(Khanate of the Franks, 1242-1260)
As of 1260, the most powerful state in existence is the Mongol World Empire.
And its largest and most powerful component of that Empire is the Khanate of
the Franks, also known as the Khanate of the Golden Ordu [FN31.04]. It is
the ulus of the Jochid line of the Golden Family - the descendants of
Genghis Khan through his eldest son Jochi. And they are doing very well by
themselves.
During his sixteen year reign, Batu Khan, very literally changed the face of
Central and Eastern Europe. The old borders have all broken down and what
were formerly many lands are now all essentially one. This is, of course,
not to say that there is one uniform government from the eastern borders of
Capetan France deep into Central Asia. The lands of Russia are the Khan's
satellites, for example, and are not directly ruled by the Khan. They have
been subject to Mongol survey and census, and their rulers are overseen by
Mongol darughachi [officials], who see to it that the Russians pay their
tribute (largely in furs) and that a suitable supply of laborers and
soldiers are provided to the Khan's armies.
In contrast to the indirect rule of the Russian lands, from Poland and
Hungary to the French border, Europe is largely ruled directly by the Khan
and his nobles. It was not always that way. For the first few years after
the initial conquest, Batu attempted a Rus-style of indirect rule in much of
Europe, with those princes who submitted being left in place as puppet
rulers. However, after the rebellions of 1251-52, Batu swept aside the
major European nobles who had offered him submission and clamped down hard
upon his Khanate. Tammachi (garrison troops) are stationed in and about the
major cities. They arrive with their families and know full well that they
will never see the steppe again - these are settler-soldiers and are
expected to raise the next generation of Mongol occupation forces. Mongol
tammachi troops, who receive no pay from the Khanate other than loot from
the occasional new conquest, set themselves up as minor lords within the
Khanate, commanding the services of local peasants, many of whom are reduced
to slavery or serfdom.
Tammachi troops tend not to intermarry with the locals. The primary reason
is the Mongol attitude towards Christianity. While a number of Mongols were
Nestorian Christians before Batu's forces arrived in the West, very few
Mongol men will accept baptism. It would seem that, in the thirteenth
century at least, the Mongol rank-and-file tend to view Christians as a
separate race, rather than merely a religion, and that being baptized means
giving up something of their Mongol-ness. So, Mongol men tend to marry
Mongol women, either from Mongolia or from other parts of the Khanate.
Mongol women, on the other hand, tend to convert to Christianity -
especially Catholic and Reformed Spiritine denominations - in more
significant numbers. The urge for religious reform infected Christian
Mongol women, a number of Mongol women in Germany have taken vows as
Beguines, not sequestering themselves entirely away from the outside world,
but living a Godly existence.
Male Christian Mongols are much less inclined to convert to European forms
of Christianity and, by in large, stick with the Nestorian faith of their
fathers. It helps that, unlike European Christian priests of any
denomination, have vigorously assimilated themselves into the Mongol
shamanist milieu. The Nestorian priests (mostly Uighurs) will frequently
co-officiate with shamans (bo'e) at sacrifices to the Tengri and indulge in
scapulimancy, a form of divination involving the burning of animal bones.
Mongol shamans, when seeking guidance from the Tengri, will scorch the
shoulder bones of sheep and read the cracks. Europeans, who initially were
relieved beyond words that the feared Tatars actually had Christians in
their ranks, are appalled by the Nestorians' participation in such pagan
rituals and flatly refuse to cooperate.
And even in Christendom riven by fundamental doctrinal differences, European
Christians are shocked by how heterodox the Nestorians are. First of all,
Nestorian priests dressed like Buddhist divines when they were in Mongolia,
and continue to do so to distinguish themselves from Western Christians.
Many also deny that God became Man and downplay the death of Christ.
Nestorian Mongol darughachi frequently appropriate Catholic or Spiritine
churches for Nestorian use, and the Nestorian priests fill them with felt
images of the dead. Nestorian priests also put even unreformed Catholic
clergy to shame with their drunken degeneracy, continuing the Mongol party
animal tradition. In a nutshell, for the first decade and a half of Mongol
occupation of Europe, the Asian and European branches of Christianity are
rubbing up against each other and not getting along at all.
This is fine with Batu. Like many of the traditionalist Mongols who will
follow Kubilai Khan into China, he is keen to maintain a separate Mongol
ruling caste over his more numerous indigenous subjects. And he is taking
no chances in losing his Khanate to rebels. Batu took savage reprisals
against the rebels of the early 1250s, and he follows up by systematically
demolishing the castles and city walls of the interior of his realm. He
does not fear invasion from the outside, and he wants to deprive any
potential rebels any citadels. So, every summer the corvee is mobilized and
more and more walls and castles are pulled down. The resulting rubble
contributes to the second part of Batu's plan for keeping a tight grip: road
and bridge construction. The Mongol army of occupation will be able to move
around the Khanate at will, delivering swift repression to any areas that
rise up against their overlords. Without walled cities [FN31.05] and with
the remaining fortifications in the hands of tammachi troops, the Europeans
will be helpless to resist.
Batu himself does not pick a capital city. He spent a great deal of time in
Aachen after the conquest, but only because he had been told that,
symbolically, its fall would convince his European subjects that the Empire
of the Romans was no more. But he is not posing as a new Charlemagne - he
holds his Khanate as a scion of the Golden Family (the descendants of
Genghis Khan, known as "Uruks," i.e. "seed"), through right of conquest and
by the will of the Tengri. But, the accommodations in Aachen are nice and
the hot springs help with his gout. But he is soon on the move. Mainz,
Rome, Prague, Sarai. While he still conducts important ceremonies in his
golden Ordu, he discovers that he likes living and doing business indoors,
as does much of his peripatetic court. So where Batu goes, rehabilitation
and new construction follow.
Occupied Europe does not have a uniform set of overlords, despite Batu's
efforts at centralization. One of the central features of the Mongol Empire
is the "appenage" system. Members of the Golden Family are entitled to
portions of all Mongol conquests. This means that an Uruk could be entitled
to the revenues of a district in China, a province in Persia and a clutch of
towns in Bohemia or the Tyrol [FN31.06]. Batu wises up quickly and realizes
that to allow the appenage holders in his Khanate to actually govern their
territories would be a recipe for disastrous division of his Khanate. So,
while the distant Mongol nobles get their payout, Batu's government appoints
all the local officials in the appenages [FN31.07].
Like Khubilai Khan in China, Batu prefers to appoint outsiders as
administrators of his Khanate. From his appenages in China, he brings
Confucian officials to serve his government and Buddhist and Taoist
luminaries to his court. (He considers most Western Christian priests to be
excessively austere and dreary, and he never really appreciated being called
the Antichrist.) He also manages to bring in a sizable number of Persian
officials who, for obscure reasons, primarily serve as tax farmers in
Naples. The entire situation brings about some odd cross-cultural
encounters.
Anti-Semitic writers repeatedly accuse Jews of serving the Khan in great
numbers, but as usual the screeds do not reflect reality. Batu does lift
the oppressive strictures imposed by the Fourth Lateran Council. And, after
due examination by Mongol officials, Judaism does acquire "erkeun" status
equal to Islam, Christianity, Taoism and Buddhism. In other words, so long
as the divines pray to Heaven (or Jehovah or Allah) for the health of the
Khan, they are tax-exempt, are not subject to military service or the
corvee. And, in due course, all the major religious sects in Europe - with
the exception of some particularly fundamentalist Spiritines - do come
around to saying prayers for the Khan. As has been noted before,
Christianity within the Western realms of the Khanate has fragmented and
sects have proliferated, costing the Khan men and money. Even though it is
hitting revenues hard, Batu is sticking with the Yasa and not sorting the
wheat from the chaff - so long as a sect is not a transparent fraud and
follows the broad outlines of Christianity, it qualifies as an officially
tolerated religion. But we should not feel too bad for the state of Batu's
treasury - the money comes flowing in. In addition to the usual exactions
from the peasantry and the income from the Ortok merchants, the Khan is
raking in the bling from the silver mines of Freiberg in Saxony, Friesach in
Austria, Monteri in Tuscany, Iglau in Bohemia, and Kutna Hora in Bohemia.
The miners, who were once privileged workers paid in ore, are reduced to
little more than slaves, who will work or die. Improved mining technology,
such as horse-drawn pumps for draining deep shafts and the silver
liquidation process, keeps the mines producing full-tilt.
Of course, being Khan is not all fiscal and religious policy. There are
still the fun parts - the conquest and subjugation of neighboring states.
Before getting his fingers singed going after Flanders and France, Batu
warmed up his armies teaching Novgorod that a little independence is a
dangerous thing and making the pagan Prussians, Livonians and Lithuanians
yearn for the good old days of the Northern Crusades. Mindaugas I, the
first and only king of Lithuania, goes down swinging and gives the Mongols
and their German and Polish troops a few bloody noses in the process.
The historical stereotype of the Khanate's armies - limitless gray ranks of
German infantry following in the wake of nimble Tatar cavalry and ingenious
Chinese siege engineers - is not entirely accurate. Thousands of Polish,
German, Hungarian, and Italian mounted fighting men have joined the Khan's
forces on their campaigns, essentially because they have nothing else to do.
There are indeed great masses of infantry - Europe, like the other lands of
the Mongol Empire, has been subject to a census and organized around the
tumen system. On paper, every tumen (ten thousand households) is expected
to support a thousand soldiers. In reality, it varies.
For the first time in the Mongol conquests in Europe, there is a little
amphibious action. The Danes, emboldened by the French pyrrhic victory in
Flanders, unwisely declare war on the Khanate for seizing Reval. Batu's
forces blitz into Denmark, supported by the ships of the Hansa cities. The
Anskar Union, in the midst of a sudden dynastic crisis, holds itself
together long enough to buy a reprieve - with a sizable annual tribute to
the Khanate - for Norway and Sweden (including Finland), then promptly
collapses into its component parts. Denmark is attached to the Khanate, and
the passage from the Baltic to the Germanic Sea is secure from Scandinavian
pirates. In southeastern Europe, Hungary (including Bosnia, but minus
Dalmatia, which is firmly in the hands of Venice) belongs to the Khan in fee
simple. Bulgaria decides it is better to pay than to burn, and voluntarily
becomes a Mongol satellite. Serbia, which holds much of the Balkans down to
the borders of Byzantium, refuses to submit. Its monarch, Stefan Urosh I,
has decided that the Mongols have too much else on their plate at the
moment, and he refuses demands of surrender and tribute. Wisely, however,
he permits Batu's emissaries to return unmolested. Serbia looks to be a
tough nut to crack, and Batu dies before he can take a whack at a major
campaign in the region.
With regards to France, after being repulsed in Flanders in 1250, Batu
confines himself to raiding across the increasingly-fortified French border.
The worst comes in 1256, when Mongol forces drive all the way to Troyes in
Champagne, ravage the suburbs of the city, capture thousands of slaves, then
race back across the border before the French can muster a sizable enough
force to stop them. For Batu, hitting France is more about repairing his
damaged prestige, and showing the French Monarch who is boss on this
continent, than actual conquest.
And then there is Italy. The major cities of Lombardy are, as per agreement
with the Lion City, placed under Venetian podestas. Those that retain the
form of local rule have Venetian "rectors," who are the power behind local
rulers, who are subject to the Khanate. The podestas and rectors have one
paramount duty - to exploit their territories for the benefit of the
Republic of Venice. They have, at their disposal, the Venetian Secret
Police, the fearsome "Signori di Notti" for ferreting out and quashing
dissent. Venetian merchants have sectors of every city exclusively for
their own use. They are subject to Venetian, rather than local, law and
Venetian, not local, judges decide the cases. Interestingly enough, many of
the podestas are very popular with those they govern. Many quickly
establish a reputation for even-handed administration, rising above the
factionalism that had rent municipal life for decades. And many, once in
place, do not kow-tow to the Venetian government, becoming known as fearless
advocates for their cities, standing between the people and the Mongols.
Things begin to shift after Batu's death in 1258. When word makes it around
that Sartak, the new Khan, is a Christian, celebrations break out all over
occupied Europe. Processionals fill the streets, with the faithful of every
Christian rite offering thanks to God for their deliverance from pagan rule.
Since this is the Middle Ages, things can't go too well for too long, and
many of the celebrations turn into pogroms against the Jews or
inter-denominational riots among Christians. All disturbances are
ruthlessly suppressed by Mongol or local troops.
As a Christian, even as a highly unorthodox one, Sartak has more of an
interest in acting as a "normal" European monarch. He greets emissaries
from France, come to congratulate him on his accession, not with traditional
Mongol demand that their King surrender or be conquered, but politely and
with an inquiry as to his "younger brother Louis'" health. Sartak also
unilaterally declares a truce with France for seven years.
And he floors a Leonese delegation by expressing a wish to make a pilgrimage
to the great shrine of Santiago de Compostela. They are both flattered by
the attention and horrified at the prospect of a Mongol Khan and his
entourage making its way through Iberia.
Much of the pagan ritual surrounding the Khan is done away with, also.
Visitors do not have to walk between fires before coming into his presence,
for example and do not have to drink kumis as a sign of submission. Sartak
keeps to his tent much as Batu did, since he is walking a fine line between
Europeanness and Mongolness, but he increasingly holds court in whatever
palace or castle he happens to be visiting.
And then there's Pope Gregory X. Gregory has reacted with caution to the
enthronement of a Christian Mongol Khan, a development which he believes
could be very dangerous to the reunification of Christendom. Under Batu,
all Christianity was equally outside the inner reaches of power. But now,
with a Nestorian Khan, European Christians could be led further astray. So
when Sartak's request that the Pope authorize a Crusade arrives in 1258,
Gregory works feverishly on turning it to his advantage.
...
[FN31.04] The ordu is the tent of the Khan. Bastardized in the OTL west to
'Horde.'
[FN31.05] I have read that the Yuan followed a similar tack in China, once
they took over the Song. Tore down some walls, made some people move inward
from remote, mountainous regions, etc. Some European cities are allowed to
keep customs walls, but not proper fortifications.
[FN31.06] The Jochid branch of the Golden Family, for its part, has
appenages in Pingyang, Zhending, Jingzhou, all in northern China.
[FN31.07] Again, the Yuan did the same thing - Chinese Confucians convinced
them that to allow the appenage holders to govern their lands would fragment
China, so Khubilai Khan let them have the revenue, but his government
appointed local officials.
