13. Genghis Khan Was Thorough About His Massacres
When the Mongols finally left a devastated city behind, the few survivors who had managed to hide emerged to scenes of utter devastation. Their grief often did not last for long. The Mongols took their massacring seriously, and when they departed, they frequently left behind killer squads near the city to kill any who came out of concealment. Otherwise, they sent detachments back to the ruins a few days or weeks after they had left in order to catch and finish off any who had escaped the initial massacre and were incautious enough to come out of hiding.
Genghis was chillingly methodical in his atrocities. He did not torture or unnecessarily abuse his victims, but had them killed quickly. Specific units were given the task of butchery, soldiers were assigned quotas of victims to kill, and the massacres were carried out swiftly. In short order, Genghis reduced Khwarezm from a prosperous empire to a depopulated wasteland. At the central mosque in the once thriving but now smoldering Khwarezmian city of Bukhara, he told the survivors that he was the Flail of God, and that: “If you had not committed great sins, God would not have inflicted a punishment like me upon you”.
