Upon recommendation, I added Jack Weatherford’s “Ghenghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern World” to my summer reading list.
In short, I devoured it. Genghis Kahn was a singular genius.
Never have I enjoyed a strategy book quite like this one, and it inspired me to reflect. Below, I distilled what I saw as Gheghis Kahn’s Five Rules of Conquest… because one never knows when they will need to efficiently conquer all of Asia.
Rule One: Recruit Ability Not Inheritance
Armies in the 12 century, both tribal and aristocratic, recruited based on family ties. If you were a clan on the steppe, you trusted your brother to join you. In aristocracy, only sons of royalty could run armies. It was pretty tough for an outsider without blood relations to rise in the ranks.
Kahn created a conceptual brotherhood out of skilled alliances. Productivity, not blood relation, was the metric. By devising ceremonies where non-related warriors could become “blood brothers,” Kahn created a mechanism where he could befriend the best, and have them swear devotion.
To secure this ceremonial brotherhood, he developed a rev share, where the most loyal raiders would get a take from a conquest. If a member died in battle, Kahn compensated their widow and child. The brotherhood was effectively a prototype for workers comp and life insurance.
As opposed to the leadership of the royal armies who cared none for the the rank and file, every Mongolian soldier was part of Genghis Kahn’s elite family.
Also of note; aristocrats tended to hold each other captive (and alive) after battles. They gave each other a form of specialized “rich person” treatment. Kahn was especially antagonistic to this mentality. He never wore fancy clothes, abstained from anything remotely like royalty, and ruthlessly axed anyone who he felt was bestowed an aristocratic title.
Rule Two: Its the Loot, Not the Kills
Genghis Kahn was a glorified thief turned conqueror. He was in it for the loot. He was not driven by a concept of honor, and he rejected most of the aristocratic ideals of chivalry. If Genghis Kahn could have knocked over a city without killing anyone, he would have.
Kahn built the profit motive into every strategic decision he made. From the deployment of forces, to the determining of targets, to the distribution of the take, Kahn built his pipeline to maximize revenue.
After taking a city, he forbade his armies to loot until complete and total victory was attained. Looting was not haphazard, but a focused and organized activity. When you design a horde for the steal, they naturally become efficient and ruthless killers.
Rule Three: Base 10… and on Horseback
Royal armies generally staffed tens of thousands of foot soldiers into massive rows. Theses slow moving armies were difficult to organize and command, and were often filled with unproven, low quality soldiers. Lords of these armies would recruit “able bodied” men and demand loyalty and discipline. Many did not want to be there.
Kahn ceremonially inducted quality fighters into the brotherhood. Then, he put these elite raiders on horseback. There was always a fraction of the number of Mongolian riders to the armies they faced, but on horseback, and with high caliber skill, they mowed the opposing soldiers down like butter.
Kahn also organized his army to scale – he used base ten for his entire organization. There were ten soldiers to a unit, ten units within a hundred, another ten of that in a thousand. Kahn was playing a real time strategy game, and he optimized the management of battalions with easy to use math.
Instead of rows of soldiers like his adversaries used, he structured his armies into concentric circles of waves. They swarmed, surrounded, and nibbled armies down to size before the final kill. They also traveled impressively light.
The hordes didn’t ride with large support teams or heavy structures in tow. Small units of engineers focused on practical structures like bridges, and catapults were built at the site of combat. The armies camped in the mountains, distributed their communications, and rationed dry meats to cut down on visible campfires. They were lean, agile, fast and incredibly deadly.
Rule Four: Join us Or Die
Genghis Kahn didn’t take prisoners. He killed off artistocrats and enemy leaders, but he had respect for a great warrior no matter what camp they came from. Kahn offered the defeated a chance to join the ranks, and if accepted, they were assimilated.
Base 10, while being an efficient system of governance, also allowed new recruits to be mixed into units to learn the new ways. A ten man unit could split, and each ingest and train five new recruits. Eventually, brothers stood by one another, regardless of their country, religion or caste. Hindu, Christian, Indian, Chinese – it didn’t matter what religion or where they came from.
Rule Five: Legend before Victory
On a particular case, early in Genghis Kahn’s ascent to power, he needed a well guarded city to fall. Despite some of the skilled warriors he had amassed, he could not confront this city’s army of 20,000 men. It would be suicide to attempt a direct attack.
Kahn lay siege to the surrounding country side. He burned villages. He systemically would captured a group, and execute all but one terrified survivor to tell the tale. A sustained campaign sent a singular message to those 20,000 men behind the city walls;
”The mongols are coming.”
When it came time to attack the city, many of the 20,000 men fled to the hills in terror. Knowing that any man left alive could mount a retaliation, Kahn sent his raiders into the hills to execute the fleeing army.
The stories people told of Genghis Kahn and the Mongol hordes was a more effective conquerer than the raiders themselves. The legend traveled to Europe and the Middle East long before the Mongols actually arrived for conquest. Fear and propaganda are weapons best used before arrival… And Genghis Kahn liked it that way.
a fun summer read
The Roman Empire took 400 years to amass a fraction of the territory that Genghis Kahn did in a mere fifteen years. He was a revolutionary conqueror who rewrote the rules of warfare, and leadership, based on a fanatical devotion to a ruthless efficiency, an eye for talent, and algorithmic approach to strategy. The book continues to tell the story of his descendants, who pushed the empire for another 100 years, but they all pale to the vision and leadership of their father who changed the world.
If you would like to read the book yourself, here is the link on Amazon. Obviously, I highly recommend it.
