7. The Great Khan’s Greatest Genocide
By 1210, Genghis Khan had reduced the Western Xia in China to vassalage, and for nearly a decade, they served him against the Jin and other enemies. However, when war broke out with the Khwarezmians, the Western Xia took the opportunity to renounce their vassalage and ally with the other Chinese. Genghis responded to the betrayal with an invasion of the Western Xia again in 1225, and this time his goal was not to reduce them to vassalage, but to exterminate them. He conducted a genocidal campaign, in which he systematically reduced and destroyed their cities, and slaughtered both the urban and rural populations.
After two years’ of savagery in Western Xia, during which his men carried out a series of massive massacres, each with a toll of victims that numbered in the hundreds of thousands, Genghis’ quest to conquer all under the heavens ended when he fell off a horse in 1227, and died of his injuries. His death did not save the Western Xia: the Mongols continued the campaign, with redoubled ferocity in honor of their deceased leader. Today, the Western Xia are almost unknown beyond a small circle of academics, precisely because Genghis’ campaign to annihilate them was so successful.
