Temüjin's orphans built history's largest contiguous empire
Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Mongol conquests forged the Mongol Empire (1206–1368), by 1260 spanning much of Eurasia from Pacific approaches toward Central Europe. Temüjin—future Genghis Khan—survived steppe abandonment after Tatars poisoned his father Yesugei.
Mongol predecessors migrated from eastern Manchuria onto the plateau southeast of Lake Baikal near Burkhan Khaldun. Twelfth-century khans allied and feuded until Yesugei's line, including abducted wife Hö'elün's children, clawed back status. Temüjin killed an older half-brother, allied with Toghrul of the Kerait, broke with anda Jamuqa after early closeness, and fled a 1187 defeat to Jin China before returning sponsored.
Horse-archer armies fixed traditional nomadic weaknesses and scaled composite-bow mobility into continental war. Fragmentation after 1260 spawned successor khanates even as conquest memory defined the age.
Every adult man was a soldier who returned to herding when not called up, paid only in plunder shared out after battle according to each man's part. The wood-and-horn composite bow normally reached about 325 metres and up to 530 in good conditions, and each rider carried two or three quivers. Genghis broke old tribal loyalties by scattering each tribe's men across decimal units and enforcing strict discipline from general to private. Numbers were not the secret: in his lifetime he probably had only 50,000 to 75,000 troops and was almost always outnumbered. Campaigns were planned at summer kurultai using intelligence from merchants and scouts, invasions came in several converging columns, and the feigned retreat became a signature trick. Weak at sieges at first, the Mongols soon recruited Muslim and Chinese engineers. The historian Atwood reads Genghis's wars as personal vendettas against defiant rulers, with world conquest emerging only gradually as an aim.
Source: Mongol conquests
