The Mongols Used Mass Terror as an Effective Strategy
When Gehghis Khan set out to conquer world, he started with China, which was fragmented at the time into various dynasties. First was the Western Xia Dynasty, which he defeated and turned into vassals. Next, he attacked the more powerful Jin Dynasty in 1211. After a decisive Mongol victory in which hundreds of thousands of enemy troops were massacred, Genghis captured and sacked the Jin capital in 1215.
The Jin emperor fled, and abandoned the northern half of his empire. Genghis then found himself ruling a domain that included tens of millions of Chinese peasants. The concept of civilized government was alien to him, so he planned to simply kill them all and transform the land into pasturage suitable for Mongol herds. The Chinese were spared that genocide only after the concept of taxation was explained to Genghis, and he understood that many live peasants working the fields and paying taxes meant great wealth.
Campaigning in China was interrupted when a governor in the powerful Khwarezmian Empire to the west executed Mongol envoys sent by Genghis to its emir. One of history’s greatest mistakes occurred when the emir scornfully refused to hand over the offending governor. Genghis launched an invasion of Khwarezim in 1218 that overwhelmed the empire and extinguished it by 1221. Its fleeing emir was relentlessly chased across his domain until he died, abandoned and exhausted, on a small Caspian island as his pursuers closed in.
It was during this war that the Mongols won their reputation for savagery. Millions of Khwarzmians died, as Genghis ordered the massacre of entire cities that offered the least resistance. Thousands of captives were forced ahead of Mongol armies as human shields, and those were often the lucky ones, because the Mongols took relatively few prisoners during the advance.
Following a victory or capture of an enemy city, the Mongol cry “feed the horses!” was a dreaded signal to fall upon and rape, murder, and plunder, defenseless populations. Especially when operating deep in enemy territory, the Mongols preferred to leave no opponents or potential opponents behind. They made few distinctions between combatants and noncombatants, and frequently killed all whom them encountered.
When not done in the heat of battle or its immediate aftermath – and when their bloodlust was up and passions were high – Mongols were chillingly methodical in their massacres and genocides. They did not torture or unnecessarily abuse their victims, but killed them swiftly. Specific units were given the task of butchery, soldiers were assigned quotas of victims to kill, and the massacre was carried out relatively quickly.
By the time Genghis was done, Khwarezm had been reduced from a thriving and wealthy empire to an impoverished and depopulated wasteland. At the central mosque in the once thriving but now smoldering city of Bukhara, Genghis told the survivors that he was the Flail of God, and that: “If you had not committed great sins, God would not have inflicted a punishment like me upon you“.