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Kiev fell over one envoy
Genghis Khan's rule was that every envoy, ambassador, and messenger was protected from arrest, torture, and killing, and anyone who killed one of his would be wiped out. Every Mongol campaign began with envoys explaining the terms of surrender, so an envoy was how a city's fate got decided.
In 1240, under his son Ögedei Khan, the army of the general Subutai reached Kiev and sent in an ambassador who happened to be a woman. Some Western sources call her a daughter of Genghis Khan, though no evidence supports that. Others call her a witch, and that is what the people of Kiev decided. They killed her, and Kiev was destroyed for it.
Why did Genghis Khan protect envoys so strictly?
In 1218 the governor of Otrar, a city in the Khwarezmian Empire, seized a Mongol trade caravan and killed its members. Genghis Khan sent envoys to demand justice, and the Khwarezm shah executed one and humiliated the others. That insult led to the Mongol invasion of Khwarezm in 1219. The episode is one of the best known causes of the war.
How did Kiev fall in 1240?
Batu Khan led the Mongol army that reached Kiev in late 1240. The city's defenders held out for several days before the walls were breached. Chroniclers say the Mongols spared the commander, Dmytro, because of his courage. When the friar John of Plano Carpini passed through in 1245, he reported that scarcely two hundred houses remained.
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