Word: batu
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...Genghis Khan in 1206 was one of the most astonishing creations in history. His cavalry pierced the Great Wall of China and overwhelmed the Chin Empire in what has been described as the conquest of 100 million people by 100,000 soldiers. It was Genghis Khan's grandson Batu who first swept into Russia. When Kiev resisted, Batu besieged the city in 1240, burned it to the ground and massacred all its inhabitants. "When we passed through that land," wrote Archbishop Plano Carpini, a papal legate bound for the new power center in Mongolia, "we found lying in the field...
...Batu charged onward to conquer Poland and Hungary, and it was probably only the death in 1242 of Batu's uncle, the Great Khan Ugedey (he was apparently - poisoned by a jealous woman in his entourage), that saved Western Europe from the fate of Kiev. Batu decided to retrench and consolidate his rule over the khanate of the Golden Horde. Spread thin though they were, the Mongols of the Golden Horde ruled Russia for more than two centuries, and it was a harsh rule. Mongol tax collectors beggared the peasantry, and occupied Russia remained completely isolated from what the West...