I have taken a small liberty with history in including a foot race. There's no record of it, but it would have been a possibility. I have no doubt other events have come and gone before the current form, just as the modern Olympics used to include a tug-of-war competition from 1900 to 1920, won twice by Britain. It is sometimes believed that Genghis left a will. If such a document ever existed, it has not survived. If it was an oral will, we do not know if it was given at the point of death, or long before. Some versions of history have Genghis dying almost instantly, while others have him lingering for days after a fall or a wound, where he could easily have arranged his own legacy. Either way, it is generally accepted that it was Genghis Khan's desire to have Chagatai inherit a vast khanate, while Tolui received the Mongol homeland. As the official heir, Ogedai inherited the northern Chin territories and whatever else he could win for himself. I have put that distribution in Ogedai's hands, in part because it would have been his final choice, no matter what his father intended. If Ogedai had executed Chagatai then, the bloodlines of that part of the world would have been very different, down to the present day.
Instead, Chagatai Khan died just a few months after Ogedai in 1242. The exact manner of his death is unknown, though the incredibly fortuitous timing allowed me to write and indeed suspect that he was killed. The earliest written formula for gunpowder is Chinese, from around 1044. It was certainly used in siege warfare during the period of Ogedai's khanate. Hand-held cannon of the sort I have described have been found dating back to Kublai Khan's period. One of the earliest recorded uses was by the Mongols in the Middle East in 1260, but they certainly went back further than that.
They were the cutting edge of military technology for the period, effectively a hugely powerful hand weapon that fired stones or even a metal ball. Iron vessels filled with gunpowder and lit with a fuse would have made effective shrapnel grenades. We do know the Mongols encountered them first against the Chin and Sung – and were quick to adopt such terrifying weapons. In fact, it was the vast territory covered by Mongol armies that led to the proliferation of such weapons across the land mass.
That said, the formula for Chinese gunpowder was poor in saltpetre, so lacked some of the explosive punch we associate with the material. A rush of flame would have been more common, with batches of the mixture varying enormously between makers, regions and periods. The extraordinary incident that led to the death of Tolui is from The Secret History of the Mongols. On his only campaign in northern China, Ogedai fell ill and 'lost [the use of] mouth and tongue' – a massive stroke, or perhaps grand mal epilepsy.
Mongol shamans and soothsayers made divinations, assuming that the spirits of the Chin were attacking the khan. They asked to be shown the correct sacrifice and, in response, Ogedai spasmed and suffered violent cramps. Using that response, they asked if a kinsman was needed. Ogedai then came round and drank water, asking to be told what had happened.
Prince Tolui did not have to be asked. The man who was father to Kublai and Mongke, both of whom would be khans, willingly gave his life to save his brother.
On the subject of slaughtering horses, I took the opportunity to speak to slaughtermen who had killed many hundreds of elderly horses over the years. In the preparation of kosher or halal meat, the animal needs to remain alive for the heart to pump out the blood. They begin by cutting the throat. The man I spoke to wanted a much faster kill, so he preferred an initial thrust to the heart, then drew the blade across the throat. Between 6 and 10 per cent of a horse's bodyweight will be blood. It's a rough estimate, but in a Mongolian pony, that would be around forty pints of blood.
As the Secret History records, Tolui took poison rather than die by the blade, but I changed his ending. The bloody sacrifice of animals was part of the attempt to save Ogedai and the two events seemed to fit together. His son Mongke was certainly present, though no exchange is recorded between them. A quick note on the subject of distances: By Ogedai's time, a network of way stations had been set up wherever Mongol influence extended. Set 25 miles apart on major roads, they were well furnished. With regular changes of horses, an urgent message could be taken 100 miles in a day, if necessary by the same man. The riders wore belts of bells, so the way stations could hear them coming and have water, food and a fresh mount waiting. A thousand miles in ten days was not just possible, but commonplace. Such lines of communication made the armies of the khans modern in a sense that no other force of the century could manage.
The shaman Mohrol is fictional, though of course the khan would have had diviners and shamans. In Mongolia, it remains the case that an extra finger will mean a child is 'chosen' to be a shaman. They do not hunt or fish and are supported by the tribes to be magic- and medicine-workers as well as keepers of history and tradition. They are men of power still. The ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan did exist. One was around 114 feet high, the other 165 feet. They were dynamited by the Islamic Taliban in 2001. There are still legends of a third, 'sleeping Buddha' in the hills there. Tsubodai's campaign against the west lasted from around 1232 to 1241. Over that time, he encountered Russians, Bulgars and Hungarian Magyars, took Buda and Pest, attacked Poland and modern-day Serbia, and sent scouts as far as northern Italy. In just one winter, over a period of two months, his tumans took twelve walled Russian cities. They had learned the use of catapults, ballistae, even a form of wall-smashing trebuchet in their wars against northern China. Russia had nothing capable of stopping the war machine of the Mongols.
It is true that Tsubodai preferred to campaign in winter and used the frozen rivers as a network of roads through the cities. Like Genghis before him, he and his generals were ruthless with fallen enemies, slaughtering vast populations. His one worry seems to have been the wide battlefront making it easy to flank or encircle his tumans. Time and again, he sent tumans out in sweeps into Poland, Hungary or Bulgaria to clear the way of possible enemies.
The legendary French Knights Templar said at the time that there was no army between Tsubodai and France that could stop him. Yet even the death of Ogedai might not have halted Tsubodai, had he not had the princes of the nation with him. Batu, Jochi's son, was there, as was Guyuk, Ogedai's son. Ogedai's grandson Kaidu was also present. It was he who raided into Poland with Baidur and fought the extraordinary battle of Liegnitz, preventing the Polish armies flanking the main attack against Hungary. I have not used Kaidu as a character here, for fear of the 'Russian novel problem', where every page brings new characters until the reader loses track. I did include Mongke in the campaign – he was there for most of it, including Kiev. Kublai was not present as one of the princes. He remained in Karakorum, studying Buddhism and establishing the Chinese influence that would dominate his adult life.
Jebe too was absent for that campaign, though I have kept him as a minor character. The Secret History does not tell his ending, unfortunately. As with Kachiun and Khasar, a once great leader simply slipped from the pages of history and was lost. Early death was common in those days, of course, and they almost certainly met their end through disease or injury, a death so ordinary as to be ignored by chroniclers.
Temuge did make a final, rash attempt to become khan after the death of Ogedai. It was unsuccessful and he was executed. Interestingly, Sorhatani was given her husband's rights and titles on his death. In that one decision, she instantly became the most powerful woman in the khanate – and in the world at that time. Three of her four sons would become khan through her influence and training. She supported Ogedai as khan and was consulted by him as the empire grew and became established. The one time she refused his wishes was when he offered to marry her to his son, Guyuk. She turned the offer down, preferring to concentrate her considerable energies on her sons. History confirms her wisdom in that matter. When Tsubodai's tumans entered Hungary over the Carpathian mountains, he faced the armies of the Hungarian King Bela IV. That monarch had accepted 200,000 Cuman refugees from Russia, a Turkic people similar to the Mongols in many ways. In exchange for their conversion to Christianity, they were given a brief sanctuary. Their leader Koten was baptised and his daughter married King Bela's son to seal the agreement. In exchange, King Bela was able to field an army of nomadic horsemen in addition to his own forces. He also expected help from the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, who was king of what is now Germany, Italy, Sicily, Cyprus and Jerusalem, or perhaps Pope Gregory IX. However, they were locked in their own struggle for power, with the Pope excommunicating Frederick II and even declaring him the Antichrist. As a result, the king of Hungary was left to resist the Mongol invasion almost without support. He did have forces from Archduke Frederick of Austria, but they withdrew after the death of Koten in a riot. The Cumans also left.