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the Mongols would not have been able to stop them.”³⁰

      John Man, 2004: “One million three hundred thousand? . . . Many historians doubt this because it sounds simply incredible. But we know from the last century’s horrors that mass slaughter comes easily . . . 800,000 were killed in the Rwanda genocide of 1994 . . . over just three months. . . . For a Mongol, an unresisting prisoner would have been easier to dispatch than a sheep. A sheep is killed with care, in order not to spoil the meat. . . . There was no need to take such trouble with the inhabitants of Merv, who were of less value than a sheep. It takes only seconds to slit a throat, and move onto the next.”³¹

      The important point to notice is that the exact same evidence can easily be interpreted in opposite directions. A recorded drop in the population between censuses is either an accurate reflection of a massive decline or an indication that the census was flawed. Either the Holocaust shows how difficult it is to kill huge numbers of people or it proves how easy it is. A full confession to killing thousands is either the truth or mere boastfulness.

      There’s a word for this shifting interpretation of underlying facts: paradigm. This is the theoretical framework within which theories, laws, and generalizations are formulated.³² If your ruling paradigm declares that human populations do not crash abruptly, then the only way to interpret the census is to assume an error in the data. If your paradigm declares that only the industrial efficiency of the gas chambers made the Holocaust possible, then obviously spear-waving barbarians can’t kill millions, regardless of what the chronicles say. In 1994, when a million people were massacred in Rwanda in three months, mostly with machetes, the paradigm shifted to accept the idea that gas chambers are not necessary for genocide.

      Admittedly, history is biased by the available sources, and many of the stories that have come down to us are likely exaggerations. Unfortunately, when you dismiss too much history as mere propaganda, you find yourself caught in a paranoid cycle where you will not trust what anyone says, and you will believe only what you want to believe. Maybe the relentless bad press that surrounds Chinggis Khan means only that history was written by his victims. On the other hand, that’s to be expected when everyone who interacted with him ended up as a victim.

       Did Everybody Do It?

      Whenever you start denigrating a notable person from the past, you will be told that those were different times. Everybody did it. You can’t judge the past by modern standards, his defenders will say. Everybody else was just as bad.

      Is this true? Were all the people of the Middle Ages as barbarous as Chinggis Khan? Well, unfortunately for the defenders of Chinggis Khan, the rebuttal is almost too easy. The career of the Universal Leader spanned almost the same years as a man who was nearly as famous, nearly as influential, and completely the opposite. Let’s consider the biography of a contemporary who didn’t kill as many people as Chinggis Khan:

      In 1206—the same year that the Mongol tribes proclaimed their warlord Temujin to be Chinggis Khan—a twenty-three-year-old ascetic arrived in Rome. Like Temujin, Giovanni di Bernardone is more commonly known by another name, in this case, Francesco, the Frenchman, even though he was from the Italian town of Assisi.^e Unlike Temujin, Francesco’s early attempts at soldiering were simply a matter of duty to his hometown, and they proved less than legendary. He was captured by forces from Perugia at the age of twenty and spent a year as a prisoner of war before a truce secured his release. He tried again in the next war, but he was sent home from this campaign with a serious fever. Charming, witty, and pleasure-loving in his youth, Francesco turned to religion and philosophy after his experience of war and near brush with death.

      After dedicating the next few years to prayer and study, Francis of Assisi concluded that all nature manifested the benevolence of God. He considered all living creatures to be the brothers of mankind. Giving away all his worldly goods and tending to the sick and poor, he made it a point to live his life as Jesus had. Francis of Assisi founded a monastic order, the Franciscans, dedicated to poverty and good works, although his contribution was mostly that of a charismatic example rather than a methodical organizer. Unlike the severe scourges-and-scorpions holy men that every religion churns up, Francis was always good-humored and pleasant.

      Francis is the first person recorded to have spontaneously sprouted the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ. Inventing this new way of being mystically weird is probably a point against him, but Saint Francis of Assisi exemplifies the best of Christianity. He died in 1226, a year before Chinggis Khan did. No gravediggers were slaughtered to hide the tomb of Saint Francis. It’s now a major pilgrimage site and one of the world’s great tourist traps.

ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE

      Death toll: 1 million¹

      Rank: 46

      Type: religious war

      Broad dividing line: Catholics vs. Cathars

      Time frame: 1208–29

      Location: southern France

      Who usually gets the most blame: Pope Innocent III, Simon de Montfort

       A Perfect Storm

      Catharism was a persistent heresy that survived several centuries of attempted eradication all across Christendom. Cathars believed that Jesus was not of this corrupt world but was a purely divine entity, a phantom. He had come to replace the vicious, vengeful God of the Old Testament who had created our flawed universe. The word Cathar came from the Greek word for purity, and Cathars believed that all people should strive to separate themselves from the corruption of the material world to reach a condition called Perfect. They also believed that humans needed no intermediaries to receive Jesus’s salvation, which obviously did not go over well with the Roman Catholic Church. After many centuries of persecution, the Cathars were finally exterminated in their last stronghold in the south of France in the thirteenth century.

       Crusade

      Sovereignty was complicated in the Languedoc region of southern France. Although the French king had ultimate dominion over the region, outsiders like the kings of England and Spain had some valuable fiefdoms scattered around the area as well. Feudal lords had even more autonomy here than most of their peers elsewhere.

      The lack of central authority attracted heretics. Cathars—called Albigensians here—weren’t the majority in Languedoc, but they were a tolerated minority. Enough local lords, such as the powerful Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, considered them useful, peaceful citizens and gave them protection. This annoyed the Catholic Church, which accused the Cathars of the usual atrocities—sodomy, devil worship, baby stealing, and desecration of holy objects. In May 1207 Raymond was excommunicated by the church for being uncooperative in its efforts to eradicate the Cathars.

      In January 1208, Rome sent an envoy into the region to try to convince Raymond to stamp out the heretics. After unsuccessful and angry negotiations, unknown assassins killed the papal representative while he was returning home. The church blamed Raymond.

      Pope Innocent III now preached a full crusade against the heretics. This was especially popular in northern France because anyone who took up the cross against the Cathars would earn the same spiritual bonus points with God as fighting in the Holy Land—without having to take a long, queasy sea voyage or eat disgusting foreign foods. Ten thousand of them gathered in Lyon.

       Beziers

      The crusaders attacked the city of Beziers first. It was well fortified and well supplied, and everyone expected it to withstand a siege, but on the first day, as the crusaders were setting up the camp, several shiftless

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