He rushed home to deal with his enemies, first Pope Gregory,* who sent an army to seize Sicily, then the obstreperous German princes, who were encouraged by his high-handed son Heinrich, king of the Romans. Frederick fought a long war to retake his territories.* Italy was divided between his own supporters and the pope’s, the two sides having factions in each city, Ghibellines supporting the emperor, Guelphs the pope, in a conflict that lasted for a century. In Germany, Frederick disinherited and imprisoned Heinrich, who died of leprosy in prison, and won back German supporters. One of these was his godson, an aggressive young knight named Rudolf who was expanding his estates around his Swiss castle, Hawk Mountain: Habsburg. Rudolf specialized in switching sides to win concessions, manoeuvres that now laid the foundations for the Habsburg dynasty that would conquer a new continent and rule swathes of Europe until 1918.
Calling himself the count of Habsburg, he proved his martial credentials by leading his own contingent in the northern crusades against the pagans – where, starting in 1237, the emperor was backing his ally, Hermann von Salza, master of the Teutonic Knights, against the pagan Lithuanians, Prussians, Sambians and Semigalians who still ruled much of today’s Germany, Poland, Belarus and the Baltics. It was a chance to kill infidels but also to carve out new territories.
Just as Frederick was winning these wars, Subotai, the one-eyed Mongol marshal, accompanied by Genghis’s grandson Batu Khan, burst into Europe. In 1237, they crossed the Volga, rapidly overrunning what is today Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. In 1239, when they took Vladimir, its prince Yuri II, pre-eminent Rurikovich, was killed and his wife burned to death in church. In 1240, Prince Möngke destroyed Kyiv.
On 9 April, at Legnica, after burning Lublin and Kraków, a Mongol army routed Poles, Bohemians and Saxons, killing the Polish duke whose naked headless body was recognized by his wife only because he had six toes on one foot. Another army under Batu and Subotai rode into Hungary. ‘You dwell in houses and have fixed towns and fortresses,’ Batu said menacingly to Bela IV of Hungary, ‘so how will you escape me?’ A Hungarian-speaking Englishman arrived from Batu to demand submission: Bela refused.
The day after Legnica, Subotai and Batu fought Bela at Mohi, where they killed 65,000 men: they may have deployed gunpowder and naphtha bombs brought from China – if so, the first use of gunpowder in Europe. But Batu was criticized for incompetence by his first cousin Güyük, son of Great Khan Ögodei, who demanded a retreat. Subotai refused and advanced to take and burn Pest on the Danube. Their detachments rode west into Austria where the locals captured eight of their number. One of these turned out to be the Englishman who had offered terms to Bela.*
Batu Khan crossed the borders into Frederick’s empire. Now thirty-five, the senior grandson of Genghis menaced the grandees of Europe. ‘I am coming to usurp your throne,’ he told Frederick, advising him to abdicate and become a falconer in Karakorum. Frederick, a connoisseur of falconry, laughed that he was well qualified for the job. Even faced with the Mongols, Europe was incapable of unity: emperor and pope declared a crusade but hated each other.
Batu and Subotai were poised to take Europe when dramatic news arrived: Ögodei had died in December 1241, without naming his son Güyük as successor. To elect the new khagan, the princes had to return for the
WHEN WOMEN RULED THE WORLD: SORQAQTANI AND RAZIA
After the death of Ögodei, his widow Khatun Töregene ran the empire. Widows ruled until a new khagan was elected. But the senior prince, Batu Khan, known as Agha – Big Brother – refused to come to Karakorum, fearing for his safety, and Töregene was not strong enough to crown her eldest son Güyük. Instead she governed through a most unlikely channel, a female Persian prisoner of war called Fatima who became ‘the sharer of intimate confidences and depository of hidden secrets’, overruling officials, ‘free to issue her own commands’ and earning herself the sarcastic nickname of Khatun. As her rival Sorqaqtani conspired against her, Töregene trusted Fatima totally, but she distrusted Ögedei’s officials, executing one by having stones forced down his throat. But she feared Genghis’s daughters, killing the youngest, Ilalti, ruler of the Uighurs, by framing her for the poisoning of her brother Ögodei.
At Karakorum, Töregene received Seljuks of Rum, Bagrations of Georgia, Rurikovichi princes of Russia and western envoys seeking Mongol backing. An intrepid sexagenarian priest, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, arrived as the legate of Innocent IV. Some princes were feasted and promoted, others feasted and murdered.
