Hardcore History 47 – Wrath of the Khans V (Dan Carlin)

Release Date: January 13, 2013
Host: Dan Carlin

Episode Overview

The final episode in Dan Carlin’s acclaimed five-part series, "Wrath of the Khans," explores the pivotal final decades of the unified Mongol Empire. Carlin analyzes the aftershocks of the Mongol onslaught in Europe, the succession crises after the death of Ogedai Khan, the empire’s greatest expansion and internal fractures, the earth-shaking sack of Baghdad, the division of the Mongol world, and the complex legacy of Genghis Khan’s descendants. Elegant threads link firsthand sources, historical what-ifs, and moral quandaries around mass violence and progress, all in Carlin’s signature vivid style.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Death of Ogedai Khan and Its Impact (04:00–16:00)

• Wildcards in History: Carlin compares historians' efforts to find a "grand theory" of history to physicists' quest for a "unified field theory," but notes the unpredictable, 'human variable' can upend all theories.
• Ogedai’s Death Halts Mongol Advance:
  • In 1242, as Mongols stand poised to conquer Western Europe, Ogedai dies—likely from alcoholism—causing the whole Mongol war machine to "power down" and withdraw from Europe.
  • European witnesses are stunned, often attributing this "miracle" to divine intervention.
• Historical What-If:
  • Speculation on whether the Mongols could have fully conquered Europe, considering previous steppes conquerors like Attila the Hun.
  • Carlin: "By the time they would have reached France, the Mongol armies likely would have consisted of a core of Mongols and a lot of people taken from Poland, Hungary, Germany, Italy, and, yes, even France, fighting other Europeans on pain of death.” (13:30)

Europeans Dragged (and Drawn) Into Asia (16:00–24:00)

• The Mongol withdrawal "sucked Europeans back into Asia" forcibly—many as slaves or concubines.

• Stories from sources like Roger of Verad demonstrate the horror of forced marches and mass executions.

  • "Once the Hungarian borders were reached, all of the non-essential and those considered to be non-valuable prisoners were going to get, as he put it, 'the edge of the sword.'" (20:20)

• Emergence of European diplomatic missions eastward, notably:

  • The papal mission of John of Plano Carpini (1245), tasked with both diplomacy and espionage.
  • Carpini's eyewitness account of the Mongol “coronation” (enthronement) of Ogedai’s successor.

The Mongol Succession Crisis & Power of Mongol Women (24:00–44:00)

• Succession rules break down after the death of the second Great Khan; no automatic or universally recognized way to pick a new Khan.
• Regency of Empress Töregene (var. Doragin/Doragini):
  • "If this really is the most powerful woman in all human history, isn’t it interesting you have to be a bit of a Mongol fanatic to have even heard of her?" (38:30)
  • She rules while factions wrangle—the most powerful woman most people have never heard of.
• Multi-year stalemate as key heirs (notably Batu, son of Jochi, son of Genghis) refuse to attend the essential political gathering (Kurultai) to select a new Khan, paralyzing the empire.
• The empire fractures along "houses" (familial lines), with infighting growing ever more bloody and personal.

The Election of Guyuk Khan and Western Observers (44:00–56:00)

• Batu is forced to send proxies to the 1246 Kurultai; John of Plano Carpini, the papal envoy, is present as the first European eyewitness to a Great Khan’s enthronement:

  • "He says, There’s 4,000 envoys, dukes, kings, princes, sultans, people from all over what these people would have considered the world. … The Mongols are not a poor people anymore." (49:40)
  • Descriptions of unimaginably lavish gifts, endless wagons of treasures.

• Carpini is struck by Mongol religious tolerance and notes the new Khan, Guyuk, might convert to Christianity—"What if the Mongol Khan had actually converted to Christianity? Talk about an absolutely world changing event." (53:30)

• Exchange of letters between Pope Innocent IV and Guyuk reveals deep mutual incomprehension.

  • Guyuk’s reply: "If God didn’t want us to be able to conquer the world, why did he let us conquer the world? ... Reality is what the gods wanted. This is reality. Wake up and smell the coffee. He wants the Mongols to be running the world." (1:00:00)

Internal Fracture and Repeated Succession Crises (56:00–1:20:00)

• Guyuk imposes harsh discipline ("If what Ogedai was, was mellow, what the heck is a stern one? Well, Kuyuk was a stern one. And everyone was about to find out what it meant to have a taskmaster, old school Mongol at the helm." (1:07:40))
• New power struggle: Guyuk and Batu edge toward civil war; Guyuk dies suddenly, possibly due to alcoholism, before blood is spilled.
• Two regencies by imperial wives mark Mongol exceptionalism in female power, but also highlight instability.
• Sorghagtani Beki (widow of Genghis’s youngest son, Tului) engineers the next succession: her son Möngke is made Great Khan at a disputed Kurultai—a move that sparks an assassination plot and bloody purges.
• Chronicled assassination plot against the new Khan; the episode underscores the fatal flaw of a consensus-based Mongol succession process and the fatal costs of family strife.

New Generation, New Empire (1:20:00–1:38:00)

• The "grandchildren generation" of Genghis Khan now rule—richer, more cosmopolitan, less cohesive than the founders.
• Carlin: “If Genghis Khan really is... this historical arsonist, this creative destroyer... these grandchildren of Genghis Khan are the replanters and the reseeders of these forests who begin to rebuild and correct some of the damage caused by their grandfather.” (1:33:00)
• Rule begins to reflect influence from conquered peoples: Chinese, Islamic, Persian cultures mold Mongol elites.
• Harsh rule brings order and safety: “a girl with a pot of gold on her head can walk from Asia to Europe and not be touched” (1:36:20) — a testament to Mongol intimidation and legalism.

The Sack of Baghdad and Its Consequences (1:38:00–2:16:00)

• Helugu Khan crushes the famous “Assassins” (Ismailis) and then bears down on Baghdad, seat of the Abbasid Caliphate.

  • Epic destruction in 1258: mass killing, pillage, and burning in the intellectual capital of the Islamic world.
  • “Baghdad was one of the most brilliant intellectual centers in the world. The Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from which Islam never recovered.” (Stephen Dutch, 2:12:00)
  • “The Tigris River was said to run red with blood... and black with the ink of all of the literature that was thrown into the water.” (2:07:45)
  • Estimates of the dead range wildly (80,000–800,000), but the destruction of knowledge, infrastructure, and confidence is undeniable.

• Unique Mongol treatment of religious groups: Christian communities spared, arguably due to the preferences of Christian Mongol leaders and their wives.

• Internal Mongol split: Berke (ruler of the Golden Horde, and a Muslim) is enraged by Helugu’s assault on Baghdad, sowing seeds of fissure among the Mongol states.

The End of Mongol Unity & Battle of Ayn Jalut (2:16:00–2:30:00)

• Mongols press further into the Middle East, threatening an Islamic world already in retreat, until Helugu is summoned home by the death of the Great Khan Möngke.
• Mongol unity collapses; different houses turn on each other.
• In 1260, the small Mongol garrison left behind is crushed by the Mamluks at Ayn Jalut—a symbolic end to Mongol invincibility.
  • Carlin notes: the defeat wasn’t due to superior Mamluk arms, but to the absence of the main Mongol force—“the giant Mongol military robot had just lost its brain, and the powering down begins anew right when the Muslim world needed it.” (2:28:00)

Division, Decline, and Historical Legacy (2:30:00–2:56:00)

• The Mongol Empire irreversibly splits into separate khanates: the Ilkhanate (Persia), Golden Horde (Russian steppes), Yuan Dynasty (China), Chagatai Khanate (Central Asia).
• Kublai Khan goes on to found the Yuan Dynasty in China, ruling as a “Chinese” emperor; European impressions are mediated by people like Marco Polo, ushering in the first wave of “revisionist” history.
  • "The Mongols would basically... go native—a problem that Kublai even saw during his own lifetime... to keep their military edge, he would consistently rotate troops out of China back to the barren, cold, harsh steppes..." (2:40:00)
• Gunpowder, bureaucracy, and the assimilation of Mongols ultimately end the “steppe advantage.”
• Discussion of the “Pax Mongolica,” rapid rise and fall.

Moral Judgments and the Costs of Empire (2:56:00–end)

• Carlin sharply questions attempts at historical moral relativism:
  • “I’ve read historians who try to claim you can’t blame people like Genghis Khan for the amounts of death and suffering caused because he didn’t know better... That to me strikes a chord that reminds me of Holocaust deniers...” (2:57:40)
  • “The real unfairness to someone like Genghis Khan and the Mongols is when we treat the mass killings and sufferings and rapes and slaughters and slavery that they did differently than we treat the same deeds carried out by Alexander and Caesar and people like that.” (2:58:40)
• Reflections on whether the long-term “benefits” of Mongol rule justify the immense suffering they inflicted.
  • “It seems to me the people in a position to make that judgment are the ones who had to pay the bill.” (End)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On History’s “Wild Cards”:

  • “When the gods of history decide to throw a wild card down on the table… that's exactly what happened in the year 1242.” (05:30)

• On Ogedai’s Death:

  • “It might be the most influential death due to intoxication addiction in all world history, and it completely short circuits the Mongol plans.” (08:00)

• On Mongol Withdrawal:

  • “When the messenger arrives… riding almost nonstop… to tell the Mongol armies operating in Europe that Ogedai had died, they pull back almost instantly. Within a mere couple of weeks, this army that was ready to follow up its victory against a defenseless Europe is gone.” (10:40)

• On Roger of Verad’s Escape:

  • “He pretended he needed to go to the side of the road to answer the call of nature, covered himself up with sticks and twigs and stayed for days until the Mongols and the refugees had left.” (22:15)

• On Religious Tolerance:

  • “What John of Plano Carpini was seeing was the Mongols’ tolerance towards other religions… because when John got to the Far East, he ran into other Christians from various other denominations, some of which he wasn’t even aware existed…” (53:00)

• On Communication Breakdown:

  • “It must have confused the Mongols unbelievably, especially when you imagine it translated several times before they get their hands on it, including translated probably by Muslims, somewhere in the mix.” (55:00)

• On the Mongols’ Justification for Conquest:

  • “If God didn’t want us to be able to conquer the world, why did he let us conquer the world? This is the great medieval and ancient way of justifying the way things are.” (1:01:30)

• On the Destruction of Baghdad:

  • "Iraq in 1258 was very different from present day Iraq... Baghdad was one of the most brilliant intellectual centers in the world. The Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from which Islam never recovered." (Stephen Dutch, 2:12:00)
  • "The Tigris river was said to run red with blood from the philosophers and the scientists that were murdered and black with the ink of all of the literature that was thrown into the water." (2:07:45)
  • "Imagining the Athens of Pericles and Aristotle obliterated by a nuclear weapon begins to suggest the enormity of the blow." (Stephen Dutch, 2:12:30)

• On the Division of the Mongol World:

  • “The Mongol world empire, which was just at its zenith... is breaking apart.” (2:28:50)

• On History’s Judgment:

  • "I've also read historians... try to play down the number of deaths... That to me strikes a chord that reminds me of Holocaust deniers who will say something like 6 million Jews didn't die in the Holocaust. It's much more like 3 or 4 million, as though somehow that lessens the evil significantly." (2:58:20)

• On Moral Accounting:

  • "Because, let's be honest, Alexander the Great's goal in killing all those people he did to create the empire that he did was not to spread Hellenism. So we would have the benefits of it today. It was much more personal and much more venal. That's the case with most of the conquerors throughout history. And just because we may benefit from it in today's modern world, I'm not sure that makes it right." (2:59:30)

Timestamps of Major Segments

• 00:00 – 04:00 Introduction: Theories of history and context
• 04:00 – 16:00 The Death of Ogedai and halted conquest of Europe
• 16:00 – 24:00 Aftershocks in Europe, forced migrations, early Western missions east
• 24:00 – 44:00 Succession crisis, Empress regency, split among Mongol houses
• 44:00 – 56:00 Election of Guyuk Khan and observations of European envoys
• 56:00 – 1:20:00 Hard-line rule, internal divisions, Mongol civil war averted by another unexpected death
• 1:20:00 – 1:38:00 The grandchild generation, new cosmopolitan Mongol society, strict rule and security
• 1:38:00 – 2:16:00 Helugu Khan, destruction of the Assassins, sack of Baghdad, repercussions
• 2:16:00 – 2:30:00 Mongol push into the Middle East, Battle of Ayn Jalut, the collapse of Mongol unity
• 2:30:00 – 2:56:00 The age of divided khanates and the assimilation (and decline) of the Mongol legacy
• 2:56:00 – End Reflections: How (and whether) we judge Mongol violence and progress

Conclusion

Dan Carlin closes the saga of the Mongol Empire’s wrath with an unflinching look at the cost of conquest, the impossibility of moral clarity in history, and the ways past devastation shapes our world. The final installment is a masterclass on the Mongol world—its power, violence, cosmopolitan reach, and enduring consequences—woven with empathy, skepticism, and awe.