THE KHAN’S MARCH TO WAR
n 1259, after the Mongol Emperor Möngke died, his ferocious brother Kublai Khan became ruler of all the Mongols. Over the next decade, Kublai intensified the conquest of China, setting up a capital at Yanjing (modern Beijing). By the time the Korean kingdom of Koryo fell, Kublai’s empire sprawled all the way west through Central Europe, to Syria. Despite being drained by years of war, Korea’s capitulation gave the Mongols access to what historian Stephen Turnbull calls
