1215 · North China Theater

Genghis Khan's war against the Jurchen Jin dynasty of North China culminated in the capture of its great capital, Zhongdu (near modern Beijing). After a long blockade that reduced the city to starvation and cannibalism, the Mongols stormed and sacked it, reportedly burning and looting for a month and leaving heaps of bones outside the walls.

1220 · Central Asia (Khwarezmia) Theater

When the Khwarezmian Shah executed Mongol envoys and merchants, Genghis Khan unleashed a war of annihilation on his vast and wealthy empire. The great cities of Bukhara and Samarkand fell in 1220; their populations were massacred, enslaved, or used as human shields, their artisans deported and the rest put to the sword. Genghis reportedly told the people of Bukhara that he was 'the punishment of God.'

1223 · Pontic Steppe (Rus) Theater

On a great reconnaissance raid around the Caspian, the generals Subutai and Jebe drew a combined army of Rus princes and Cuman allies into a trap on the Kalka River. The Mongols feigned retreat for days, then turned and destroyed the disunited pursuers. Captured Rus princes were crushed to death beneath boards on which the victors feasted.

April 11, 1241 · Hungary (Central Europe) Theater

During the great invasion of Europe, Subutai and Batu lured the Hungarian army of King Béla IV into a vulnerable camp near the Sajó River at Mohi, encircled it using a feint and a flanking crossing, and destroyed it, leaving the Hungarian dead strewn for miles. Days earlier, a separate Mongol force had crushed a Polish-German army at Legnica.

February 1258 · Mesopotamia Theater

Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis, marched on Baghdad, the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate and the cultural heart of the Islamic world. After a short siege the city fell, and the Mongols sacked it for days in an orgy of destruction. The libraries and 'House of Wisdom' were destroyed, the Tigris said to run black with ink and red with blood, and the last Abbasid Caliph was rolled in a carpet and trampled to death by horses.

September 3, 1260 · Galilee (Levant) Theater

With the main Mongol army withdrawn east after the death of the Great Khan, the Egyptian Mamluks under Sultan Qutuz and his general Baibars met the remaining Mongol force in Galilee at Ain Jalut, the 'Spring of Goliath.' Using a feigned retreat of their own to draw the Mongols into an ambush, the Mamluks broke and destroyed them, killing their commander Kitbuqa.

1274 & 1281 · Japan (Hakata Bay) Theater

Twice — in 1274 and again, on a colossal scale, in 1281 — Kublai Khan launched seaborne invasions of Japan from conquered Korea and China. Both times the samurai defenders, fighting from prepared positions behind a defensive wall, held the invaders at the beaches of Hakata Bay; and both times great typhoons arose and wrecked the enormous Mongol fleets, drowning tens of thousands of men.

March 19, 1279 · South China Sea Theater

Kublai Khan's decades-long war to conquer the Southern Song dynasty ended in a great naval battle at Yamen, off the coast of Guangdong. The Mongol-Yuan fleet trapped and destroyed the Song fleet; with defeat certain, a loyal official leapt into the sea with the boy-emperor of Song in his arms, and tens of thousands of officials and soldiers reportedly drowned themselves rather than surrender.