The Miracle of Freedom by Ted Stewart

Author:Ted Stewart
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: History
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2011-05-04T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

The Mongol Horde Turns Back

Part of Genghis Khan’s strategy was calculated massacre: if a city resisted his armies, once it fell to him—and they always fell— he had all the inhabitants slaughtered. The chroniclers’ reports of the numbers of dead are staggering.

Robert Cowley in What If

Five hundred years after the Muslim army had been driven from southern France, another army marched on Europe, this one more savage and dangerous than any that had ever been witnessed on the continent before.

This raging army left nothing but devastation in its wake. Whole cities were destroyed, every man, woman, and child beheaded, their bloody skulls stacked in huge piles outside the city walls. Entire cultures and peoples—some of them highly advanced—were wiped off the earth, their history and societies reduced to the point that they were never heard from again. Indeed, the destructive power of this brutal army would be felt throughout Asia and Eastern Europe for the next seven hundred years, to the point that some modern-day nations are still dealing with its devastating impacts.

Such was the power of the Mongol horde.

In 1236, after raging through China and eastern Asia, the Mongols set their eyes on Europe.

The timing couldn’t have been any worse, for the world was at a crossroads that it had never approached before. The Dark Ages were receding. Advances in science, technology, art, agriculture, and law were slowly working their way into the light. More important, the embryonic ideas of individual freedom and representative government were just beginning to take hold, with some European leaders beginning to concede to their people the essential elements of free will.

At this critical time, the threat of civilization devolving into chaos rose once again.

The Mongol army raged in from the Mongolian steppes. Throughout all of Eurasia, city after city fell. With the approach of the vicious army, the future of Western civilization hung in the balance, the outcome anything but assured.

But to understand the grave threat that the Mongol army presented, we must first understand the nature of the Mongol treatment of its conquered peoples and the condition of Europe as its invasion began.

Gurganj (Capital City of the Kingdom of Khwarizm) Central Asia AD 1221

What had started as a modest settlement along the western bank of the Amu Darya River had grown into the most beautiful city in the entire kingdom. Dating back to the fourth century BC, when the city was nothing but a small square of mud homes, it had spread south and then west until it covered a large tract of the broad plain.

Thick ramparts with four beautiful gates kept the city safe, the massive Gate of Peace the most beautiful of them all. Across the bridge, the Garden of Amusements lay just outside the city walls. Canals ran up to each gate but then stopped, there being no room inside the crowded city for them to continue any farther. The great palace of Ma’mun stood next to the Hajjaj gate, its blue-tiled dome reflecting the morning light. Inside the highly fortified city, residential neighborhoods took up most of the space.

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