I posted earlier about the Death Of The Naiman Adventurer Khüchüleg. With Khüchüleg no longer in the picture, Chingis Khan was free to invade Khwarezmia and avenge the Deaths of His Envoys to Otrar. According to the Secret History of the Mongols, he announced:
I shall set out against the Sarta’ul people
[Khwarezmians],
To take revenge
To requite the wrong
for the slaying of my hundred envoys with Ukhuna at their head . . .”
His anger over the murder of his envoys to the Khwarezmshah
may have cooled, but his resolution to exact retribution had stiffened. His
intelligence networks would have informed him that while the Khwarezmshah was
inflicted by infighting among his family and court and by rising discontent
among the populace of his empire, he was still capable of putting half as
million or so soldiers into the field. It would not do to ride off half-cocked
against such an enemy. Chingis organized the invasion of Khwarezmia in the same
step-by-step methodical way he had attacked and finally defeated the Chin in
northern China.
As the final preparation were being made to depart from
Mongolia one of his wives, Yesüi Khatan, decided it was time to speak up.
Yesüi
Khatan seemed to hold a special place in the heart of Chingis Khan. She was a
member of the Tatar tribe whom the Mongols had earlier defeated. He had first
married her younger sister, but the latter soon intimated that her older sister
Yesüi
might be a better wife for Chingis. In the confusion following the defeat of
the Tatars the older sister Yesüi had somehow disappeared. Chingis sent
men to track her down and they eventually found her in the company of a man to
whom she had been betrothed . . . Continued.
