Enlightened sovereigns and wise generals moved and won, performed feats, surpassing all others because they knew everything in advance.
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War" (no later than IV century BC)
Mongol Empire
The phenomenon of this state is so unusual, grandiose and large-scale that it is difficult to comprehend by the philistine consciousness, and this, in many cases, gives rise to doubts among history lovers about the very fact of its existence. And in fact, how is it so, suddenly out of nowhere appears a huge state, founded by wild and illiterate nomads, exists there for a short period of time and disappears without a trace, leaving nothing behind? This does not happen.
In fact, and not "out of nowhere", and not "without a trace", and not so wild and illiterate. But to understand this, you need to subjectively immerse yourself in the study of this issue, and not try, operating with "logic and common sense" without relying on any knowledge, to deny indisputable, scientifically proven facts, replacing them with irresponsible fantasies of morally unscrupulous authors.
This article does not aim to put an end to the philistine skepticism about the existence of the Mongol Empire - a state stretching from the banana-lemon jungles of Southeast Asia to the Novgorod cranberry swamps, from the Pacific coast to the Carpathian mountains, a state in which the traveler of the 13th century. it could take a whole year to cross it from one end to the other. The purpose of the article is to dispel some doubts of skeptics regarding a single question, namely the question of how the Mongols "knew everything" from.
Indeed, a close examination of many aspects of the military campaign of the Mongols against the ancient Russian state, it seems that not nomad aliens from the distant Mongolian steppe came to Russia, but their own, local, well acquainted with the theater of military operations, its natural conditions, geographical and climatic nuances, who had information about the political situation, the military-economic potential of the enemy, as well as all other information necessary for the successful planning and conduct of military operations in enemy territory. The answer to the question of how the Mongols actually knew all this, we will try to get within the framework of this study.
Sources of information
The main sources on which we will rely in this study will, of course, be the ancient Russian chronicles and written documents left to us by the contemporaries of the described events. First of all, this is the "Secret Legend of the Mongols", recorded, according to modern research, in 1240 in the Mongolian language, and the reports of the Catholic monks Giovanni Plano Carpini and Julian of Hungary.
Of course, when working on this study, the author also used the works of professional historians: V. V. Kargalova, E. L. Nazarova, A. P. Smirnova, R. P. Khrapachevsky, D. G. Khrustalev, H.-D. Erenzhen and others.
Exploration in the 13th century
What was intelligence in the XIII century? in general and intelligence of the empire of Genghis Khan in particular?
All five ranks of spies work, and you cannot know their paths. This is called an incomprehensible secret. They are a treasure for the sovereign … Therefore, for the army there is nothing closer than spies; there are no greater rewards than for spies; no case is more secret than espionage.
These words of Sun Tzu exhaustively define the complexity faced by any author who is going to write about intelligence, no matter what time he writes about, if it is not about tactical intelligence during the conduct of hostilities, but about political or strategic intelligence. But in this case we are interested in it.
Of course, in the XIII century. no state (except, perhaps, China) had political or strategic intelligence as such: with its staff, hierarchy of subordination, structure, personnel, etc. The collection of information about the enemy was not carried out by professional intelligence officers trained and trained specifically for these purposes, but mainly by random people: merchants, religious missionaries, and, of course, diplomats, employees of embassy missions. All of these were people who stood quite high in the social hierarchy of society, because an intelligence officer (anyone), in addition to certain personal qualities, such as high intelligence, charm, sociability, ability and willingness to take risks, must have many qualities that are completely uncharacteristic of commoners. He must be familiar with circles that have information of interest to him, must have at his disposal certain (and often considerable) means to bribe or reward informants, and, not to mention elementary literacy, he must (preferably) know the language of the country in which he works (or keep a translator with you).
Perhaps the circle of such persons in the Middle Ages was limited precisely to nobles, merchants and representatives of the clergy. It was they, and only they, who had the opportunity to conduct intelligence activities.
In the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, it was strategic intelligence that was always given special attention. History has preserved for us even several names of persons who carried out such activities. First of all, this is a certain Muslim merchant named Jafar-Khoja, one of the closest associates of Genghis Khan. The Chronicle of Yuan-shih, the official history of the Chinese imperial Yuan dynasty, which, as you know, was of Mongolian origin, tells us about other Muslim merchants who carried out diplomatic and intelligence missions of Genghis Khan: a certain Asan (probably Hasan), a native of Turkestan, Danishmed-Hajib, Mahmud al-Khwarizmi. The latter, by the way, was “recruited” by the ruler of Khorezm and supplied him with disinformation regarding the forces and intentions of Genghis Khan. In general, Muslim merchants, with whom Genghis Khan always tried to maintain the best relations based on mutual benefit, probably played a key role in the system of collecting information about the opponents of the Mongol Empire. Often they were entrusted with missions not only of an intelligence, but also of a diplomatic nature.
In order to coordinate efforts to collect information about the enemy and its systematization, Genghis Khan created an analytical body that is constantly operating both in war and in peacetime - the prototype of what we now call the General Staff. There were simply no analogues of such a structure in other states at that time. Of course, the functions of this "general staff" included the collection and analysis of information not only about neighboring states, but also about the state of affairs in its own empire, that is, it combined the functions of the modern ministry of internal affairs and the ministry of defense, but taking into account the level of development of state institutions time in the world in general, it was a huge step forward. The employees of this "general staff" had the rank of "yurtadzhi", and the agents who collected information, that is, the scouts themselves, were called "anginchins". In fact, Genghis Khan came close to creating a cadre intelligence service.
In Europe, the creation of such an organization will not come very soon.
Acquaintance
The first clash between the Mongol Empire and Russia took place in 1223, when a battle took place on the river. Calca.
Actually, the campaign itself of the two Mongolian tumens under the leadership of Jebe and Subedei was a deep strategic reconnaissance in order to collect information about the natural conditions of the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region, as well as about the people who inhabited this area, and indeed any information about new, hitherto unknown territories. …
Before the battle, the command of the Mongolian expeditionary force tried to resort to their favorite trick, with the help of which they repeatedly managed to split the coalitions of their opponents. Ambassadors were sent to the Russian princes, urging them not to provide military assistance to the Polovtsy. The Russians simply killed the first group of such ambassadors, possibly because the Mongols used local brodniks as ambassadors, who knew the Polovtsian language, with which the Mongols were also familiar, and who could convey to the Russians the meaning of the message that Jebe and Subedei. Brodniks, that is, vagabonds, robbers, the forerunner of the late Cossacks, were not considered "handshake" by the Russian princes, so negotiations with them did not work out. These same "brodniks" subsequently took part in the battle against the Russians on the side of the Mongols.
It would seem, what other reason did the Mongols need after the execution of the "ambassadors" by the Russians to open hostilities? However, they send another embassy to the Russians, probably more representative (according to some researchers, it could have been Arab Muslim merchants detained by the Mongols), which they never did either before or after. The reason for such persistence of the Mongols may be precisely their desire to obtain intelligence information about the number and composition of the coalition of Russian princes, the quality of their weapons. Still, this was the first contact between two civilizations, previously completely unfamiliar with each other: in 1223 the borders of the Mongol Empire were still far to the east of Russia and the opponents knew literally nothing about each other. Having received information from their second embassy about the possible number and, most importantly, the composition of the Russian army, the Mongols realized that they would have to deal with heavy cavalry on the model of the knightly (they were familiar with such an enemy from the wars in Persia), and were able to proceed from the information received, draw up a battle plan suitable for this particular case.
Having won the battle, the Mongols pursued the defeated retreating Russian armies for a long time, invading far into the territory of Rus proper. It will be appropriate here to recall the notes of Plano Carpini, which he compiled more than twenty years after the events described.
“And we also learned many other secrets of the aforementioned emperor through those who arrived with other leaders, through many Russians and Hungarians who knew Latin and French, through Russian clerics and others who were with them, and some of them stayed for thirty years. war and other deeds of the Tatars and knew all their deeds, because they knew the language and stayed with them for twenty, some ten years, some more, some less; from them we could find out everything, and they themselves told us everything willingly, sometimes even without questions, because they knew our desire."
It is quite possible that the “Russian clerics” mentioned by Karpini appeared in the capital of the Mongol Empire precisely after the raid of Jebe and Subedei, they could be Russians who were captured after the Battle of Kalka, and there is no doubt that there were many of them. If, however, the term "clerics" is understood exclusively as persons of the clergy, then such persons could have been captured by the Mongols in the course of the pursuit of the defeated Russian troops on the territory of Rus proper. Considering the fact that the raid itself was conceived as "reconnaissance in force", as well as the special attentive and tolerant attitude of the Mongols to religion, including the religion of conquered or planned to conquer peoples, this assumption does not seem incredible. It was from these prisoners captured by the Mongols in 1223 that the Great Khan could receive the first information about Russia and the Russians.
Mongols … in Smolensk
After the defeat of the Russians on the Kalka, the Mongols left in the direction of the Middle Volga, where they were defeated by the troops of the Volga Bulgaria, after which they returned to the steppe and disappeared for a while, contact with them was lost.
The first appearance of the Mongols in the field of view of Russian chroniclers after the battle on the river. Kalka is marked in 1229. This year the Mongols came close to the borders of the Volga Bulgaria and began to disturb its borders with their raids. The main part of the forces of the Mongol Empire at that time was engaged in the conquest of southern China, in the west there were only forces of the Juchi ulus under the command of Batu Khan, and those, in turn, were busy with the continuation of the war with the Polovtsy (Kipchaks), who resisted stubbornly and staunchly. During this period, Batu could only put up small military contingents against Bulgaria, before which there were no serious tasks to conquer new territories, therefore, despite the fact that the Mongols over the next three years managed to expand their territory of influence on the interfluve of the Volga and Yaik (Ural) in their lower reaches, the southern borders of the Volga Bulgaria remained insurmountable for them.
In the context of this study, we will be interested in the following fact.
No later than 1229, a trilateral trade agreement was concluded between Smolensk, Riga and Gotland, in one of the lists of which there is an interesting article.
"And on which farmstead there is a German or a guest of a German, do not put a prince in the courtyard of either a Tatar or any other ambassador."
It is this list that most researchers date back to just 1229.
From this short article, the following conclusions and assumptions can be drawn.
Shortly before the treaty was drawn up in 1229, the Tatar embassy was present in Smolensk (this is how the Russian chronicles called the Mongols), which the Smolensk prince (probably it was Mstislav Davydovich) placed in the German courtyard. We can only speculate what happened to this embassy, which led to the need to make an appropriate addition to the trade agreement. Probably, it could have been some kind of quarrel, or simply the Mongolian ambassadors with their presence somehow greatly constrained the Germans in Smolensk. It is impossible to speak about this with any certainty. However, the very fact of the presence of the Mongolian embassy in Smolensk, as well as the fact that the arrival of similar embassies from the Mongol Empire was fully tolerated both by the Smolensk prince and by the Rigans with the Gotlandians, is beyond doubt.
It should also be noted that none of the Russian chronicles of the facts of Mongolian embassies in Russia before 1237, literally on the eve of the invasion, does not record, from which it can be concluded that such facts were not recorded in chronicles at all, and, therefore, the assumption that that there could be many such embassies has certain grounds.
What kind of embassy could it have been?
Historians know the Mongolian, and not only the Mongolian, custom of notifying all neighboring countries about the death of their ruler and the ascension to the throne of his successor. In 1227, Genghis Khan died, and it would be at least strange if the new Khan Ogedei did not follow this custom and sent his embassies to all neighboring states. The version that this embassy had one of its goals to notify the Russian princes about the death of Genghis Khan and the election of Ogedei as the Great Khan is indirectly confirmed by the fact that it was in 1229 that Genghis Khan's death was marked by some Russian chronicles.
We do not know whether the path of this embassy ended in Smolensk and, in general, what is its fate. However, the very fact of its presence precisely in Smolensk, on the extreme western borders of Russia, allows us to assume that the Mongols could visit Vladimir or Suzdal with their mission to Smolensk (depending on where Grand Duke Yuri Vsevolodovich was at that time), if it followed the shortest path through the Volga Bulgaria, or, possibly, Chernigov and Kiev, if moving through the steppes. Such a route, however, is unlikely, since at that time there was a war with the Polovtsi in the steppe and the path through the steppe was very unsafe.
If the Mongolian embassy had not "inherited" in Smolensk, we would have known nothing about its very fact, but now we can quite possibly assume with a very high degree of probability that similar embassies (or the same, Smolensk) visited Vladimir and in Kiev, and in Novgorod, and in other cities - the centers of the Russian lands. And from our side it would be completely strange to assume that these embassies were faced with exclusively diplomatic tasks, which did not include intelligence.
What information could such embassies collect? Passing through Russian lands, visiting Russian cities, staying in them or next to them for the night, communicating with local princes and boyars, even with smerds, you can collect almost any information about the country in which you are. Learn trade routes, inspect military fortifications, get acquainted with the weapons of a potential enemy, and after staying in the country for a fairly long time, you can get acquainted with the climatic conditions, with the way and rhythm of life of the taxable population, which is also of the most important importance for planning and implementing a subsequent invasion. If the Mongols did just that before, waging or preparing wars with China or Khorezm, they are unlikely to have changed their rules in relation to Russia. The same embassies, no doubt, collected information about the political situation in the country, the genealogy of the rulers (to whom the Mongols have always paid special attention) and other aspects no less important for planning the subsequent war.
All this information, of course, was collected and analyzed at the headquarters of both Batu Khan and Ogedei himself.
Diplomatic activity of the Mongols in Europe
We also have one direct evidence of the high diplomatic activity of the Mongols both in Russia and in Europe. In a letter intercepted by Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich, sent by Khan Batu in 1237 to the Hungarian king Bela IV and given by the prince to the Hungarian monk Julian (we will dwell on this letter in more detail in the next article), we see the following phrase:
I am Khan, the ambassador of the king of heaven, to whom he gave power over the earth to raise those who obey me and suppress those who oppose, I marvel at you, king (just like that, with disdain. - Auth.) Hungarian: although I sent ambassadors to you for the thirtieth time, why don't you You don’t send one of them back to me, and you don’t send your ambassadors or letters to me either.
For the present study, one fragment of the content of this letter is significant: Khan Batu reproaches the Hungarian king for not responding to his messages, although he is already sending an embassy to him. Even if we assume that the number "thirty" has a figurative meaning here, as we say "one hundred" (for example, "I have already told you a hundred times"), it still clearly follows from this letter that at least several Batu embassies in Hungary already sent. And again, it is not entirely clear why, in this case, he should have limited himself exclusively to communication with the Hungarian king, while forgetting about the king, for example, the Polish one, numerous Russian princes and other hierarchs of Central and Eastern Europe?
Considering that ambassadorial activity has always and at all times went hand in hand with intelligence, the level of awareness of Batu, and therefore, probably, of Ogedei, about European affairs should have been very high, while the Europeans began to establish diplomatic relations with the Mongolian empire, sending their emissaries only after the end of the Western campaign of the Mongols, the defeat of Russia, Poland and Hungary.
The following fact also gives an idea of the level of preparation of the Mongols for the Western, or, as they called it, the "Kipchak" campaign, as well as the level of readiness of Russia and Europe to repel Mongol aggression.
We know that the Mongols did not have their own script, so for correspondence, including diplomatic, he used the Uyghur script, applying it to his own language. No one at the court of Prince Yuri was able to translate the letter intercepted from the Mongolian ambassador. Unable to do this and Julian, to whom the prince handed this letter for delivery to the addressee. Here is what Julian himself writes about this:
Therefore, he (meaning Khan Batu. - Author) sent ambassadors to the king of Hungary. Passing through the land of Suzdal, they were captured by the prince of Suzdal, and the letter sent to the king of Hungary, he took from them; I even saw the ambassadors themselves with satellites given to me.
The above letter, given to me by the prince of Suzdal, I brought to the king of Hungary. The letter is written in pagan letters in the Tatar language. Therefore, the king found many who could read it, but did not find anyone who understood.
Apparently, Yuri Vsevolodovich did not harbor any illusions about the immediate prospects for relations with the Mongols - he was expecting an inevitable war. Therefore, when the Mongolian embassy tried to proceed through its lands to the Hungarian king Bela IV, he ordered to detain this embassy, and opened the letter of Khan Batu, addressed to Bela IV, and tried to read it. However, here he ran into one insurmountable difficulty - the letter was written in a language completely incomprehensible to him.
An interesting situation: a war is about to break out, and neither Russia nor Hungary can find a person who could read a letter written in the enemy's language. A striking contrast against this background is the story of the same Julian, recorded by him after returning from his first trip, which took place in 1235-1236.
In this country of Hungarians, the said brother found Tatars and an ambassador of the Tatar leader, who knew Hungarian, Russian, Cuman (Polovtsian), Teutonic, Saracen and Tatar …
That is, the "ambassador of the Tatar leader" knows the languages of all opponents of the Mongol Empire, probable in the foreseeable future, already in 1236. It is unlikely that he was the only one, and by chance it was he who fell into Julian "in the country of the Hungarians." Most likely, this state of affairs was the norm among the Mongolian diplomatic corps. It seems that this says a lot about the level of preparation of the sides (Europe and Asia) for the war.
