Titans of History

After his early triumphs over the Khwarazm empire, Genghis pressed on, eager to consolidate his gains. He pushed into Russia, Georgia and the Crimea, defeating the forces of Prince Mstitslav of Kiev at the Battle of Kalka River in 1223, in which, after a feigned retreat, his forces turned on their pursuers and routed them. He now ruled a vast empire stretching from the Black Sea to the Pacific, his people enjoying ever-increasing wealth. In 1226, however, he died after he fell from his horse hurrying back to Xi Xia, where a rebellion had erupted in his absence.

The Great Khan left his empire to his son Ogodei, though it was soon divided amongst the descendants of his sons, who founded their own khanates which ruled the Near East, Russia and China (where his grandson Kublai Khan founded his own dynasty). The Mongol empire thus expanded even further, until it stretched from the Pacific coast of Asia in the east to Hungary and the Balkans in the west. The Crimean khanate, longest-lasting of the successor states of the Mongol empire, would survive up until 1783.

A Y chromosomal lineage in an astounding 8 percent of men in Asia is descended from one source. Most likely this was Genghis himself.

FREDERICK II OF HOHENSTAUFEN

1194–1250

He was an adroit man, cunning, greedy, wanton, malicious, bad-tempered, but at times when he wished to reveal his good and courtly qualities, consoling, witty, delightful, hard working.

Salimbene di Adam, Chronicle (1282–90)

The author of a book on falconry called The Art of Hunting with Birds, Frederick was the most powerful ruler in Europe—Holy Roman Emperor, king of Sicily, later king of Jerusalem and heir to vast German-Italian lands. Green-eyed, ginger-haired, son of the German Emperor Henry IV and the Norman heiress of Sicily, Constance, he was raised in Sicily, a court that blended Christian and Islamic, Arab and Norman culture. If his upbringing—speaking Arabic and at home with Jews and Muslims—made him seem exotic, his eccentricity was his own. He traveled with Arab bodyguards, a Scottish magician, Jewish and Arab scholars, fifty falconers, a zoo and a sultanic harem of odalisques. He was said to be an atheistic scientist who joked that Jesus, Muhammad and Moses were frauds and was portrayed as a proto-Dr. Frankenstein who sealed a dying man in a barrel to see if his soul would escape.

Yet he was actually an effective and ruthless politician with a clear vision of his own role as universal Christian emperor. In 1225, he married Yolande, fifteen, heiress to Jerusalem, making him king of the Holy City. He seduced one of her ladies at the wedding and she died at sixteen. But, after many false starts Frederick set off in 1227 on crusade, even though already excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his delays. Backed by his Teutonic Knights, Frederick offended the crusader barons with his imperial air, seduced local ladies and marched down the coast—all the time, negotiating with Saladin’s nephew, Sultan Kamil of Egypt, who, faced with his own rebellions as well as this new crusader threat, agreed a most unconventional peace deal.

The sultan agreed to share Jerusalem with the emperor. Like a modern peace deal in the Middle East, the Muslims kept the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), the Christians got the rest of Jerusalem. Frederick arrived in Jerusalem to reclaim the Holy City, where he showed his unusual respect for Islam. In the church of the Holy Sepulcher, he held a crown-wearing ceremony to promote his vision of himself as Christian emperor. But he then had to flee—pursued by the papal ban. He ruled Jerusalem from afar for ten years—but the majority of his life was devoted to his war against the papacy.

Papal policy had dictated his upbringing. His father, Emperor Henry VI, had challenged the popes for leadership of Christendom. After Henry’s sudden death, the curia ensured the division of his lands: two other candidates were installed in the German kingdom, while the infant Frederick was left with Sicily. His mother died shortly afterward, and the four-year-old king of Sicily became a ward of the papacy. After his German replacements had proved too territorially ambitious, Frederick was reinstalled as a teenager in his northern titles, but not before his erstwhile guardian, Pope Innocent III, had extracted from him promises of extensive papal privileges and numerous vows never to reunite Germany and Sicily under one ruler.

Frederick, however, refused to be a puppet. He saw the Holy Roman Empire as sacred and universal. His conception of imperial sovereignty drove him to extend his authority into the Italian states that lay between his northern and southern lands.