The day a funeral saves Europe from the Golden Horde

At first the only stories circulating in Europe about the Mongols are bloody tales of horror. The wild warriors are rumored to brutally torture their prisoners and kill them as painfully as possible. They pile the heads of their victims, douse them with oil, and set them on fire. And when they lay waste to a city, they throw the mutilated bodies of their enemies over the walls. When the Golden Horde makes its way to the West, the horror stories become a reality. Under Batu Khan, grandson of the famous Genghis Khan, the Mongols conquer Moscow, burn Kiev to the ground, and destroy German, Polish, and Hungarian armies. They spread fear and terror with fire and blood. “In 1241 Batu Khan is about to conquer Vienna and destroy the Holy Roman Empire,” says Yale University historian Timothy Snyder. “No European power would’ve been able to keep Khan’s troops from reaching the Atlantic.” But in early 1242 the defenders of Vienna can hardly believe their eyes: The Mongols simply break down their camp and go home. Many years pass before the Europeans learn what stopped the brutal Mongol invasion: On December 11, 1241, Ögedei Khan dies unexpectedly in the Mongolian capital of Karakorum. Ögedei was a Great Khan, the ruler of the Mongol Empire. Yassa, the secret Mongol code of law, obliged the other khans to participate in kurultai— the assembly of the political council decides who Ögedei’s successor will be. For Timothy Snyder, this day was one of the most decisive in history: “If Ögedei had died a few years later, Europe as we know it today would’ve never existed.”