saw him when he was in Karakorum, Mongolia. He said Subutai was well respected among the Mongols and called him a Knight/Valiant/Hero (translation of Baghatur). Subutai returned to Mongolia from the Song campaign in 1248 and spent the remainder of his life at his home in the vicinity of the Tuul River (near modern Ulaanbaatar), dying there at the age of 72. A folk legend claimed that Subutai wished to die by his son Uriyangkhadai by the banks of the Danube river. Subutai's descendants such as Uriyangkhadai and Aju would serve the Great Khans for the next three decades as commanders. Uriyangkhadai would successfully conquer the kingdom of Dali, invade Dai Viet and obtain their submission, and achieve great success invading the Song from the southwest in the 1258 invasion of Möngke Khan. Aju fought with his father, and then later led the successful five-year Mongol siege of the pivotal dual fortress of Xiangyang-Fancheng in the battle of Xiangyang, which opened up a gateway into the heart of the Song and enabled their total conquest six years later in 1279. Legacy In a unique historical anomaly, the strategic and operational innovations of Genghis Khan and Subutai became lost in history, and others were forced to rediscover them 600 and 700 years later. Even though Subutai had devastated the armies of Russia, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, and Latin Constantinople in a series of one-sided campaigns, Western military leaders, historians, and theorists completely ignored him until the 20th century. The Mongols did not operate as one distinct mass, but instead moved along 3–5 axes of approach, often 500–1000 km apart, and threatened numerous objectives simultaneously. Like Napoleon, Subutai (and Genghis Khan) would disperse their forces along a wide frontage and rapidly coalesce at decisive points to defeat the enemy in detail. Their methods were aligned to completely crush the enemy state's will to fight. Subutai has been credited as the first general to operate campaigns using the modern organizational methods of command and control. Though unknown to the west for many centuries, Subutai's exploits were featured by the British military theorist B. H. Liddell Hart in his book Great Captains Unveiled after World War I. Liddell Hart used the example of the Mongols under Genghis and Subutai to demonstrate how a mechanized army could fight using the principles of mobility, dispersion and surprise. Due to his innovative battle tactics and novelty in