Genghis Khan

In 1162, deep in the heart of Asia, a child was born.

He was clutching a blood clot, a sign from heaven that he was destined to be a great warrior.

His life was to become a legend.

His name...

Genghis Khan.

Many believe his story is simple,

that he was the incarnation of evil, a brutal barbarian who butchered millions.

But the real character of Genghis Khan is far more intriguing.

How did this illiterate outcast turn the feuding tribes of Mongolia into a powerful nation?

And how did he transform the Mongol hordes into a ruthless and disciplined fighting machine?

An army that, ultimately, stood poised to conquer Europe.

And why, on his death bed, did he believe his divine mission remained unfulfilled?

-TRANSLATION:

-Soon I will know death, but I will never know my destiny.

Shortly after his death, his heirs gathered their memories into an epic account of his life.

They called it The Secret History Of The Mongols.

Evidence from Chinese and Persian sources, the work of leading scholars

and The Secret History allow this to be the most complete television portrait of Genghis Khan ever made.

The characters are all real historical figures.

And the words of Genghis Khan are rooted in the great speeches of The Secret History.

This is the story of how that tiny fist turned to iron

and came to rule the largest land empire ever known to man.

The boy who would become Genghis Khan was called Temujin.

He was the son of a tribal warrior chief.

When he was only nine years old, he received news that was to change his life.

TRANSLATION FROM MONGOLIAN:

HE CRIES

'My father had been poisoned by a rival tribe.

'My mother told me my father's enemies were forever the enemies of my own heart.

'From that day,

'I would never be a child again.'

As the eldest son, Temujin grew up to lead what was little more than an extended family.

And on the Steppes, a small tribe was weak and vulnerable.

To survive, Temujin knew he must forge links with other tribes.

And there was only one way he could do that.

'Her name was Borte.

'We were betrothed when we were children.

'There were only two things to know about my marriage.

'She was a woman of beauty.

'And the sable fur they gave us was worth a thousand of the swiftest horses.

'Borte was mine. And so was her tribe.'

The great tribes of Mongolia were locked in a spiral of murderous vendettas.

There was only one law on the Steppes...

If a man wanted something, he took it.

Now Temujin had something another man wanted.

The Merkit tribe had feuded with Temujin's father.

Now Temujin himself was in danger.

And especially vulnerable was his new wife.

Temujin!

Temujin!

The Secret History recalls what Temujin, the man who would one day be Genghis Khan, did next.

'They've taken my wife.

'I knew what I had to do.'

What Temujin had to do was to escape.

'Only a fool fights a battle he knows he cannot win.'

Wife-stealing was common on the Steppes.

Borte knew she had no choice but to submit...

..if she wanted to live.

HE SHOUTS ANGRILY

'I had just one friend I could trust.

'Jamuka.

'As children, we had sworn the vow of "anda".

'It was the most sacred vow of all.

THEY WHOOP

HE SPEAKS IN MONGOLIAN

'We were blood brothers.

'The bond that joined our lives as one.

'But to take revenge,

'I needed more than just my blood brother.'

Temujin and Jamuka sought an audience with the one man they thought could help.

He was a khan. The leader of an uneasy alliance of tribes.

His name was Toghril.

Many years before, he had fought alongside Temujin's father.

TRANSLATION FROM MONGOLIAN:

HE SPEAKS IN MONGOLIAN

'I reminded the khan he was once my father's blood brother.

'I told him he was as a father to me.

'A man who seeks power needs friends who have power

'and there was only one thing I had to offer.

'The sable fur.

'His judgement would decide my future.'

Temujin's reaction to being accepted by the khan is written in The Secret History.

'With the friendship of Toghril and my sworn bother Jamuka,

'my power had been increased by heaven and earth.'

At the Merkit camp in the mountains of northern Mongolia, Temujin went looking for his wife.

Temujin!

Aaagh!

'We made the Merkits pay for their deed.

'We destroyed their families and emptied their breasts.'

Temujin, the man who was to become Genghis Khan, was barely 20

and he'd already eliminated one of Mongolia's great tribes.

Nine months after the raid, Temujin's wife gave birth to a son.

But no-one would ever know who was the true father...

Temujin or the tribal leader who had captured his wife.

But Temujin treated the child as one of his own.

SHE HUMS

In those early days, Temujin and Jamuka shared the leadership of the tribe.

Yet even as they celebrated the victory over the Merkits, there was a hidden tension between them.

At the root was a fundamental question.

How to measure a man's worth.

Both Temujin and Jamuka were the sons of tribal leaders, Mongolian aristocrats.

But only Temujin had experienced real adversity

and learned from it.

'After my father was murdered, our tribe deserted us.

'Men are loyal only to a strong leader.

'They'd left us with nothing.

'We had no friends but our own shadows.

'Like the wolf, we endured.

'And from hardship,

'I grew strong.

EAGLE CRIES

'Now I cared only for the strength in a man's heart.

'A warrior does not win a battle by virtue of his birth.'

Temujin rewarded ability and loyalty alone.

One of his most promising warriors was Subodei, the son of a humble herdsman.

HE SPEAKS IN MONGOLIAN

But this attitude flew in the face of Mongol tradition.

Jamuka's noble birth led him to believe

that high rank should be reserved only for Mongol aristocrats.

But now, his blood brother was throwing out the old ways.

HE YELLS

The gulf between Temujin and Jamuka widened still further,

until the prophesy of the Mongol holy man brought their relationship to a crisis.

'The shaman said he had ascended into Heaven in the holy trance

'where the Supreme God told him that he would give to me and to my sons

'the whole surface of the world.'

For the tribe and for Jamuka, it was a decisive moment.

One that made Jamuka determined to bring the question of leadership into the open.

'Men who are sworn brothers share one life,

'but I began to question whether Jamuka was truly my blood brother for all eternity.

'It was not right that our differences should force a feud,

'but my wife stopped me from going after him.

'She warned that one day my blood brother would ride against me.'

For Temujin, this feud brought back the darkest memory of his childhood.

'I knew where a war between brothers would lead.

'Even when we were starving, my brother Bekter had betrayed us.

'He refused to share the spoils of a hunt.

'He died of his wounds.'

Jamuka split the tribe.

Now the very thing that Temujin feared most, disunity, had happened again.

Two years would pass before they would hear from Jamuka.

He accused a member of Temujin's tribe of stealing horses.

Jamuka's revenge was brutal.

But this was only the beginning.

High on the plateau of central Mongolia

is a place known as Dalan Bhalzhut.

It was here that Jamuka's men ambushed Temujin's tribe.

It had been a catastrophic defeat.

CROWS CALL

'My army was unprepared, outnumbered and outwitted.

'The earth was soaked with the blood of my warriors.

'But worse was to come.'

Jamuka took the generals he had captured and subjected them to the cruellest of punishments.

He boiled them alive.

PRISONER SCREAMS

Aaargh!

When Temujin learned of the atrocity, he made this vow...

'By the power of Heaven, I swore to gain my vengeance.

'Never again would I be defeated,

'nor my loyal warriors so dishonoured.'

It was now that Temujin started a revolution.

HE SPEAKS IN MONGOLIAN

'They say that the Mongols were descended from the wolf.

'Like the wolf...

THEY CHANT

'..we were famous for our ferocity and courage.

'But to win a battle, we had to fight fiercely.

'Not as individual warriors, but as parts of a whole.'

Temujin formed an elite officer training corps, the Kashik.

He was building a professional fighting machine from top to bottom.

The Mongol's universal instrument of battle was the bow.

Made from wood and animal bone, it had a shooting range of 500 yards.

Training in archery and horsemanship was made compulsory for all, even children.

They learned to release their arrows

at the exact moment the horse's hooves were off the ground, for maximum accuracy.

Temujin had thrown out the old tribal divisions.

This was a meritocracy.

This was a modern army.

THEY CHEER

Now he was ready.

In the summer of 1204, Temujin rode west to confront his blood brother.

The outcome would be decisive for the future of the Mongol people.

In the foothills of the Khangai Mountains, on the eve of battle, Temujin called his generals to him.

HE SPEAKS IN MONGOLIAN

'I told them,

' "One tribe is like a single arrow, easily broken.

' "But many tribes together would be strong.

' "They could never be broken." '

THEY CHEER

But Temujin didn't just rely on inspirational speeches,

he practised psychological warfare.

'I knew Jamuka's scouts would be watching as my men prepared for battle.

'I ordered each man to light not one, but five fires.'

Jamuka's scouts reported that Temujin's army was so large

they had more fires than there were stars in the sky.

At daybreak, Jamuka led his army onto the heights of Chakirma'ut.

And this was the sight that confronted him.

'I saw the man who had been my friend, who had sworn the sacred vow of anda.

'But he had broken that vow.'

Jamuka was about to become the first commander

to face an army that would eventually conquer 12 million square miles.

'We advanced in silence, saving our battle cries to the last.

'When the enemy came within reach, my archers released a storm of arrows.

'And my cavalry attacked without mercy.'

According to The Secret History, each tactic was meticulously planned and ingenious.

Temujin held squadrons and weapons in reserve.

Then, with the enemy in disarray, they regrouped and charged.

One of Temujin's cavalry squadrons suddenly fled the battlefield.

Jamuka's men chased them down.

But they were being lured into a trap.

In the heart of the battle, Jamuka saw his army destroyed...

and he ran.

'Across the battlefield,

'I saw the bodies of Jamuka's men

'lying together like felled logs in the forest.'

Following the defeat, Jamuka fled into the mountains of Tannu.

He hid throughout the winter of 1204.

In the spring he re-appeared,

escorted by two of his own generals who thought they knew where their best interests lay.

They delivered Jamuka to Temujin.

'The generals expected a reward for betraying their leader

'and delivering him into the hands of his enemy.

'And I saw they got their reward.'

Temujin granted his blood brother his final wish.

And broke his back.

SNAPPING

CHANTING

The defeat and death of Jamuka led to a sight never before seen in the history of Mongolia.

The recognition of one man as the leader of all the Mongol tribes.

In the Mongol world, there had never been such a figure.

And in 1206, a new title was created to honour him.

Universal King,

Ruler Of All Men.

Genghis Khan.

'But my destiny, the destiny of the great Mongol people,

'was still unfulfilled.'

Genghis Khan had forged a nation.

But now he faced a new and more potent threat...China.

He knew the Chinese would not tolerate such a powerful leader as him on their border.

So he took the fight to them.

In a campaign that was to last six years,

he led his army of 50,000 Mongols on one of the most audacious military actions in history.

He crossed the Gobi Desert and invaded northern China.

On hearing that the Mongol army was approaching, the emperor of north China sent this message.

"Our empire is as vast as the sea.

"Yours is but a handful of sand.

"How can we fear you?"

The Chinese had spent centuries perfecting their defences.

But Genghis Khan solved the problem posed by China's biggest border defence, the Great Wall,

by one simple expedient - they went around it.

The Chinese were the richest and most civilised people in the East.

But they also knew how to fight a dirty war.

Iron spikes, like Medieval minefields, were buried in the path of the oncoming Mongol armies.

HORSE WHINNIES IN PAIN

The Chinese could afford to employ people to fight for them.

In the borderlands, the Mongols met a force of heavily armed mercenaries...

..who were loyal as only mercenaries could be.

MERCENARIES CHANT

MONGOLS CHANT

Reinforced by the mercenary troops, they marched into the fertile plains of northern China.

Few of the Chinese villagers had seen a Mongol warrior before.

And few of the Mongols would have journeyed this far into China.

It was the clash of two alien cultures.

There was only one certainty. The Chinese would never forget them.

The Mongols plundered without mercy

and, from each conquest, Genghis Khan took his own reward.

A highborn wife from the vanquished.

'The greatest fortune a man can have is to conquer his enemy,

'steal his riches, ride his horses and enjoy his women.'

Further east lay an even greater prize.

With a population of 350,000, 13th century Beijing was one of the most sophisticated cities on Earth.

Capital of the northern Chinese empire, famous for its grand palaces,

gilded temples and markets overflowing with silks and spices.

In his quest to take these riches for himself, Genghis Khan faced one huge problem.

Standing between him and the conquest of the city was a wall.

40 feet high and 10 miles long with 900 guard towers.

To a nomadic army, used to fighting on the open Steppes, these fortifications seemed impregnable.

'I'd trained my men to attack with the speed of the wind.

'Now they had to learn the guile of the wolf.'

His first tactic was straightforward.

He waited.

The Mongols set up camp outside the city

and stopped supplies from getting in.

From Chinese engineers who had defected,

his generals learned to build catapults, portable defences and battering rams.

The tools of siege warfare.

The Mongols were in no hurry.

They feasted on the supplies they captured.

Genghis Khan turned Beijing into a prison.

Within the walls, thousands starved to death.

The survivors resorted to cannibalism.

Finally, Genghis Khan's army was ready to attack.

'All who surrender would be spared.

'Those who did not surrender,

'but opposed with struggle and dissention, would be annihilated.'

Despite enduring months of starvation,

the commander of the Chinese army still controlled a formidable garrison

with thousands of men and a powerful array of weapons.

Genghis Khan knew that few in the first wave of the attack would survive.

So he forced captured enemy prisoners to wheel the siege engines forward into the killing zone.

It is said that each of his own warriors was given a silk shirt.

If the arrow penetrated the body, it took the silk with it,

making it easier to draw the arrow out and minimising the wound.

But despite the Mongols' attempts to master siege warfare,

the Chinese were still much more advanced in their military technology.

They responded by filling bombs with crude oil, molten metal, chemicals and excrement.

Despite the ferocious bombardment,

Genghis Khan ordered his men to advance to the walls.

Once again, Chinese prisoners were in the front line.

HEAVY THUD

HEAVY THUD

As the city fell, the Chinese commander had just one option.

Genghis Khan was so confident of victory that he left his army to capture the city.

His final command to his generals

was to fulfil his prophecy.

He ordered total annihilation.

For one month, his army plundered, burned and raped.

A year later, visiting foreign ambassadors described the streets as "slippery with human fat".

They also recorded that, beyond the walls, stood an entire mountain of bones.

Genghis Khan's fearsome reputation grew from the destruction and carnage he practiced in Beijing.

But what he now created at Karakorum in central Mongolia revealed an entirely different nature.

Genghis Khan wanted Karakorum to be a great trading and cultural centre.

Here, in stark contrast to his nomadic origins,

he began to establish a permanent capital.

And he wanted his people to benefit from his conquests.

'My people are as numerous as the trees in a forest.

'I wanted them to feed on tender meat,

'live in beautiful tents and pasture their horses on rich soil.'

He imported knowledge.

Captured Chinese citizens were brought here to teach the great secrets of their culture.

He established a medical corps trained by Chinese physicians.

He learned the technology of the Chinese military.

BOOM!

Above all, Genghis Khan wanted to leave a lasting legacy.

It was not only the sword he wished to be remembered by.

The Mongols could neither read nor write, but Genghis Khan understood the power of the written word.

He ordered his Imperial Court to create a record of all his judgements.

It was the beginning of a legal system.

The death penalty was introduced for crimes such as rustling and kidnapping.

It was forbidden for any man to own a Mongol slave.

And each tribe was granted its own land.

Genghis Khan had been born into a world of betrayal and eternal feuding.

Now he wanted order.

He looked to the west to build on his conquests.

Not through war, but through trade.

He sent ambassadors to Persia.

And he established a network of routes linked by staging posts 25 miles apart.

A messenger could travel 125 miles in a single day.

It was a mediaeval pony express.

In the summer of 1218, one messenger sent back to Genghis Khan from Persia carried a package.

A package that would change the course of history.

It was the head of Genghis Khan's ambassador.

The Sultan had fundamentally misjudged Genghis Khan's character.

'I was not the instigator of these tribulations.

'God, grant me the strength to exact vengeance.'

Genghis Khan sent an army 200,000 strong to invade Persia.

It was a campaign of extreme savagery.

On his order, every Persian town that did not submit was burned to the ground.

When they had finished, over a million men, women and children were dead.

The extent of the bloodshed in Persia was without precedent.

'I am the punishment of God.

'If you had not committed great sins,

'God would not have inflicted a punishment such as me upon you.'

After the conquest of Persia,

Genghis Khan ordered a small army to see how far west they could penetrate before they were stopped.

And they weren't stopped at all.

This was the Mongols' first raid into Europe.

It would not be their last.

His empire was now four times the size of Alexander the Great's

and twice the size of the Roman Empire.

But even this was not enough to satisfy the desire of Genghis Khan.

He wanted something more, something his army could not give him.

Which is why, in 1222, this man travelled towards Genghis Khan's court.

He was a revered Taoist monk.

From him, Genghis Khan sought just one thing.

'I told him how my life was a divine mission.

'I'd been sent to Earth to conquer the world.

'I spoke of the prophecies,

'the battles, my ambitions, my age.

I asked what medicine he had brought to prolong my earthly existence.

It was only then the monk realised

Genghis Khan was asking for the secret elixir of eternal life.

Unfortunately, the monk could only offer him advice about prolonging life through sexual abstinence.

But not immortality.

There is nothing to indicate that Genghis Khan took the monk's advice.

Recent scientific evidence suggests that perhaps one in 200 men alive today

can trace their genetic lineage to Genghis Khan.

Four years later, he embarked on one more campaign of conquest, into China.

HE SHOUTS IN MONGOLIAN

According to legend, these were the last words of Genghis Khan.

'I have conquered for you a large empire,

'but my life was too short to take the whole world.

'That I leave to you.'

He appointed his son, Ogodei, to succeed him as Khan.

Genghis Khan died without having achieved what he believed was his destiny,

to conquer the entire world.

In the years after his death, his sons carried out his wish,

doubling the size of the empire.

They returned to Europe and invaded Russia, Poland and Hungary.

But in 1242, approaching Vienna, the new Khan died.

Mongol law decreed that all chiefs return to elect a new leader

and Europe was spared the Mongol terror.

A century later, his mighty empire began to crumble.

His reputation has made him one of history's immortals.

A reputation enhanced by the mystery of his burial.

It is said that every witness to his funeral cortege

was executed to keep the site of the tomb a secret.

Today, almost eight centuries later,

the burial place of Genghis Khan remains undiscovered.

There is no grave, no mausoleum,

no monument to this bloodthirsty conqueror.

The most successful military commander the world has ever known.

Subtitles by Chris Boyd BBC Broadcast 2005

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