Storm from the east, p.15
Storm from the East, page 15
While Carpini and his party had been struggling through another Russian winter, a Dominican named Ascelinus of Lombardy was making his way through the Levant, retracing the journey taken by Andrew of Longjumeau in search of Baiju’s camp. Unlike Andrew, Friar Ascelinus managed to obtain good directions and arrived at the military governor’s camp at Sisian in the Karabagh Highlands in May 1247.
Whatever qualified Ascelinus for this mission it was not any gift for diplomacy. Requested to make the obligatory genuflection, descending three times on the left knee, Ascelinus obstinately refused; nor did he bring with him the customary tributes so that he might be recognised as a serious envoy. Then Ascelinus made things even worse by referring to the Pope as ‘the greatest of all men’, and went on by demanding that Baiju and his followers should all become Christians.
Having first delivered Ascelinus a stinging rebuke – ‘You ask us to become Christians and so [become] dogs like you?’ – Baiju sentenced the monks to death, planning to flay them alive and then deliver their straw-stuffed hides to Rome. The monks escaped only through the intervention of Baiju’s wife, who insisted that her husband show the customary Mongol respect for clerics – no matter how insolent. Despite his reprieve, the Dominican’s obstinate nature was barely tempered and he might yet have come to grief had not an official from Qaraqorum arrived with orders to relieve Baiju of his command. The new governor, Eljigidei, wily tactician, was another of Guyuk’s sweeping changes to his administration. Ascelinus departed soon afterwards, bearing letters that reiterated Guyuk’s message to the Pope and with very little good to say of the Mongols.
OPTIMISM IN EUROPE
One year after leaving Sira-ordu, Carpini’s epic journey was finally over; he arrived at Lyons on 18 November 1247, nearly two and a half years after having left that city. Innocent IV greeted him warmly and was delighted by the encouraging reports that the eastern Christians or Nestorians were prepared to recognise him as their ‘particular lord and father and the Holy Roman Church as lady and mistress’. However, the report from the Mongol court, coupled with Guyuk’s letter, made him feel less optimistic. Europe had little option, in Carpini’s opinion, but to prepare for the worst. The only chance of a reprieve, he suggested, was the growing rift he had observed between Batu and Guyuk, which he thought might possibly delay or distract the Mongols from renewing their advance in the West.
The papal court accepted this news grimly, and then listened hopefully for information on Prester John. The Franciscan confessed he could find no actual evidence of the man, nor of any large and powerful Christian king in the neighbourhood. However, the best piece of news, the one seized upon and broadcast throughout Christendom, was Carpini’s description of the powerful influence that the eastern Christians enjoyed at the Mongol. Clutching at this straw, Carpini even went so far as to predict that Guyuk would some day convert to Christianity. In what was, on the whole, a somewhat depressing – though fascinating – account, this singular fact was enough to generate widespread optimism, especially as it seemed to corroborate the report of Andrew of Longjumeau who had returned from Persia just a few months before.
The heady confidence that soon filled the papal court could not disguise some harsh realities: the Europe to which Carpini had returned was in no position to form a united front against a renewed Mongol attack – the ‘dissensions and wars’ had got worse during his absence. Three years before, at the Thirteenth Ecumenical Conference, Innocent had resolved to deal with the Mongols, not as the ‘Hammer of God’ but as a foreign invading power. It had also been decided to conduct yet another Crusade for the Holy Land, which the young and devout King Louis IX of France would lead. Innocent’s strategy towards the Mongols was to try to draw the eastern Churches into a pan-Christian alliance – and first reports were encouraging.
However, these plans were put aside when the long-running conflict with Frederick II flared up again, spreading the fighting from Italy up into Germany and threatening to ignite central Europe. Within months of his return, Carpini was despatched once again, this time to the court of Louis IX, to plead for assistance in the war against Frederick. But Louis would not abandon the Crusade, and by August he and his wife, Queen Margaret, had set sail for Cyprus. He had spent three years preparing, and had the foresight to take with him many followers with experience of the Middle East, including Andrew of Longjumeau.
MONGOL DECEIT, EUROPEAN NAIVETY
The French King left behind a Europe even more torn by internal strife, and praying for continued respite from the Tartars. He was unaware, however, that the hemisphere to which he sailed now contained a new and powerful military presence. Louis made his first base at Limassol, but, before he had even begun to deploy his army, he received two envoys from General Eljigidei, the new Mongol military governor of northern Persia. Eljigidei’s ambassadors were two wily Nestorians named David and Mark, one of whom was recognised by Andrew from his earlier travels through Georgia. They bore a letter from Eljigidei, which claimed he had been charged by the Great Khan to protect all Christians in western Asia, rebuild their churches and pray for the success of Louis’s Crusade. The letters went on to claim that the Great Khan had recently been baptised and that Eljigidei had followed his Khan’s example. The ambassadors also delivered a secret message to Louis, which they claimed Eljigidei had dared not commit to paper. It was a proposal for a military alliance.
According to David and Mark, Eljigidei was preparing his armies for a winter assault on Baghdad. If the King of France would co-ordinate his plans for an attack upon Egypt at the same time, then the two great Islamic powers, the Sultanate of Egypt and the Caliphate of Baghdad, would be unable to come to each other’s assistance – and so the separate ambitions of the Great Khan and the great Pope would doubtless succeed. Eljigidei went further, and in a wonderfully bold stroke suggested that their respective armies should then converge and between them liberate the Holy Land.
To the young French King this was marvellous news. Eljigidei’s message had confirmed Carpini’s optimistic prediction, as well as more recent reports claiming that the entire Mongol court might soon be converted to Christianity. Soon Louis’s court was wild with enthusiasm. He swiftly sent word to the Pope and then set about composing a suitable reply to the Mongol commander. He sent separate letters to both Guyuk Khan and Eljigidei, commending their decision to turn to Christianity and their offer of assistance in the war against Islam. Then, as a tribute to the Great Khan, he had a marvellous portable chapel constructed complete with decorations – all the paraphernalia necessary to celebrate Mass plus a few fragments from the True Cross. When it was finished, Louis sent Andrew of Longjumeau to Eljigidei’s camp with the letters, gifts and secret messages regarding the forthcoming campaign.
The naivety with which Louis responded to David and Mark’s message only demonstrates how desperately Europe had come to believe in the Mongols’ conversion – in the ancient legend of the powerful Christian kingdom of the East made manifest. While Christian influence at the court was well known, and Guyuk’s baptism even possible, it is absolutely certain that neither he nor his court ever seriously embraced Christianity. Eljigidei’s ambassadors were a most cunning ruse, executed with great aplomb.
There was one aspect of Mongol military endeavours that remained essential to all their successes, and that was the gathering and exploitation of first-rate intelligence. It might be recalled that, while Ascelinus and his party were held captive in Baiju’s camp, Eljigidei had arrived to take command. According to an account of one of the monks in that party, before they were released, Ascelinus had been closely questioned about rumours that the Europeans were preparing to launch a fresh campaign to reconquer Jerusalem. It would have been obvious to a man of Eljigidei’s calibre what advantages might be gained from a Mongol–European alliance. The scheme was simple, but ingenious. The Caliphate of Baghdad was the last significant power that stood in the way of Mongol ambitions in Persia, but to launch an attack would probably have invited a united Islamic response. If he could be certain that the Egyptian Sultan’s armies would be pinned down at the same time, then he stood a better chance of success. The Mongols had no plans to march on the Holy Land, as yet.
Andrew and six other friars set sail with the portable chapel in late January 1249. By the time they arrived at Eljigidei’s camp in the spring, Louis and his army were landing in Egypt as agreed. Eljigidei had not attacked Baghdad, nor had he even mobilised, for in the past six months the balance of power had shifted again in Qaraqorum.
A NEW POWER STRUGGLE IN THE MONGOL CAPITAL
In 1248 there had been an attempt to resolve the differences between Guyuk and Batu through a meeting between the two cousins in the Ili valley, about midway between their respective domains. But before Batu reached the rendezvous, he received word that the planned reconciliation was in fact a trap; Guyuk intended to arrest him and have him executed. However, all Guyuk’s plans came to nothing. His addiction to alcohol coupled with the rigours of the journey were finally too much for him, and he died somewhere along the road to the Ili valley. He was forty-two. His widow, Oghul-Ghaimish, assumed the regency until the next quriltai and, as was the custom, had begun conspiring to have her son Shiremun elected as the next Great Khan. This time, however, the house of Ogedei did not have the numbers. Tolui’s widow, Sorghaghtani Beki, with the support of Batu and most of the other princes, was gathering support for her son Mongke, whom Guyuk had defeated two years before.
Under the present circumstances, Eljigidei, who owed his promotion to Guyuk, decided it would be unwise to launch a new campaign until the result of the election was known. So, in order to waste time, he sent Andrew and the portable chapel to Oghul-Ghaimish’s camp in Tarbagatai. Nearly nine months later they arrived at the regent’s camp, where the gifts intended for her late husband were taken as tribute from the Christian West and proof of their submission to the Mongol court. Poor Andrew was then entrusted with a letter for King Louis, which simply enjoined him to return each year with further tribute of gold and silver; if he did not, he would be destroyed. Andrew and his companions had naively expected to be welcomed into a Christian realm and treated as allies. Instead, Louis’s envoys were hastened away as though they were messengers of a vassal lord.
In all respects the venture had proved a catastrophe. While the Dominicans had been fruitlessly trekking across Asia to the seat of the Mongol court, Louis had been in prison. Having landed in Egypt in June 1249, Louis’s army quickly took Damietta unopposed and then marched on towards Cairo, firmly believing that at that moment Eljigidei’s armies were laying siege to Baghdad. But Louis’s progress was halted long before he reached Cairo by a unit of the Sultan’s army led by a young Mamluk commander named Baybars. The Mamluks were Turkic slave soldiers who had entered the Sultan’s service back in 1238. In fact, they had originally been captured by Batu’s son Berke during the raids that preceded the Mongol invasion of eastern Europe, and then sold to the Egyptian Sultan to help finance Batu’s war. In the ten years since, the Mamluks had become not only an indispensable element of the Egyptian army but also a significant force at court.
The confrontation between the armour-clad French knights and these once nomadic horsemen was as one-sided as the battles between the Poles and the Mongols. Louis’s vanguard was utterly destroyed, forcing the army to fall back. It fought an effective rear-guard action, but eventually was cut off from its supply lines and brought close to starvation. Louis had no option but to surrender and he was carried away in chains, stricken with dysentery and near death. He languished in prison until May 1250, when finally a massive ransom of one million gold bezants was paid and he and the remnants of his army were released. Out of 60,000 men, only 12,000 sailed with him to Acre, where he made his base for the next four years.
The irony of Louis’s situation couldn’t have been more poignant. As he and his meagre army sailed from Egypt, the Mamluks were in revolt, having murdered the Sultan’s heir. The Sultan himself had died the year before, and following the revolt his widow, Shajar al-Durr, had married the Mamluks’ commander-in-chief, Aybak. This created a new Islamic regime, but more importantly splintered the rest of the Islamic world and led to years of intrigue and civil war. There could have been no better time in which to launch a decisive campaign against Islam – but Louis did not have the means. He must have writhed with frustration.
In April 1251, Andrew of Longjumeau returned from Mongolia to be received by his King at Caesarea near Acre. According to Louis’s biographer, Joinville, the King was appalled at Oghul-Ghaimish’s letter and at the Mongols’ mendacity. Nevertheless, Andrew’s mission was not entirely fruitless; it did plant the seed of the possibility of Christian–Mongol entente – even if that response had probably been motivated by a lingering faith in an Eastern saviour. However, as things were, Europe would doubtless think twice before responding to any such suggestion again. In the meantime, as Andrew had been making his way back to Palestine, the question of the succession to the Great Khan was resolved. Oghul-Ghaimish’s efforts on behalf of her son had become desperate and at one point she had even attempted to assassinate the other candidate, Mongke; however, the plot was discovered, Oghul-Ghaimish was discredited and on 1 July 1251, Mongke was duly elected. There followed the usual purge of opposition supporters, along with seventy advisers who were executed for their complicity; Oghul-Ghaimish suffered the same fate as Fatima; Chaghadai’s grandson Buri had been part of the plot and was therefore doomed; and Shiremun was sent away to the wars in China and murdered there on Mongke’s orders. Even Eljigidei and his sons were swept away in the purge.
Mongke Khan then immediately distinguished his reign by declaring his wish to renew the Genghis mandate of world conquest. There would be two massive imperial expeditions: the first was to take up properly the campaign against the Sung Dynasty in southern China and extend the empire’s borders in the east. Mongke decided he would lead this campaign himself with the aid of his younger brother, Khubilai. The other great expedition he gave to another of his younger brothers, Hulegu.
This was the expansion of the empire in the west – not into Europe, but through Persia, down into Mesopotamia and Syria and eventually invading Egypt. This strike into the Middle East became the most ferocious and devastating attack that Islam ever encountered.
CHAPTER 7: MONGOL CRUSADERS
With the enthronement of Mongke, the empire was once again in the hands of an expansionist. The motivating force behind the empire had lain dormant since Ogedei’s reign and during that time it had shown distinct signs of decadence and internal decay. Mongke Khan was set to change all that. As this new sense of purpose moved through the Mongol capital, the Pope and his advisers struggled to decipher the confusing signals their envoys had delivered on the intentions of the ‘Tartar hordes’. Louis’s experience had been a bitter lesson.
However, though Europe waited to see what the fates delivered, this did not mean the end of European contact with the Mongol court. Among King Louis’s entourage was a young Flemish monk by the name of William, who was soon to find himself at the very heart of the great empire just as it was about to make another stride on the world stage. Very little is known of William, except that he was born in the French town of Rubruck about 1217, that he lived for some time at a friary in Paris, that he was passionately devout and that he had been in Louis’s service at least since his departure for Egypt in 1248.
SPY AND EVANGELIST IN THE LAND OF THE MONGOLS
William of Rubruck enters the story because of his remarkable account of life and customs at the Mongol court. Far more detailed than previous accounts, it describes the workings of the empire’s capital at a critical time for both the empire and the rest of the world.
Friar William turned up at the Mongol court because of his own personal mission to preach the gospel among the pagans. He had been inspired by the stories of Andrew of Longjumeau and the writings of Carpini, among others, which described Mongol tolerance towards foreign religions. Rubruck had become concerned in particular about what he presumed was the pernicious influence of the ‘Nestorians’. He had also been greatly moved by accounts of German slaves who were apparently labouring for one of the Mongol princes. This passionate friar saw it as his calling to travel the breadth of Asia, bring succour to the European slaves and, during this time of great evangelical fervour, convert the Mongols to the true Christian path.
Naturally Louis was reluctant to offer much encouragement to Rubruck’s plan. He insisted that the friar should make quite clear to all Mongol officials the unofficial nature of his mission, in case they mistook his presence as an indication of Louis’s submission to the Great Khan. However, in return for an account of Rubruck’s observations from within the empire, Louis was prepared to give the monk a letter of introduction to Prince Sartaq, one of Batu Khan’s sons and a recent convert, requesting safe conduct for the monk to fulfil his mission.
Rubruck set off from Acre at the beginning of 1253 with a party that included the Italian Franciscan Bartholomew of Cremona, a royal secretary named Gosset who brought with him gifts for the Khan, and a Syrian named Omodeo who was to act as guide and interpreter. They travelled by way of Constantinople, across the Black Sea and into Mongol territory, which Rubruck described as like ‘stepping into some other world’. They arrived in July at Sartaq’s camp, where the locals immediately presumed they were emissaries from King Louis; they were then sent on to Batu Khan’s camp, three days’ journey away. Batu also found Rubruck’s explanations of a religious mission less than convincing, and he too sent them on – to the seat of the great Mongke Khan himself, at Qaraqorum.
