President Vagabundi could not put the pages of the diary down. He was reading it with such fascination that even the food was forgotten. Who needs food when one of the most important people in the history of your country talks to you over the centuries of ups and downs, mostly downs. For five hundred years, your country was nothing but a pimple on the collective ass of the world yet, he was living at the peak. He created that peak and managed it for a while. He took it to unprecedented heights. He was at the top of the world. He was the one to follow, yet, one had to know the truth to understand it and make the decisions. Some decisions were severe, often too harsh to swallow. And, there it was, in black and white. In his own words and most likely, written in his own hand. That was really the voice from the past. It was fantastic, unreal, ghost-like. The President drank some kumis. No, no food, no hard drinks, just the kumis. That was the real Mongolian food, and that is how this document should be handled — the Mongolian way. Was there any other way for President Vagabundi? In Mongolia? At the present time? When so many things were at stake? When he had to make some tough decisions, and only the ghost from the distant past could honestly counsel him? Ghost… This was something not too many presidents ever experienced. Did anyone ever experience anything like that? Ever? Arban could not recall an example that would satisfy the question. He got up, walked around the room, stopped, considered, and sat down again. Batu was not just one of the most infamous butchers in the history responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of the dead. He burnt down half of Europe and rearranged the present societies. He smashed the old barriers and build new ones. He was the most powerful hurricane of death, torture, slavery, and hope. He also was a visionary, philosopher, thinker, educator, warrior, strategist, statesman and now, the writer. He was well ahead of his time, basically in everything. How was it possible in combination with that destruction? And, Subutai probably was the pillar of his strength. We do not make people like that anymore, but there was quite a few of them back then, starting with Genghis Khan. Was Batu much lesser than the greatest khan of them all? Kumis and the goodwill were not enough. Genes. You needed the right genes for anything and for making the heroes specifically. That’s where it was hidden. The genes… That was the time for the heroes. Was he the fire that burnt the green shoots of the civilization to nothing delaying the development for many years to come? Or, his fire had removed the dead brush and the undergrowth and let the green shoots to grow freely, to develop, to flourish? Did he remove the old so, the new could push forward? Yes, he was fortunate to read it, even to see it. He was lucky.
“Almost two hundred relatives had joint me at Sarai Batu (my capital camp) (Ulus — unitary sovereign state) in the last two-three months. Each of them had at least a hundred warriors accompanying him. Also, there were members of the family, servants, craftsmen, and slaves. Each of them came with a caravan and a herd of animals. They had their own supplies. I did not have to give them anything, but they were ready to share with me if I needed it, anything. I could use the help if they really meant it. Frankly, I could build a Tumen, if not two, just out of my relatives, but it would be the worst Tumen ever. Though some of them were good soldiers, they all had something against each other and would fight among themselves rather than with the enemy. My relatives were not here for the common goal of the war. They came over only for the campaign and expected some high positions and proper rewards. If I would give them that before the war was over, they would find an excuse and go away now. They were loyal only up to a point. What I usually did was appointing them as the military leaders (garrison or area commanders) and the tax collector to the regions that were not occupied yet. When we take that place, it’s yours to manage in one capacity or another. That was the motivation for them to stick around for the long run. Back home, they were the youngest in the family and inherited or would inherit nothing. That’s what you get when you have too many children and too little to give. Still, children were your power. That’s the clan that unlikely would betray you. You need your children, and they need your inheritance. Yet, their future back home often was not full of gold. Only if you were a part of the successful military campaign, you could get ahead, earn a piece of land and a steady income for the whole family. So, they stayed with me hoping for the reward, and they fought for it hard. If they were true to me, in the end, they succeeded.
Me? Subutai? We would shed them off as we went, and that was good. That title and the territory would come for life, so they had to defend it for themselves and me building the own little empires to the best of their ability. If they failed, I would take it away and appoint in their place someone else and so on. Those fiefdoms would become my frontier. By the time the enemy went through them, if the enemy were strong enough for that, the Golden Horde capital of Sarai and the Ulus would be protected. By then, I could meet the enemy anywhere and with force. That little delay would give me time to assemble the army and to move it anywhere. It did not take too much of time. Because of the financial implications, because it was their domain of some sort and the family was there, they would hold that territory for as long as they could. They would fight to the death. Usually, it was a considerable time, enough for me to send the reinforcement and maybe save them. But, if necessary, they would die fighting for it, and they often did. That’s how important it was for them. They were hard people, and it was their new home, and they were defending it from everyone. The entire structure was good, and it worked well.
Of course, they were hiding some taxes from Ogedei and me, but they were kinsfolks, and they loved us. They always shared everything if we asked. You did not even need to apply much pressure. Just ask and explain the situation. They would listen with deep concern and comply. They liked it when you took them into your confidence. They thought better of themselves then. Usually, we were not hard enough on them but, if we did, we had to kill the entire family, and that was reserved only for the traitors. It had to be proven beyond any reasonable doubt. It was not an easy decision to make, never ever. Even if you did not like much that specific relative, you needed a concrete proof of the guilt. If you didn’t have that, you did not have anything. Justice and fairness were fundamental to us, all of us. After all, we were not the barbarians as the Russian were. We brought the new ideas from the East, and that was good for the West. We were the best that ever happened to the West, and the West could move forward. Old was not working for the West any longer. Still, blood had to be shed. I hated it when it happened, but it happened often enough.
The closer people get to the power, the more they conspire, and that leads to treason. I think it happens just about everywhere, in every country and in every kingdom on earth. Death of a relative was a terrible thing, a tragedy so, we killed a few non-relatives for the sake of the same crime just to balance it up, to feel better and to scare the enemies at the same time. They should be guilty of something anyway. Anyone is guilty of something. That’s the truth and a known fact. It’s just that we were not always looking for the guilt. If there was no threat to us or our society, we left it alone, until it became a threat. Then, if it happened, we dealt with it as the situation called.