LIFE COMES FULL CIRCLE – Ogedei Khan

We’ve all heard stories or watched movies where a person’s death is related to a newborn. Circle of life
or natural balance, they called it. But what if we bring you a story where one death saved a whole
civilization?
Did you know that there were only two empires in history that tried conquering the entire world?
One was the Hellenic Kingdom of Alexander the Great in the 4th Century BC and the other one was The
Golden Horde of Mongols in the 13th Century. It’s interesting to know that both these conquests
stopped due to the death of two different people. You all might know about Alexander and why he
retreated.
But who is that other person, whose death literally saved Europe from the ruthless Mongol War
machine?

It was Ogedei Khan. The Supreme Khan of the Mongols.
Now let’s go back in history and see what exactly happened.
Before learning about Ogedei Khan – we should know about his father, Genghis Khan – the founder and
the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Empire became the largest contiguous empire in
history after its demise. It was Genghis Khan who started the Mongol world conquest. Ogedei Khan
was Genghis Khan’s 3rd son. Being aware of the friction between his sons, he was worried about the
possible conflicts among them in the case of his death. He, therefore, decided to divide his empire among
his sons while appointing one of his sons as his successor. The 4th son being too young to take the
throne, the first and second being rivals, the obvious choice was Ogedei Khan.
Ogedei pursued his father’s dream of conquering the world. Having Eastern and Central Asia under his
control, he sent his able and trusted deputy, Batu Khan, to conquer Europe. Under his command, all of
Russia, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Bulgaria were brought under Mongol rule.
The next obvious conquest was to topple the Holy Roman Empire by conquering and no European force
could have stopped his army from reaching the Atlantic. At this juncture, just 2 weeks before Christmas
of 1241 – after crossing Danube River – in a surprising move, the Mongols retreated. Which were a big
mystery and a miracle for Europe.
Many Europeans thought that it was the Polish warriors who stopped the Mongols. But in reality, the
Mongol retreat was in response to Ogedei Khan’s death, as the high ranking Mongol army leaders
believed that they had to return to decide the succession.