1The idea in one paragraph

Temüjin, a boy from a clan that abandoned his family, spent forty years uniting the warring tribes of the Mongolian steppe, was proclaimed Chinggis (Genghis) Khan in 1206, and in his last twenty years broke the Jin empire in northern China and destroyed the Khwarazmian empire in Central Asia and Iran. Richard I rebelled against his father to inherit the largest collection of lands in western Europe, then spent a ten-year reign fighting: on the Third Crusade against Saladin, and in France against Philip II. The exam asks the same of both: how did they rise, what did they want, how did they win, and what did it cost? Behind every answer is a problem of evidence, because nearly everything we know was written by people with reasons to praise or to condemn.

2Genghis Khan: rise to power and the uniting of the tribes

Around 1160 the steppe was a patchwork of tribes, the Mongols, Tatars, Kereit, Naiman, Merkit and others, herding and raiding one another. The Jin emperors of northern China kept them divided by paying one to fight another. Figure 1 follows Temüjin from there.

A hard start. Temüjin was born around 1162 (sources range from 1155 to 1167). When he was about nine his father, Yesügei, was poisoned by Tatars and the clan abandoned the family. He learned early that kinship did not guarantee loyalty.

Alliances. He rose by attaching himself to stronger men: Toghrul, khan of the Kereit (later Ong Khan), his father's sworn brother, and Jamukha, his own sworn brother (anda). With them he rescued his wife Börte from the Merkit, and followers began leaving their own chiefs for him.

Destroying rivals one by one. He crushed the Tatars in 1202, defeated Toghrul and absorbed the Kereit in 1203, and beat the Naiman in 1204; Jamukha was handed over and executed soon after.

How the uniting worked. He did not just defeat tribes; he dismantled them. Defeated peoples were split up among units loyal to him instead of being left under their old nobles. His nökör (companions) were promoted over men of noble birth. Men who betrayed their own lord to him were usually executed: a man who betrays one master will betray another. Reward for loyalty and punishment for treachery are the key to his rise.

1206: the naming. At a quriltai (great assembly) at the source of the Onon river he was proclaimed Chinggis Khan. The meaning of "Chinggis" is debated ("fierce", or "universal"), but the title was new: he was khan not of one tribe but of all the steppe peoples.

3Motives, reputation and the importance of his leadership

He left no statement of aims, so historians infer them from his actions.

• Unity and security on the steppe, achieved by 1206.
• Plunder and tribute. A united army had to be rewarded; if the raiding stopped, the old feuds could return.
• Revenge and honour, above all after the massacre of his trade caravan at Otrar in 1218.
• Trade in goods the steppe could not make: silk, metalwork, grain.
• World rule under a mandate from Tengri, the Eternal Blue Sky. Later Mongol sources say so; whether Genghis himself thought this way is debated.

He achieved most of this: the steppe united, Xi Xia submissive, northern China to the Yellow River taken, Khwarazm shattered. He did not finish the Jin (they fell in 1234) or build a settled government; his sons did that.

Reputation. No medieval commander won so consistently over such distances. But much of the fighting was led by generals such as Jebe, Subutai and Muqali, and his reputation grew as much from terror as from battle.

How important was his leadership? For: he created the unity, the organisation and the loyalty system his generals worked within, and the empire kept growing on those foundations after 1227. Against: mounted archery was an old steppe skill, his enemies were divided, and others won many of the key battles. A strong answer says his leadership mattered most in building the machine, not in winning each fight.

4The campaigns, and how the Mongols fought

Northern China, 1211–1215. First he forced Xi Xia, the Tangut kingdom, to submit (1209–1210), securing his flank. In 1211 he invaded the Jin empire and routed its field army at Yehuling (Badger Mouth). Walled cities were harder: in 1214 he besieged the Jin capital Zhongdu (Beijing), accepted a huge tribute and withdrew, and when the Jin emperor then moved his court south to Kaifeng, Genghis treated it as a breach of the peace. Zhongdu fell in 1215 and was sacked. Khitan officials of the Jin came over to him, among them Yelü Chucai, who urged the Mongols to tax conquered farmers rather than kill them. From 1217 Muqali carried on the war in China.

Khwarazm, 1219–1221. Shah Muhammad II ruled from the Syr Darya to Iran. In 1218 his governor at Otrar massacred a caravan of several hundred merchants sent by Genghis, and an envoy sent to demand justice was killed. In 1219 the Mongols invaded in several columns. Bukhara fell in early 1220 and Samarkand soon after. The Shah, distrusting his commanders, had split his army among the city garrisons, so it was destroyed piece by piece; he fled, pursued by Jebe and Subutai, and died on an island in the Caspian. In 1221 Urgench was taken and flooded, Genghis's son Tolui destroyed Merv, Nishapur and Herat, and the Shah's son Jalal al-Din was beaten on the Indus. Jebe and Subutai rode on round the Caspian to defeat the Rus' and Cumans on the Kalka (1223).

Figure 2 maps why they won.

Organisation. A decimal system: units of 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 (a tumen). The thousands mixed men from different tribes, so loyalty ran to the commander and the khan, not the clan. Discipline was collective and severe. Above them stood the keshig, the khan's guard, enlarged to about 10,000 in 1206: an elite force and a school for commanders.

Technology. The composite bow of horn, wood and sinew could be shot accurately from the saddle, and each rider brought several remounts, so armies moved faster and further than any settled force. For sieges the Mongols used what they captured: Chinese and later Muslim engineers built their catapults, and they turned rivers against cities, as at Urgench.

Strategy and tactics. Columns invaded separately and converged. Scouts and merchants gathered intelligence beforehand. In battle the Mongols used the feigned retreat to draw enemies out of formation, and encirclement, rehearsed in the great ring hunts (nerge). Prisoners were driven ahead to fill ditches and absorb arrows.

Terror. Cities that opened their gates were usually spared, though plundered and stripped of craftsmen; cities that resisted were often destroyed. The reputation ran ahead of the armies and made later cities surrender. Terror was a policy, not a loss of control.

5The impact of the conquests

Political. The Khwarazmian dynasty was destroyed, Xi Xia annihilated in 1227, the Jin broken. Genghis ruled through family and commanders, leaving darughachi (overseers) in conquered lands to collect tribute through local officials. The Yassa, Mongol law, is said to have governed loyalty, discipline, plunder and punishment. Persian writers of the later thirteenth century describe a written code; David Morgan argued there is no good evidence for one issued in 1206, and that the Yassa was more likely a growing body of the khan's rulings and steppe custom. After 1204 the Mongols adopted the Uighur script, and Genghis's adopted brother Shigi Qutuqu recorded judgements as chief judge. The move towards meritocracy was real but limited: commoners such as Jebe and Subutai reached the top, but only Genghis's descendants, the "Golden Family", could rule.

Economic. Genghis valued merchants; many of his envoys, such as Mahmud Yalavach, were Muslim traders. Under his successors a single authority from China to Iran, and a relay of post stations (the yam), made the trade routes safer than for centuries; historians such as Jack Weatherford see here the start of a connected world economy. The cost came first: the irrigated farmland of Khurasan, fed by underground canals, was wrecked and in places took generations to recover.

Social, cultural and religious.

• Population displacement: craftsmen deported east, captives marched with the army, refugees fleeing into Iran, Anatolia and India.
• Terror, looting, murder and the destruction of settlements: Merv, Nishapur, Urgench. Chroniclers gave death tolls of hundreds of thousands or more for single cities; historians treat the numbers as exaggerated but not the scale.
• Religious, cultural and technological exchange: artisans, engineers, physicians and administrators moved across the empire in both directions.
• Religious freedom. The Mongols honoured Tengri but imposed no faith, and often exempted clergy of every religion from tax in return for prayers for the khan, as Genghis did for the Daoist master Changchun in 1223. When Jebe took Qara Khitai in 1218 he let each people keep its religion, winning over Muslims the previous ruler had persecuted. Tolerance was a tool of rule, not an ideal.

The historians split between the Genghis of the Muslim chroniclers, a destroyer, and the Genghis of much recent writing and of modern Mongolia, a state-builder. Strong answers use both and say what each leaves out.

6Richard I: rise, reputation and motives

Richard was born at Oxford on 8 September 1157, third surviving son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose lands, England, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, historians call the Angevin empire. He grew up mainly in Aquitaine, spoke French and Occitan, and was installed as Duke of Aquitaine in 1172. Figure 3 follows his career.

The revolt of 1173–1174. Henry II had his eldest son, Henry "the Young King", crowned in 1170 but gave him no power. In 1173 the Young King fled to Louis VII of France; Richard and Geoffrey joined him, encouraged by Eleanor, and Louis VII, William the Lion of Scotland and the Count of Flanders backed them. Henry won: William was captured at Alnwick in July 1174, Eleanor was imprisoned until 1189, and Richard, the last to submit, gave in in September 1174. Henry then sent him to crush the rebel barons of Aquitaine, and his capture of Taillebourg in 1179 made his military name.

Heir and rebel again. The Young King died in 1183. Henry refused to confirm Richard as heir and wanted to give Aquitaine to John, so in 1188 Richard allied with the new French king, Philip II (Philip Augustus). Together they drove Henry back; he died at Chinon on 6 July 1189, and Richard was crowned at Westminster on 3 September 1189, twice a rebel and helped to the throne by his future enemy.

Reputation.

• Military prowess: a brave, skilful commander in sieges and in the field, respected as dangerous even by Muslim writers.
• Chivalry: courage, generosity, crusading piety and personal combat, and courteous diplomacy with Saladin's brother al-Adil, to whom in 1191 he proposed marrying his sister Joan as part of a peace.
• "Richard the Lionheart": the name (Coeur de Lion) was used in his lifetime and turned into legend by later romances. Victorian historians such as William Stubbs judged him a king who neglected England and used it for money; John Gillingham, author of the standard modern biography, argued that he governed a cross-Channel empire responsibly and that his priorities made sense.

Motives and objectives.

• Defence and recovery of the French lands. Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine were the heart of the Angevin empire, and Philip II meant to break it up.
• Defence of the crusader states and recovery of lost territory. Saladin's victory at Hattin (July 1187) and capture of Jerusalem (October 1187) left the crusaders holding a few ports. Richard took the cross at Tours in 1187, the first prince north of the Alps to do so, moved by piety, dynastic honour and the chivalric ideal.

7Richard's campaigns

Sicily, 1190–1191. Richard and Philip set out in July 1190. The new king of Sicily, Tancred, was withholding the dowry of Richard's widowed sister Joan and a legacy promised to Henry II. After clashes with the citizens, Richard stormed Messina in October 1190 and Tancred paid. Richard also broke his engagement to Philip's sister Alys, souring the alliance before the crusade began.

Cyprus, 1191. A storm drove ships onto Cyprus, whose ruler, Isaac Komnenos, mistreated the survivors. Richard landed in May 1191, conquered the island in about a month, and married Berengaria of Navarre at Limassol. He sold Cyprus to the Templars and then to Guy of Lusignan, whose family ruled it until 1489; it became the crusader states' supply base for a century.

The Third Crusade, 1191–1192. With Frederick Barbarossa drowned on the way in 1190, the crusade rested on Richard and Philip.

• Acre. Besieged since 1189, it surrendered on 12 July 1191, weeks after Richard arrived with his siege engines. Philip soon went home.
• The prisoners. When Saladin missed the deadlines of the surrender terms (a ransom, Christian captives and the relic of the True Cross), Richard had about 2,700 Muslim prisoners killed outside Acre on 20 August 1191. Christian writers called it military necessity, since he could not march while guarding thousands; Muslim writers called it treachery. Historians still argue whether it was calculation, retaliation for Saladin's delays, or both.
• Arsuf. Marching down the coast with the fleet alongside, he kept his army in order under constant attack and won at Arsuf (7 September 1191), then took Jaffa.
• Jerusalem. In January and again in June 1192 he came within a day's march and turned back, judging, with the military orders, that the city could be taken but not held once the crusaders left. Critics call it failure; many military historians call it sense.
• Treaty of Jaffa (2 September 1192). After relieving Jaffa in August he agreed a three-year truce: the coast from Tyre to Jaffa stayed Christian and pilgrims could visit Jerusalem. The kingdom, now centred on Acre, survived another century.

Capture and ransom. Shipwrecked on the way home, Richard was captured near Vienna in December 1192 by Leopold V, Duke of Austria, whose banner his men had thrown down at Acre, and handed to Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. The ransom was 150,000 marks (£100,000, a mark being two-thirds of a pound). He was freed on 4 February 1194.

France, 1194–1199. While he was captive, Philip took Gisors and much of the Norman Vexin, the frontier guarding Rouen. Figure 4 shows how Richard's reign was spent: the last five years went almost entirely on this war.

He beat Philip at Fréteval (1194), capturing the French royal archives, built Château Gaillard (1196–1198) to block the road into Normandy, and won again near Gisors in 1198. By 1199 he had recovered almost everything except Gisors. Besieging Châlus-Chabrol in the Limousin, he was hit by a crossbow bolt and died on 6 April 1199.

8The impact of Richard's reign

Political impact in England. Figure 4 carries the argument: about six months of a reign of nearly ten years were spent in England. His chancellor and justiciar, William Longchamp, quarrelled with the barons and with Richard's brother John, and was driven out in 1191. In 1193, with Richard imprisoned, John did homage to Philip II, claimed the throne and rebelled, and the two offered Henry VI money to keep Richard captive. The revolt collapsed on Richard's return in 1194, and he forgave John. England held together because of Henry II's administrative machine and Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury and justiciar from 1193. Instability was real; collapse did not come.

Political impact in France. Philip II used the absence well: he took the Vexin, encouraged John, and pressed his rights as feudal overlord of the Angevin lands. After losing his archives at Fréteval he kept royal records in Paris, part of a steady growth in royal administration. Richard held him off while he lived, but Capetian prestige and reach grew, and by 1204 Philip had taken Normandy and Anjou from John.

Economic impact.

• Raising money. In 1189 Richard sold offices, lordships and privileges wholesale; the chronicler Richard of Devizes has him saying he would have sold London if he could find a buyer. William the Lion bought release from his oath of submission for 10,000 marks.
• Taxation of clergy. The Saladin Tithe of 1188, a tenth of revenues and movable goods, fell on clergy as well as laity, crusaders excepted.
• The ransom. Every subject, lay and clerical, paid a quarter of their revenues and movables; churches gave up their plate; Cistercian monks surrendered a year's wool. The sum was several times the crown's normal yearly income, and the war in France that followed kept taxes heavy. John inherited the resentment.

Social, cultural and religious impact.

• Anti-Jewish violence. Jews bringing gifts to the coronation in September 1189 were attacked, and a London riot followed. As crusading fervour grew in 1190, Jews were attacked in King's Lynn, Norwich, Stamford and Bury St Edmunds. At York in March 1190 the community sheltered in the royal castle; many took their own lives rather than be forcibly converted, the rest were killed, and the records of debts owed to them were burned. Richard ordered punishment, partly because Jews were a royal financial asset, but few were punished.
• Treatment of Muslim prisoners. Acre is the defining case, and shows the same act written as necessity by one side and atrocity by the other.