So, then, within the space of less than two centuries, the Mongols had rampaged from the eastern steppe to supremacy over the whole Eurasian world, before imploding, briefly reuniting, and then disintegrating again. Theirs was a strange story indeed, and perhaps the bloodiest one of all the Middle Ages. Mongol methods of conquest, pioneered and perfected by Genghis Khan, and imitated ably by Temür, prefigured the terror autocracies of the twentieth century, in which millions of civilians could be thoughtlessly murdered to service the demented personal ambitions of charismatic rulers, and the
...more
