of thing shows that the balance of power is switching quite dramatically. And Ogaday and his successors are part of it. You can follow Legacy on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also binge entire seasons early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.