What if Alexander the Great had lived longer?.Some three billion of the seven billion people alive today live in countries that formed part of the Mongol Empire. To put that into context, the Mongol Empire grew to four times the size of the one created by that other great conqueror, Alexander the Great, and twice the size of the Roman Empire. Over the course of the century, he and his successors built the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world, a 12-million-square-mile swathe of land that stretched from the Sea of Japan to the grasslands of Hungary in the heart of Europe. But for Genghis Khan, it was just the start. That achievement in itself would have been enough to elevate him into the pantheon of great military commanders. Genghis Khan – the butt of a Chinese emperor’s jokes and leader of two million illiterate nomads – had brought the Jin to their knees. They also recorded that beyond the walls stood a mountain of bones. A year later, visiting ambassadors reported that the streets of Beijing were “slippery with human fat”.

The city of the utmost sophistication, famed for its grand palaces and markets overflowing with silks and spices, had been reduced to a charnel house. For one month, his army burned, plundered and raped with abandon. The walls were scaled, the defenders overcome, and what followed was utter annihilation. Genghis Khan – the butt of a Chinese emperor’s jokes and leader of two million illiterate nomads – brought the Jin to their knees

Wrath of the khans podcast