READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS.

CHAPTER III.

GENGHIS KHAN.

AMONG the men who have influenced the history of the world Genghis Khan holds a foremost place. Popularly he is mentioned with Attila and with Timur as one of the “Scourges of God.” One of those terrible conquerors whose march across the page of history is figured by the simile of a swarm of locusts or a fire in a Canadian forest; but this is doing gross injustice to Genghis Khan. Not only was he a conqueror, a general whose consummate ability made him overthrow every barrier that must intervene between the chief of a small barbarous tribe of an obscure race and the throne of Asia, and this with a rapidity and uniform success that can only be compared to the triumphant march of Alexander. But he was far more than a conqueror. Alexander, Napoleon, and Timur were all more or less his equals in the art of war. But the colossal powers they created were merely hills of sand, that crumbled to pieces as soon as they were dead; with Genghis Khan matters were very different, he organised the empire which he had conquered so that it long survived and greatly thrived after he was gone. In every detail of social and political economy he was a creator, his laws and his administrative rules are equally admirable and astounding to the student. Justice, tolerance, discipline, virtues that make up the modem ideal of a state, were taught and practised at his court. And when we remember that he was born and educated in the desert, and that he had neither the sages of Greece nor of Rome to instruct him, that unlike Charlemagne and Alfred he could not draw his lessons from a past, whose evening glow was still visible in the horizon, we are tempted to treat as exag­gerated the history of his times, and to be sceptical of so much political insight having been born of such unpromising materials.

It is not creditable to English literature that no satisfactory account of Genghis Khan exists in the language. Baron D’Ohsson in French, and Erdmann in German, have both, written minute and detailed accounts of him, but none such exist in English, although the subject has an epic grandeur about it that might well tempt some well-grounded scholar like Colonel Yule to try his hand upon it. We have seen how he received the name of Temudjin. According to the vocabulary attached to the history of the Yuen dynasty, translated from the Chinese by Hyacinthe, Temudjin means the best iron or steel. The name has been confounded with Temurdji, which means a smith in Turkish. This accounts for the tradition related by Pachymeres, Novairi, William of Ruysbrok, the Armenian Haiton, and others that Genghis Khan was originally a smith.

The Chinese historians and Ssanang Setzen place his birth in 1162; Raschid and the Persians in 1155. The latter date is accommodated to the fact that they make him seventy-two years old at his death in 1227, but the historian of the Yuen dynasty, the Kangmu, and Ssanang Setzen are all agreed that he died at the age of sixty-six, and they are much more likely to be right. Mailla says he had a piece of clotted blood in his fist when born, no bad omen, if true, of his future career. According to De Guignes, Karachar Nevi-an was named his tutor. Ssanang Setzen has a story that his father set out one day to find him a partner among the relatives of his wife, the Olchonods, and that on the way he was met by Dal Setzen, the chief of the Kunkurats, who thus addressed him:— “Descendant of the Kiyots, and of the race of the Bordshigs, whither hiest thou?” “I am seeking a bride for my son,” was his reply. Dai Setzen then said that he recently had a dream, during which a white falcon had alighted on his hand. “This,” he said, “Bordshig, was your token. From ancient days our daughters have been wedded to the Bordshigs, and I now have a daughter named Burte who is nine years old. I will give her to thy son.” “She is too young,” he said; but Temudjin, who was present, urged that she would suit him by-and-by. The bargain was thereupon closed, and having taken a draught of kumiss and presented his host with two horses, Yissugei returned home.

On his father’s death Temudjin was only thirteen years old; an age that seldom carries authority in the desert, where the chief is expected to command, and his mother acted as regent. This enabled several of the tribes which had submitted to the strong hand of Yissugei to reassert their independence. The Taidshuts, under their leaders Terkutai, named Kiriltuk, the spiteful, the great grandson of Hemukai, and his nephew Kurul Behadur, were the first to break away, and they were soon after joined by one of Yissugei’s generals with a considerable following. To the reproaches of Temudjin, the latter answered,“The deepest wells are sometimes dry, and the hardest stones sometimes split; why should I cling to thee?”. Temudjin’s mother, we are told, mounted her horse, and taking the Royal Standard called Tuk (this was mounted with the tails of the Yak or mountain cow, or in default with that of a horse; it is the Tau or Tu of the Chinese, used as the Imperial Standard, and conferred as a token of royalty upon their vassals, the Tartar Princes) in her hand, she led her people in pursuit of the fugitives, and brought a good number of them back to their allegiance.

After the dispersion of the Jelairs, to which I have previously referred, many of them became the slaves and herdsmen of the Mongol royal family. They were encamped near Sarikihar, the Saligol of Hyacinthe in the district of Ulagai Bulak, which D’Ohsson identifies with the Ulengai, a tributary of the Ingoda, that rises in the watershed between that river and the Onon. One day Tagudshar, a relative of Chamuka, the chief of the Jadjerats, was hunting in this neighbourhood, and tried to lift the cattle of a Jelair, named Juji Termele, who thereupon shot him. This led to a long and bitter strife between Temudjin, who was the patron of the Jelairs, and Chamuka. He was of the same stock as Temudjin, and now joined the Taidshuts, with his tribe the Jadjerats. He also persuaded the Uduts and Nuyakins, the Kurulas and Inkirasses, to join them.

Temudjin struggled in vain against this confederacy, and one day he was taken prisoner by the Taidshuts. Terkutai fastened on him a cangue, the instrument of torture used by the Chinese, consisting of two boards which are fastened to the shoulders, and when joined together round the neck form an effectual barrier to desertion. He one day found means to escape while the Taidshuts were busy feasting, hid in a pond with his nostrils only out of water, was detected by a pursuer named Surghan Shriek (by Ssanang Setzen, Torghan Shara). He belonged to the Sulduz clan, had pity on him, took him to his house, hid him under some wool in a cart, so that his pursuers failed to find him, and then sent him to his own people. This and other stories illustrate one phase of Mongol character. We seldom hear among them of those domestic murders so frequent in Turkish history; pretenders to the throne were reduced to servitude, and generally made to perform menial offices, but seldom murdered. They illustrate another fact; favours conferred in distress were seldom forgotten, and the chroniclers frequently explain the rise of some obscure individual by the recollection of a handsome thing done to the ruler in his unfortunate days.

Another phase of Mongol character, namely, the treachery and craft with which they attempt to overreach one another in war may be illustrated by a short Saga told by Ssanang Setzen, and probably relating to this period of Temudjin's career. It is curious how circumstantial many of these traditions are. “At that time,” he says, “Buke Ghilger of the Taidshuts dog a pitfall in his tent and covered it with felts. He then, with his brothers, arranged a grand feast, to which Temudjin was invited with fulsome phrases. ‘Formerly we knew not thine excellence,’ he said. ‘and lived in strife with thee. We have now learnt that thou art not false, and that thou art a Bogda of the race of the gods. Our old hatred is stifled and dead; condescend to enter our small house”. Temudjin accepted the invitation, but before going he was warned by his mother : “Rate not the crafty foe too lightly” she said. “We do not dread a venomous viper the less because it is so small and weak. Be cautious.” He replied, “You are right, mother, therefore do you Khassar have the bow ready. Belgutei, you also be on your guard. You, Chadshikin, see to the horse, and you, Utsuken, remain by my side. My nine Orloks you go in with me, and you my three hundred and nine body guards surround the yurt”. When he arrived he would have sat down in the middle of the treacherous carpet, but Utsuken pulled him aside and seated him on the edge of the felt. Meanwhile a woman was meddling with the horse and cut off its left stirrup. Belgutei, who noticed it, drove her out, and struck her on the leg with his hand, upon which one Buri Buke struck Belgutei’s horse with his sword. The nine Orloks now came round, helped their master to mount the white mare of Toktanga Taishi of the Kortshins, a fight began, which ended in the defeat and submission of the enemy.” Once more free, Temudjin, who was now seventeen years old, married Burte Judjin, whose betrothal I have already described. He was not long in collecting a number of his men together, and soon managed to increase their number to 13,000. These he divided into thirteen battalions of 1,000 men each, styled gurans (rings; compare the rings among the Avares), each guran under the command of a gurkhan. The gurkhans were chosen from his immediate relatives and dependents. The forces of the Taidshuts numbered 30,000. With this much more powerful army Temudjin risked an encounter on the banks of the Baldjuna, a tributary of the Ingoda, and gained a complete victory. Abulghazi says the Taidshuts lost from 5,000 to 6,000 men. The battle-field was close to a wood, and we are told that Temudjin, after his victory, piled faggots together and boiled many of his prisoners in seventy cauldrons. A very problematical story.

Among his neighbours were the Jadjerats or Juriats, the subjects of Chamuka, who, according to De Guignes, fled after the battle with the Taidshuts, just described. One day a body of the Jadjerats, who were hunting, encountered some of Temudjin’s followers, and they agreed to hunt together. The former ran short of provisions, and he generously surrendered to them a large part of the game his people had captured. This was favourably compared by them with the harsh behaviour of their suzerains, the Taidshut princes, and two of their chiefs, named Ulugh Behadur (the Yulu of De Mailla) and Thugai Talu, with many of the tribe went to join Temudjin. They were shortly after attacked and dispersed by the Taidshuts. This alarmed or disgusted several of the latter’s allies, who went over to the party of Temudjin. Among these were Chamuka, who contrived for a while to hide his rancour, and the chiefs of the Suldus and Basiuts. Their example was soon followed by the defection of the Barins and the Telenkuts, a branch of the Jelairs.

Temudjin’s repute was now considerable, and De Mailla tells us that wishing to secure the friendship of Podu, chief of the Kieliei, or Ykiliesse, i.e. the Kurulats, who lived on the river Ergoné, i.e., the Argun, and who was renowned for his skill in archery, he offered him his sister Termulun in marriage. This was gladly accepted, and the two became fast friends. As a sign of his goodwill, Podu wished to present Temudjin with fifteen horses out of thirty which he possessed, but the latter replied, “To speak of giving and taking is to do as merchants and traffickers, and not allies. Our elders tell us it is difficult to have one heart and one soul in two bodies. It is this difficult thing I wish to compass, I mean to extend my power, over my neigh­bours here, I only ask that the people of Kieliei shall aid me.” Temudjin now gave a grand feast on the banks of the Onon, and distributed decorations among his brothers. To this were invited Sidsheh Bigi, chief of the Burgins or Barins, his own mother, and two of his step­mothers. A skin of kumiss, or fermented milk, was sent to each of the latter, but with this distinction. In the case of the eldest, called Kakurshin Khatun, it was for herself and her family; in that of the younger, for herself alone. This aroused the envy of the former, who gave Sichir, the master of the ceremonies, a considerable blow. The undignified dis­turbance was winked at by Temudjin, but the quarrel was soon after enlarged. One of Kakurshin’s dependents had the temerity to strike Belgutei, the half-brother of Temudjin, and wounded him severely in the shoulder, but Belgutei pleaded for him. “The wound has caused me no tears. It is not seemly that my quarrels should inconvenience you,” he said. Upon this Temudjin sent and counselled them to live at peace with one another, but Sidsheh Bigi soon after abandoned him with his Barins. He was apparently a son of Kakurshin Khatun, and therefore a step­brother of Temudjin. About 1194, Temudjin heard that one of the Taidshut chiefs, called Mutchin Sultu, had revolted against Madagu, the Kin Emperor of China, who had sent his Chinsang (prime minister) Wan-jan-siang, with an army against him. He eagerly volunteered his services against the old enemies of his people, and was successful. He killed the chief and captured much booty. Inter alia was a silver cradle with a covering of golden tissue, such as the Mongols had never before seen. As a reward for his services he received from the Chinese officer the title of Jaut-ikuri, written Tcha-u-tu-lu in Hyacinthe, who says it means commander against the rebels. According to Raschid, on the same occasion Tuhii, the chief of the Keraits, was invested with the title of Wang (king). On his return from this expedition, desiring to renew his intercourse with the Barins, he sent them a portion of the Tartar booty. The bearers of this present were maltreated. Mailla, who describes the event somewhat differently, says that ten of the messengers were hilled by Sidsheh Bigi, to revenge the indignities that had been put on his family. Temudjin now marched against the Barins, defeated them at Thulan Buldak (Tielito of Mailla). Their two chiefs escaped. According to Mailla they were put to death.

In 1196 Temudjin received a visit from Wang Khan, the Kerait chief who was then, in distress. His brother Ilkah Sengun, better known as Jagampu Keraiti, had driven him from the throne. He first sought assistance from the chief of Kara Khitai, and when that failed him, turned to Temudjin, the son of his old friend. Wang Khan was a chief of great consequence, and this appeal must have been flattering to him, he levied a contribution of cattle from his subjects to feast him with, and promised him the devotion of a son in consideration of his ancient friendship with Yissugei.

Temudjin was now, says Mailla, one of the most powerful princes of these parts, and he determined to subjugate the Kieliei (the inhabitants of the Argun, to whom I have already referred), but he was defeated. During the action, having been hit by twelve arrows, he fell from his horse unconscious, when Bogordshi and Burgul (Portchi and Mouholi of Mailla) at some risk took him out of the struggle. While the former melted the snow with some hot stones and bathed him with it, so as to free his throat from the blood, the latter, during the long winter night, covered him with his own cloak from the falling snow. He would, nevertheless, have fared badly if his mother had not collected a band of his father’s troops and come to his assistance, together with Tului, the Kerait chief, who remembered the favours he had received from Temudjin’s father. Mailla says, that returning home with a few followers he was attacked by a band of robbers. He was accompanied by a famous crossbowman, named Soo, to whom he had given the name of Meighen. While the robbers were within ear-shot, Merghen shouted, “There are two wild ducks, a male and a female, which shall I bring down.” “The male,” said Temudjin. He had scarcely said so when down it came. This was too much for the robbers, who dared not measure themselves against such victims. The Merkits had recently made a raid upon his territory, and carried off his favourite wife Burte Judjin. It was after her return from her captivity that she gave birth to her elder son, Juji, about whose legitimacy there seems to have been some doubt in his father’s mind. It was to revenge this that he now (1197) marched against them, and defeated them near the river Mundsheh (a river Mandzin is still to be found in the canton Karas Muren). He abandoned all the booty to Wang Khan. The latter, through the influence of Temudjin, once more regained his throne, and the following year (1198) he had an expedition on his own account against the Merkits, and beat them at a place named Buker Gehesh, but he did not reciprocate the generosity of his ally.

In 1 199 the two friends made a joint expedition against the Naimans. The latter were now divided between two brothers, who had quarrelled about their father’s concubine. One of them, named Buyuruk, had retired with a body of the people to the Kiziltash mountains. The other, called Baibuka, but generally referred to by his Chinese title of Taiwang, or Tayang, remained in his own proper country. It was the latter who was now attacked by die two allies, and forced to escape to the country of Kem Kemdjut, towards the sources of the Yenissei. Chamuka, the chief of the Jadjerats, well named Satchan, or the crafty, still retained his hatred for Temudjin. He now whispered in the ear of Wang Khan that his ally was only a fair-weather friend. Like the wild goose, he flew away in winter, while he himself, like the snow-bird, was constant under all circumstances. These and other suggestions aroused the jealousy of Wang Khan, who suddenly withdrew with his forces, and left Temudjin in the enemy’s country. The latter was thereupon forced to retire also. He went to the river Sali or Sari. Gugsu Seirak, the Naiman general, went in pursuit, defeated Wang Khan in his own territory, and captured much booty. Wang Khan was hard pressed, and was perhaps only saved by the timely succour sent by Temudjin, which drove away the Naimans. Once more did the latter abandon the captured booty to his treacherous ally. After the victory, he held a Kuriltai, on the plains of Sari or Sali, to which Wang Khan was invited, and at which it was resolved to renew the war against the Taidshuts in the following year. The latter were in alliance with the Merkits, whose chief, Tukta, had sent a contingent, commanded by his brothers, to their help. The two friends attacked them on the banks of the river Onon. Raschid says in the country of Onon (the great desert of Mongolia). The confederates were beaten. Terkutai Kiriltuk and Kududar, the two leaders of the Taidshuts, were pursued and overtaken at Lengut Nuramen, where they were both killed. Another of their leaden, with the two chiefs of the Merkits, fled to Burghudshin (Burgusin on Lake Baikal), while the fourth found refuge with the Naimans.

This victory aroused the jealousy of certain tribes which were as yet independent of Temudjin, namely, the Kunkurats, Durbans, Jelairs, Katakins, Saldjuts, and Taidshuts, and they formed a confederacy to put him down. We are told that their chiefs met at a place called Aru Bulak, and sacrificed a horse, a bull, a ram, a dog, and a stag, and striking with their swords, swore thus: “Heaven and earth hear our oaths, we swear by the blood of these animals, which are the chiefs of their races, that we wish to die like them if we break our promises.” The plot was disclosed to Temudjin by his father-in-law, Dai Setzen, a chief of the Kunkurats. He repaired to his ally, Wang Khan, and the two marched against the confederates, and defeated them near the Lake Buyur. He afterwards attacked some confederated Taidshuts and Merkits on the plain of Timurkin (the river Timur or Temi), and defeated them. Mean­while the Kunkurats, afraid of resisting any longer, marched to submit to him. His brother, Juji Kassar, not knowing their errand, unfortunately attacked them, upon which they turned aside and joined Chamuka.

That inveterate enemy of Temudjin had at an assembly of the tribes, Inkirasses, Kurulasses, Taidshuts, Katakins, and Saldjuts, held in 1201, been elected Gurkhan. They met near a river, called Kieiho by Mailla, Kian by Hyacinthe, and Kem by Raschid, and then adjourned to the Tula, where they made a solemn pact praying that “whichever of them was unfaithful to the rest might be like the banks of that river which the water ate away, and like the trees of a forest when they are cut into faggots.” This pact was disclosed to Temudjin by one of his friends who was present, named Kuridai. He marched against them, and defeated them at a place north of the Selinga, called Ede Kiurghan, (site of the grave mounds), Chamuka fled, and the Kunkurats submitted.

In the spring of 1202, Temudjin set out to attack the tribes Antshi and Tshagan. These were doubtless the subjects of Wangtshuk and Tsaghan, mentioned by Ssanang Setzen. They were probably Tungusian tribes. The western writers tell us that Temudjin gave orders to his soldiers to follow up the beaten enemy, without caring about the booty, which should be fairly divided among them. His relatives, Kudsher, Daritai, and Altun, having disobeyed, were deprived of their share, and became, in consequence, his secret enemies. Ssanang Setzen has much more detail, and his narrative is interesting because, as Schmidt suggests, it apparently contains the only account extant of the conquest of the tribes of Manchuria. He says, that while Temudjin was hawking between the river Olcho (a river Olcoui, rising in the Soyoldji, a branch of the Khinggan mountains, about the forty-seventh parallel of latitude, is mentioned by D’Ohsson), and the Ula (probably the Nonni Ula). Wangtshuk Khakan, of the Dschurtschid (i.e., of the Niutchi Tartars of Manchuria), had retired from there. Temudjin was angry, and went to assemble his army to attack the enemy’s capital. But as a passage was forbidden him across the river Ula, and the road was blockaded, the son of Toktanga Baghatur Taidshi, named Andun Ching Taidshi, coupled ten thousand horses together by their bridles, and pressed into the river, forced a passage, and the army then began to besiege the town. Temudjin sent word to Wangtshuk, and said: “If you will send me ten thousand swallows and one thousand cats then I will cease attacking the town,” upon which the required number was procured. Temudjin fastened some lighted wool to the tail of each and then let them go; then the swallows flew to their nests in the houses, and the cats climbed and jumped on the roofs; the city was fired, by which means Temudjin conquered Wangtshuk Khakan, and took his daughter Salichai for his wife. He then marched further eastwards to the river Unegen, but he found it had overflowed its banks, whereupon he did not cross it but sent envoys to Tsaghan Khakan (? the tribe Tsagan mentioned in the western accounts, vide supra) of the Solongos, i.e., of the Solons. “Bring me tribute, or we must fight,” he said ; upon which Tshaghan Khakan was frightened, sent him a daughter of Dair Ussun, named Khulan Goa, with a tent decorated with panther skins, and gave him the tribes of Solongos and Bughas as a dowry, upon which he assisted Tshaghan Khakan, so that he brought three provinces of the Solongos under his authority,

Ssanang Setzen at this point introduces one of those quaint Sagas, which however mythical in themselves, are true enough to the peculiar mode of thought of the Mongols to make them very instructive. The Saga runs thus During a three years’ absence of her husband, Burte Judjin sent Arghassun Churtshi (Arghassun the lute player) to him; when the latter was introduced, he spoke thus: —“Thy wife, Burte Judjin Khatun, thy princely children, the elders and princes of thy kingdom, all are well. The eagle builds his nest in a high tree; at times he grows careless in the fancied security of his high-perched home; then even a small bird will sometimes come and plunder it and eat the eggs and young brood: so it is with the swan whose nest is in the sedges on the lake. It, too, trusts too confidently in the dark thickets of reeds. Yet prowling water-falcons will sometimes come and rob it of eggs and young ones. This might happen to my revered lord himself.” These words aroused Temudjin from his confident air. “Thou hast spoken truly,” he said, and he hied him on his way homewards. But when some distance still from home he began to grow timid. “Spouse of my young days, chosen for me by my noble father, how dare I face thee home­tarrying Burte Judjin, after living with Chulan (the Chulan Goab already named), whom I came across in my journey, it would be shameful to seem unfriendly in the assembly of the people. One of you nine Orloks hie you to Burte Judjin and speak for me.” Mukuli, of the Jelair tribe, volunteered, and when he came to her, delivered this message:— “Beside protecting my own lands I have looked around also elsewhere. I have not followed the counsel of the greater and lesser lords. On the contrary, I have amused myself with the variegated colours of a tent hung with panther skins. Distant people to rule over I have taken Chulan to be my wife: the Khan has sent me to tell you this”. His wife seems to have understood the enigmatical phrases, for Setzen says, “The sensible Burte Judjin thus replied, ‘The wish of Burte Judjin and of the whole people is that the might of our sovereign may be increased. It rests with him whom he shall befriend or bind himself to. In the reedy lakes there are many swans and geese. If it be his wish to shoot arrows at them until his finger be weary, who shall complain? So also there are many girls and women among our people. It is for him to say who the choicest and luckiest are. I hope he will take to himself both a new wife and a new house. That he will saddle the untractable horse. Health and prosperity are not wearisome, nor are disease and pain desirable, says the proverb. May the golden girth of his house be immortal” (i.e. may the band that binds the felts and spars of the yurt never decay, in other words, may he ever be prosperous, a favourite Mongol wish).

When he arrived at home he discovered that Arghassun had appro­priated his golden lute, upon which he ordered Boghordshi and Mukuli to kill him. They seized him, gave him two skins full of strong drink, and then went to the Khan, who had not yet risen. Boghordshi spoke outside the tent: “The light already shines, in your Ordu. We await your commands, that is, if your effulgent presence, having cheerfully awoke, has risen from its couch! The daylight already shines. Condescend to open the door to hear and to judge the repentant culprit, and to exercise your favour and clemency.” The Khan now arose and permitted Arghassun to enter, but he did not speak to him. Boghordshi and Mukuli gave him a signal with their lips. The culprit then began: “While the seventy-tuned Tsaktsaghai unconcernedly sings tang, tang, the hawk hovers over and pounces suddenly upon him and strangles him before he can bring out his last note jang. So did my lord’s wrath fall on me and has unnerved me. For twenty years have I been in your household but have not yet been guilty of dishonest trickery. It is true I love smoked drink, but dishonesty I have not in my thought. For twenty years have I been in your household but I have hot practised knavery. I love strong drink, but am no trickster.” Upon which Temudjin ejaculated, “My loquacious Arghassun, my chattering Churtchi,” and pardoned him.

Temudjin now seems to have been master of the country generally known as Eastern Dauria, watered by the Onon, the Ingoda, the Argun, and also of the tribes of Tungusic race that lived on the Nonni and the Upper Amur. The various victims of his prowess began to gather together for another effort. Among these were Tukta, the chief of Merkits, with the Naiman leader, Buyuruk Khan, the tribes Durban, Katagun, Saldjut, and Uirat, the last of whom were clients of the Naimans. Wang Khan was then in alliance with him. At the approach of the enemy they retired into the mountains Caraun Chidun, in the Khinggan chain, on the frontiers of China, where they were pursued. The pursuers were terribly harassed by the ice and snow, which Mailla said was produced by one of their own Shamans, or necromancers, and which proved more hurtful to them than to the Mongols. Many of them perished, and when they issued from the defiles they were too weak to attack the two allies. The latter spent the winter at Altchia Kungur (a small river Kungur flows into Lake Taal). Here their two families were united by mutual betrothals; as these, however, broke down ill-feeling was aroused between them, and Chamuka had an opportunity of renewing his intrigues. He suggested that Temudjin had secret com­munications with the Naimans, and was not long in arousing the jealousy of Wang Khan and his son Sengun. They attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate him, but he was warned in time. He now collected an army and marched against the Keraits. His army were very inferior in numbers, but attacked the enemy with ardour. Wang Khan’s bravest tribe, the Jirkirs, turned their backs, while the Tunegkaits were defeated, but numbers nevertheless prevailed, and Temudjin was forced to fly. This battle, which is renowned in Mongol history, was fought at a place called Kalanchin Alt. Raschid says this place is near the country of the Niuchis, not far from the river Olkui. Some of the Chinese authorities call it Khalagun ola, and Hala chon, and D’Ohsson surmises that it is that part of the Khinggan chain from which flow the southern affluents of the Kalka, one of which is called Halgon in D’Anville’s map. Mailla, however, distinctly places it between the Tula and the Onon, which is probably right. Abandoned by most of his troops, he fled to the desert Baldjuna, where he was reduced to great straits (D’Ohsson says that a lake Baldjuna, whence flows the Tura, a tributary of the Ingoda, is found in the plateau north of the Onon). Here are still found many grave mounds, and the Buriats relate that this retired place, protected on the north by woods and mountains, was formerly an asylum. A few firm friends accompanied him. They were afterwards known as Baldjunas, a name compared by Von Hammer with that of Mohadshirs, borne by the companions of Mahomet’s early misfortunes. Two shepherds, named Kishlik and Badai, who had informed him of Wang Khan’s march, were created Terkhans.

Having been a fugitive for some time, Temudjin at length moved to the south-east, to the borders of Lake Kara, into which flows the river Uldra, there he was joined by some Kunkurats, and he once more moved on to the sacred Mongol lake, the Dalai Nur. Thence he indited the following pathetic letter to Wang Khan:—

 “1. O Khan, my father, when your uncle, the Gur Khan, drove you for having usurped the throne of Buyuruk, and for having killed your brothers Tatimur Taidshi and Buka Timur, to take refuge at Keraun Kiptchak (the Caravoun Cabdjal of D’Ohsson), where you were beleaguered, did not my father come to your rescue, drive out, and force the Gur Khan to take refuge in Ho Si (the country west of the Hoangho), whence he returned not? Did you not then become Anda (sworn friend) with my father, and was not this the reason I styled you father?

“ 2. When you were driven away by the Naimans, and your brother, Ilkah Sengun, had retired to the far east, did I not send for him back again, and when he was attacked by the Merkits, did I not attack and defeat them? Here is a second reason for your gratitude.

“ 3. When in your distress you came to me with your body peering through your tatters, like the sun through the clouds, and worn out with hunger, you moved languidly like an expiring flame, did I not attack the tribes who molested you; present you with abundance of sheep and horses? You came to me haggard. In a fortnight you were stout and well-favoured again. Here is a third service we have done you.

“ 4. When you defeated the Merkits so severely at Buker Gehreh, you gave me none of the booty, yet shortly after, when you were hard pressed by the Naimans, I sent four of my best generals to your assistance, who restored you the plunder that had been taken from you. Here is the fourth good office.

“ 5. I pounced like a Jerfalcon on to the mountain Jurkumen, and thence over the lake Buyur, and I captured for you the cranes with blue claws and grey plumage, that is to say, the Durbans and Taidshuts. Then I passed the lake Keule. There I took the cranes with blue feet, that is, the Katakins, Saldjuts, and Kunkurats. This is the fifth service I have done you.

“6. Do you not remember, O Khan, my father, how on the river Kara, near the Mount Jurkan, we swore that if a snake glided between us, and envenomed our words, we would not listen to it until we had received some explanation; yet you suddenly left me without asking me to explain.

“7. O Khan, my father, why suspect me of ambition? I have not said: ‘My part is too small, I want a greater;’ or ‘It is a bad one, I want a better.’ When one wheel of a cart breaks, and the ox tries to drag it, it only hurts its neck. If we then detach the ox, and leave the vehicle, the thieves come and take the load. If we do not unyoke it, the ox will die of hunger. Am I not one wheel of thy chariot?”

With this letter Temudjin sent a request that the black gelding of Mukuli Behadur, with its embroidered and plated saddle and bridle, which had been lost on the day of their struggle, might be restored to him; he also asked that messengers might be sent to treat for a peace between them.

Another letter was sent to his uncle Kudshir, and to his cousin Altun.

This letter is interesting, because it perhaps preserves for us some details of what took place at the accession of Genhis. It is well known that the Mongol Khans affected a coy resistance when asked to become chief. The letter runs thus:—“You conspired to kill me, yet from the beginning did I tell the sons of Bartam Behadur (his grandfather), as well as Satcha (his cousin), and Taidju (his uncle), why does our territory on the Onon remain without a master? I tried to persuade you to rule over our tribes. You refused. I was troubled. I said to you, ‘Kudshir, son of Tekun Taishi, be our Khan.’ You did not listen to me; and to you, Altun, I said, ‘You are the son of Kutluk Khan (the Kubilai of D’Ohsson), who was our ruler. You be our Khan? You also refused, and when you pressed it on me, saying, ‘Be you our chief,’ I submitted to your request, and promised to preserve the heritage and customs of our fathers. Did I intrigue for power? I was elected unanimously to prevent the country, ruled over by our fathers near the three rivers, passing to strangers. As chief of a numerous people, I thought it proper to make presents to those attached to me. I captured many herds, yurts, women, and children, which I gave you. I enclosed for you the game of the steppe, and drove towards you the mountain game. You now serve Wang Khan, but you ought to know that he is fickle. You see how he has treated me. He will treat you even worse.”

Wang Khan was disposed to treat, but his son Sengun said matters had gone too far, and they must fight it out. We now find Wang Khan quarrelling with several of his dependents, whom he accused of conspiring against him. Temudjin’s intrigues were probably at the bottom of the matter. The result was that Dariti Utshegin, with a tribe of Mongols, and the Sakiat tribe of the Keraits, went over to Temudjin, while Altun and Kudshir, the latter’s relations, who had deserted him as I have described, took refuge with the Naimans.

Among the companions of his recent distress, a constant one was his brother Juji Kassar, who had also suffered severely, and had had his camp, &c., pillaged by the Keraits. Temudjin had recourse to a ruse. He sent two servants who feigned to have come from Juji, and who offered his submission on condition that his wife and children were admitted the justice of this punishment, which he would himself have meted out if he had been successful.

D’Ohsson says that Temudjin had now conquered enough of men, cattle, and pastures, and his eyes turned to the capture of richer booty in the south, the former hunting ground of many nomad tribes. His first venture was made upon Tangut, the Hia of the Chinese writers. The kingdom had been previously known as that of Ho Si, i.e. west of the river (corrupted by the Mongols into Kaschin). When Temudjin con­quered it the name Kaschin was given to his youthful grandson, a son of Ogotai’s, who was born at the time, and on his death the name was changed to Tangut. The Mongols first captured a strong fort named Liki (Lairi of Hyacinth’s History of the Yuen), and having razed it to the ground, took the town of Lung-si-hien (Asagitgelus of Erdmann), and in it a large booty, with which he returned to the desert. This expedition was made in 1205. De Mailla here tells a quaint story, “As Temudjin returned from Hia he met a child in charge of some sheep. This child had put a stick in the ground and his cap upon it, and was dancing and singing around it. Temudjin, whose curiosity was tickled, asked him why he did thus. “When one is alone” said the child, “having no com­panion but one’s cap, one ought to respect it. If there are two persons together, the younger ought to pay respect to the elder. As I was alone I did it to my cap. I heard you were about to pass, and I thought I would practice the ceremonies due to you when you should arrive.” Temudjin took the child home and had him brought up in his tent.

He had now reached a memorable epoch in his life; north of the desert he had subdued all the turbulent and lawless tribes that stretched from the Irtish to the Khinggan mountains. He had destroyed all his rivals, and we are told that in the spring of 1206 he summoned a Kuriltai near the sources of the Onon; on this spot was planted a standard com­posed of nine white tuks (i.e, Yak-tails, one for each of the nine Orloks) placed one over the other, around this were collected the chiefs of the different tribes. A Shaman named Gueukdju, who was surnamed But Tengri, or Image of God, now came forward and declared solemnly that having conquered so many Gur Khans, i.e., “chief Khans,” he could not adopt that humbled title, and that heaven decreed to him the title of Jingis Khan, or the “Very Mighty Khan.” He was therefore saluted under that name by the different chiefs. He was now forty-four years of age, or according to Raschid fifty-one.

Ssanang Setzen has a queer tale to tell of the origin of the name Jingis. He says that in 1189, when Temudjin was forty-eight years old, he was proclaimed Khakan on the banks of the river Kerulon. For three mornings before the ceremony, a five-coloured bird, in shape like a lark, came and sat on a squared stone in front of the royal yurt, and screamed out Genhis, Genghis, which he thereupon adopted as his middle name, his title in full being Sutu Bogda Genghis Khakan. There then appeared in the midst of the stone the seal called Chas Boo. This seal was a span in length and breadth. On its lower face was a turtle, and in the back of the latter two dragons were interlaced. On this truly Mongol legend Erdmann has the cynical comment, “En Cor Zenodoti en jecur Cratetis.” The legend goes on to say that it was now that Temudjin gave his people the name of Köke Mongol, i.e., Blue or Celestial Mongols. Ssanang Setzen says they had hitherto been called Bedé, but, as I have shown, the name Mongol is of much older date. Guekdju the Shaman had gained great credit among the Mongols, and even persuaded them he sometimes mounted to heaven on a grey horse. He now became trouble­some to Temudjin, to whom he was aggressively impertinent. The latter grew weary of him, and ordered him to be killed. Juji Kassar, we are told, kicked him out of the tent and then put him to death. After the dissolution of the Kuriltai, Genghis (as we shall now call him) marched against the Naimans. On the death of Tayang Khan, his brother Buyuruk, who had divided the heritage with and now succeeded him, was with his people hunting in the Ulug Tag mountains (the Urtu-ola of the Chinese—they form the western continuation of the Little Altai west of the Balkash Sea) near the river Sudja. Here he was attacked and killed by some supporters of Genghis, his wife and baggage fell into the victor’s hands, while his nephew Gushluk and the irrepressible Khan of the Merkits fled towards the land watered by the Irtish. As the people of Hia had failed to send the promised tribute, he ordered a fresh expedition against them. This was in 1207. This expedition captured the town of Wuhlahai, and returned with much booty. Wuhlahai gave its name to one of the seven lu of the Mongolian period, including Tangut or Kansuh. It was probably the kingdom of Egrigaia of Marco Polo. Genghis Khan now called upon the Kirghises and Kem Kemdjuts who lived north of the Naimans to do homage. Their two chiefs are called Idyrnere and Aldar by Hyacinthe, Yetici Ynali and Alitiei by Mailla. One of the names is wanting in the MSS. of Raschid. The other is called Urus Inal by him. Ssanang Setzen calls him Orodshu Schiguschi and his people Oirad Buriad. Burnt is still a well-known synonym for the black or proper Kirghises. The two chiefs agreed to do homage, and sent Genghis a present of some Jerfalcons.

In the autumn of 1208 Genghis pursued Gushluk andTukta in the direction of the Irtish. On the way the tribe Oirat, called Ouayla by Mailla (Oirat is a synonym for the Telenguts or White Kalmuks of the Irtish), submitted to him, and their chief volunteered to guide his army. The fugitives were overtaken near the Kem, the upper Irtish. Tukta the Merkit chief was killed, Gushluk escaped to Kara Khitai. Soon after he received the submission of Bardjuk the Idikut or king of the Uighurs; he was a tributary of Kara Khitai, but in 1209 had murdered the deputy of that empire, named Shukem; when in expectation of dire punishment he heard of the great successes of Genghis, he hastened to recognise him. In the fulsome Eastern panegyric he wrote “As when the clouds break and disclose the sun burning with renewed lustre, as the cracking ice displays the pure blue stream below, so did thy arrival fill me with delight and with the hope of deliverance.” Jingis Khan received this message with courtesy, and sent word back that he wished the Idikut to go to him in person with the richest object in his treasury. The latter despatched a valuable bag full of pearls and other gifts, but does not appear to have gone himself.

In 1209 he commenced another campaign by penetrating into Kan-su, then dependent on the kingdom of Hia, whose king, Li-ngan-tsuen, sent his son with an army to oppose him, but he was beaten, and Kao-ling-Kong, his Lieutenant-General, was made prisoner. The Mongols then captured Uiraka (i.e., the passage through the wall—Raschid calls it Erica, and in another place Erlaca, and it is probably the Egrigaia of Marco Polo), they then took the fortress of I-men, crossed the Hoangho, and laid siege to Nin hia fu, then called Chung hing, the capital of Hia (the Calatia of Marco Polo—it was for­merly also called Hwai Yuen), but the inhabitants opened the dykes of the river and flooded their camp. The Mongols then sent messengers into the city to treat. The king of Hia agreed to acknowledge their supremacy, and surrendered one of his daughters, who was sent to the harem of Genghis. On his return to his yurt he found the Idikut of the Uighurs, Arslan Khan, chief of the Karliks (the Turks of Kayalik), and Ozar, prince of Almalig, who had come to do him homage. Arslan Khan bad recently followed the example of the Uighur prince, and had slain the deputy of his suzerain, the Khan of Kara Khitai. Genghis took him into his service, invested him with a golden girdle, and gave him a daughter of his house to wife. The Idikut asked that he might have some special mark of favour and be treated as his fifth son. To this he assented, and gave him his daughter Altun Bigi in marriage. Ozar, prince of Almalig, was shortly after captured while hunting, and put to death by order of Gushluk. Genghis appointed his son Seknak Tekin to succeed him, and gave him the daughter of his eldest son Juji in marriage.

The Khan of the Mongols now felt himself strong enough to undertake a much more important enterprise, namely to attack the empire of China.

That country was divided into two portions, the southern portion, with its capital at Lin-ngan (the later Hangchow, in Chekiang; it was also called Kinsai, and was so known to Marco Polo), was under the native dynasty of the Sung; the northern portion, comprising the provinces of Pehchehli, Shansi, Shan-tung, Honan, the southern part of Shensi, and that part of Kiang Nan north of the Yellow River, with its capital at Yenking, near the modern Peking, was under the domination of the Kin emperors, the Tartar dynasty from which the Manchus eventually sprang. The Kin emperors dominated over Tartary, and among others the Khitans, the previous masters of Northern China, were their tributaries. Genghis Khan relied upon the assistance of these latter. He was also encouraged by some refugees, who reported to him that the Chinese were discontented with the Kin dynasty. During the reign of the emperor Chang-tung, 1190-1208, his uncle Ta ngan, who held the fief of Wei in Honan, had been sent into Tartary to collect tribute, and had used his influence to thwart the rise of Genghis. In 1209 Ta-ngan succeeded his nephew, and is known in Chinese history as Chong-hei. In 1209 he sent the usual embassy to Jingis to receive his tribute. Instead of kneeling to receive the Imperial commands he scornfully told the envoy that the “Son of Heaven” (the euphemism used by the Chinese when speaking of their emperors) ought to be an extraordinary person, but an imbecile like this Chong-hei, was he worthy of a throne, or that he Temudjin should abase himself before him? Upon which he mounted his horse and rode away.

Having collected his officers, he recounted to them the injuries their ancestors had received at the hands of the Altan Khans, the good fortune that had hitherto attended his arms, which would probably continue, and his determination to resist the pretensions of the emperor. This address was well received, and it was determined to send one of the principal Mongols, named Jafar Khodsha, to the Altan Khan with a haughty message, reminding him that Genghis had risen from being a small chieftain to be the master of the desert. That his forces were well disciplined and well equipped. That fortune attended his arms in all directions, and that he was prepared for either peace or war, whichever the Kin emperor desired, but that he should no longer be his dependent. To this the emperor, who was naturally enraged, replied with some firmness and scorn, and Genghis prepared for war. On the mountain In-chan he made a solemn pact with a chief of the Khitans, in which a white horse and a black ox were sacrificed, and an arrow was broken while the parties faced towards the north. They swore mutual fidelity; the Khitan undertaking to serve the Mongols, while the latter undertook to restore the Khitans to the sovereignty of Liautung. The chief with whom this treaty was made was named Yeliu Liuko. He was a scion of the old royal family of the Liau, and lived at Tsien-u, on the northern frontier.

Before setting out, Genghis climbed a mountain, and, having unloosed his girdle, addressed a prayer to the gods, in which he mentioned the murder of his relatives Ugin Berkak and Hemukai Khan by the Kin emperors; how he was now setting out to claim vengeance for their blood, and prayed that victory might rest with those who had the right on their side. Having left his trusty commander and son-in-law, Thugadshar Noyan, with a corps of 2,000 men to keep a watch on the newly conquered tribes, he set out in March, 1211, from the river Kerulan. His four sons accompanied him. He had first to cross the desert of Gobi, which then bordered the Mongol tribes on the south, and then came to the province of Shansi, whose northern frontier was protected by the rampart of earth and bricks, with its occasional towers, widely celebrated as the Great Chinese Wall. The Onguts, who garrisoned the wall, treacherously went over to the invaders. It would seem that their chief, Alausse or Alakush, was the chief influence among them which was favourable to the Mongols, and that the tribesmen were by no means so well affected. At all events, we are told that shortly after this Alausse was put to death by his officers, and his nephew Sengun succeeded him.

Chepe Noyan commanded the right wing; Genghis’s three sons, Juji, Ogotai, and Jagatai commanded the left wing; while he himself with his youngest son Tuli was in the centre. Chepe, with the élite of the Mongol army, forced several posts of the Great Wall situated to the north-east and north-west of Tai tong fu, then called Si king, or the western court. He then advanced and plundered the country to within a short distance of the Kin capital Tung king. Genghis himself invaded the province of Pehchehli. After the capture of the town of Fu chau, he advanced to the mountain, Ye hu ling, situated seven or eight leagues from Siuen-hwa-fu. The Kin generals, With an army which has been calculated at the absurd number of 400,000, were encamped close by. They deemed it a good opportunity for attacking him while his horses were emaciated from hard service, and the troops demoralised by the recent plunder of Fu chau. Genghis was informed of the plan; he was also joined by Ming-ngan (a Kin general in command of the advance guard), who deserted to him. The Mongols made the necessary arrangements; attacked and defeated one division of the Kin army, under the general Kiukien. The main army, under Wainen Hosho, upon this retired hastily, and was pursued to the fortress of Hoi ho pu on the river Hoi, where it was attacked and cut to pieces. A general whose name is not mentioned, but De Guignes says he was a Guebre or Fire Worshipper, now attacked the strong fort of Kiu yong koan, situated at the head of a defile four leagues long, leading to the capital. This was abandoned in a cowardly manner by its commander, and the Mongols took possession of it. Meanwhile the third army, commanded by the three sons of Jingis, overran six districts north of the Great Wall of Shansi, while another division conquered the frontier country of Pehchehli. The list of Mongol conquests in China is monotonous and not very easy to follow. At length in August, 1212, Jingis laid siege to Tai-tong-fu. This successfully resisted his attack, and, having been wounded by an arrow, he retired once more into the desert. His invasion of China had been an almost continuous success. He had broken the prestige of the Kin soldiery and had tested the skill of his officers, among whom Chepe, Mukuli Subutai and his brother Juji Kassar had greatly distinguished themselves. While the great invasion was going on, his ally Yeliu Liuko, who had raised a considerable army and was assisted by a contingent of 3,000 Mongols, defeated the Kin general Ho-sho, who was at the head of 60,000 men. Jingis now sent his able officer Chepe to help him. He laid siege to Liauyang (also called Tung king, or the eastern residence), the capital of Liautung, which was shortly afterwards captured. Yeliu Liuko, with the consent of Jingis, took the title of king of Liau, and fixed his capital at Hienping.

When the Mongols retired, the Kin soldiers reoccupied many of the towns the former had captured, but they did not hold them long. In the autumn of 1213, Genghis once more entered China and overran a large part of Pehchehli. The list of his captures occupies a closely packed page of D’Ohsson’s history. It is too monotonous to extract. But meanwhile a serious revolution occurred elsewhere. A general of the empire called Hushaku, who had been an exile and very destitute, and had been suddenly raised to his present position, conspired against the emperor, had him seized in his palace, and a few days afterwards murdered him, and placed Utubu, a brother of the murdered emperor and a creature of his own, on the throne. He then fought a battle with the Mongols, in which he was successful. The following day they renewed the combat, and Kaoki, who commanded the Imperial forces in the absence of Hushaku who had been wounded, was defeated. Fearing the vengeance of the latter he forestalled him and had him murdered. Having cut off his head he presented it to the emperor, who rewarded his unsoldierly conduct by making him generalissimo of his forces.

Meanwhile the Tanguts of Hia invaded the west of the empire. When they had been recently attacked by the Mongols they had asked assistance from the Kin emperor, and as this had been refused they were piqued, made terms with the Mongols, and now attacked the frontier town of Kia chau in Shensi. Many Chinese had joined the standard of Genghis, and to conciliate them he appointed Chinamen to command them. He also adopted the clever plan of making the women, the aged, and the children march in front of his army, so that if attacked they would be the first victims. Leaving a corps of observation in the north he divided his army into three divisions, one of which overran Shansi; a second, the maritime districts of Pehchehli and the district of Liau-si. The third, under his own orders, conquered the interior districts of Pehchehli and Shan-tung. They ravaged ninety flourishing towns, compelling the rural population, as they went along, to construct the siege works. In this war, in which a great part of the country north of the Yellow river was overrun, the Mongols captured an immense booty; gold and silken tissues, cattle, horses, and slaves. The Mongol armies were all reunited not far from Yen-king, and Genghis sent to the emperor to offer terms, these were accepted. Utubu gave Genghis one of the daughters of the deceased emperor Chong-hei in marriage, and with her a great quantity of precious articles, 500 youths, 500 girls, and 3,000 horses. D’Ohsson says that Genghis in retiring from the country made a general massacre of his prisoners.

The Kin emperor having got rid of his great enemy, proclaimed a general amnesty, and then removed his residence and court to his southern capital, Pien-king, now Kai-fung-fu. This aroused the jealousy of Genghis, and as at the same time a leader of irregular troops in the Imperial service called Choda (he is called Kanta by Gaubil), revolted and asked his assistance, he once more ordered his Mongols to cross the frontier. They speedily invested Yen-king, and defeated the armies sent to its relief. The commander, despairing of success, poisoned himself, after having composed a monitory address to his emperor, in which he set out the measures necessary to save the empire. The commander who replaced him escaped from the city in a most cowardly manner, and the Mongols entered it. Here they made a general carnage; they fired the emperor’s palace, which is said to have continued burning for a month, and then despatched a vast booty to Genghis Khan. Among the captives was a Khitan whose long beard, great stature, and imposing voice, are recorded as having impressed his conqueror very much. Genghis addressed him: “The houses of the Liau and Kin have always been enemies, I have avenged thee.” Khu-tsai, such was his name, replied: “My father, grandfather, and myself have been the subjects and servants of the Kin Emperors; it is not seemly that I should abuse them.” Touched by his fidelity, Genghis took him into his house, made him court astrologer, and deputed to him especially the duty of consulting the divination by means of burnt shoulder blades of sheep, a practice still frequent among the Mongols. He became the trusty councillor of Ogotai, vide infra. The chief heroes of the capture of the northern capital of the Kin were the Mongol generals Samuka Behadur and Mingan. Genghis was determined to push on his success. He despatched Samuka with 10,000 men, with orders to march by way of Hia and to force the pass of Tung kwan, the celebrated passage through the mountains which separates the provinces of Shensi and Honan, and is in fact the key to the latter. After attacking it in vain he succeeded in turning it, and clambered over the ravines and rocks—according to De Mailla using lances and boughs of trees lashed together with chains as a roadway for his cavalry. Having thus crossed the mountains he penetrated into the heart of Honan, but was there beaten and had to retire rapidly; his troops crossed the Yellow river on the ice. He did not retire far, and next year again crossed the river, captured the fort of Tung kwan and several cities, and laid siege to the capital, but not having a sufficient force he retired again, and was soon after defeated near Pen yan fu, in Shan-si.

Meanwhile the emperor had sent an army to recover possession of Liautung, which, from its natural strength, having three sides defended by the sea, was treated as a place of refuge, in case of disaster, by the court. This army had driven out Yeliu Liuko, soi-disant king of Liautung, and captured his capital. Genghis sent his most trusty general Mukuli with an army to reinstate his protégé. Mukuli attacked Tung-king, which he captured, by a ruse. One of the emperor’s messengers, on his way there, was captured and put to death, and his patent of office having been secured, a trusty Mongol was substituted for him. He presented himself at the city, was not suspected, reported that everything was again quiet at the Imperial court, and that the soldiers should be disbanded. Hardly was this done when Mukuli appeared with his army, and occupied the town without shooting an arrow. This conquest, says De Mailla, secured to the Mongols several thousand li of territory, 180,000 families, 100,000 soldiers, and an immense store of riches. Of thirty-two towns of Liautung, all except Tai-ning were captured. Mukuli now advanced into Liau Si, i.e., Liau West.

He was met in the country of the Hoa-tao by the Kin general Intsing, who had an army of 200,000 men. This, according to Gaubil, was filled with traitors, and partially dispersed. The Imperial general was assassinated, and another named Ilduku put in his place. Having ventured on a battle, he was beaten, and the Peking, or northern capital, which then was the city of Ta-ning-fu, fell into the hands of the Mongols. Ilduku was appointed its governor. Mukuli put down a fresh rebellion and killed its leaders, and having reduced the two important provinces of Liautung and Liau Si to order, he returned to the camp of Jingis, who received him with great honour, pronounced an eulogium upon him, gave the year 1200, had already extended his dominion by the conquest of Balkh, Herat, and all Khorasan. In 1208-9 he broke his allegiance to the Gur Khan, and in the next year he subdued Trans-Oxiana. In 1212-13 he annexed the principality of Gur, and three years later that of Ghazni. Here he discovered that the caliph of Bagdad had been intriguing against him; he thereupon marched an army against him, overran Irak-Adjem, and was only prevented from taking Bagdad by the severity of the winter and the incessant attacks of the Kurds and other nomads.

The mother of Muhammed was Turkan Khatuna. She belonged to the Turkish tribe of the Kankalis, who then dominated over the steppes north of the Aral. On her marriage many chiefs and tribes of that race entered into the service of the Khuarezm Shah; they formed quite a sepa­rate element in the population, a kind of military aristocracy, like the later Mameluks, over which the Sultana had great influence, and through which she had almost equal authority with her son. On his return from Iraq, Muhammed came to Bukharia, where he received some envoys from Genghis Khan, who brought him presents of silver bars, musk, jade, costly dresses of white wool called tarkoul (made of white camels’ hair, and costing fifty dinars each), with the message: “I send these greeting, I know thy power and the vast extent of thine empire, I regard thee as my most cherished son. On thy part, thou must know that I have conquered China and all the Turkish nations north of it; thou knowest that my country is a magazine of warriors, a mine of silver, and that I have no need of other lands. I take it we have an equal interest in encouraging trade between our subjects.” This good feeling was apparently reciprocated by Muhammed, but an unfortunate occurrence soon caused a serious quarrel between them; some agents of Genghis who had gone to buy merchandise for him in Trans-Oxiana were seized as spies at Otrar and executed by Inallzig, the chief of the Kankalis encamped there, and with the approval of Muhammed. Genghis sent envoys to demand that the governor of Otrar should be handed over to him, in default of which he would declare war. Muhammed’s ruthless answer was to murder Bagra, the chief envoy, and to send the other two back with their beards cut off. He then, without declaring war, led an army into the steppes north of the Jaxartes. War was now inevitable, and Genghis having called a Kuriltai, it was determined to prosecute it vigorously. It would seem that he was encouraged to proceed by the invitation of the Khalif Nassir, who was a deadly enemy of Muhammed, the latter having attempted to displace him and to put a nominee of his own on the throne of Baghdad.

In the spring of 1218 Genghis set out from Karakorum and summered his cavalry on the Irtish; with him marched the princes of the Uighurs and the Karluks, and the chief of Almalig. From the Irtish the Mongol Khan directed that his army should advance upon the Khuarezmian empire by two grand routes. The northern army under the command of his second son Jagatai marched against the Kankalis, who defended the country about the Balkhash sea and Karatag mountains. The southern army under his eldest son Juji, who had rejoined his father after his campaign in the north of Sungaria, marched by way of Utsh Turfan and Pidshan, and drove the broken remnants of Kushluk’s former army towards Kashgar, and then on through the passes of Akizek, Terek, and Tazik in the Asfera range, and into Ferghana. The fugitives wished to join a body of Muhammed’s troops who were in the neighbourhood of Khokand or Khodjend. They were overtaken between the river of Ush, also called Takti Soliman, Kamuksu, or Kamzi, and the river of Keba, both small tributaries of the Jaxartes, probably near Ardana, and were cut to pieces, except a few who escaped or were taken prisoners. Muhammed’s forces amounted it is said to 400,000 men, who were ill-disciplined and disintegrated, while he himself had lost the confidence of his younger days. The approach of the Mongols from this side was unexpected; he put his people in motion and set them out in battle array between Ush and Sangar. The Mongol chiefs wished to retire and to draw the Sultan’s army into the narrow passes, where a small force might easily resist a large one  but Juji was of a different opinion. He ordered the attack; a savage fight ensued, during which in his eagerness he was nearly captured or killed, and was saved by the timely succour of Pi-tu, the son of Je-lu-lieu-ko, who had been appointed king of Liautung by Genghis, the Khuarezmian army was defeated, and if we are to believe the chroniclers who deal in hyperbolic phrases, the loss in killed, wounded, and fugitives was 160,000. Muhammed now determined to avoid meeting the Mongols in the open field, but to scatter his army among the towns of Mavera-ul-nehr and Khuarezm, in the vain hope that the Mongols would be content with ravaging the open country, and then return with their booty. He himself retired to Samarkand, and his retirement broke down to a large extent the spirit of his subjects.

While Juji was invading Trans-Oxiana from the east, the other sections of the Mongol army were marching down upon the doomed garden of Asia from the north. Otrar was the main point of attack. It is the key to the fertile province to the south of the Jaxartes called Mavera-ul-nehr by the Arabs, and known in the west as Trans-Oxiana, names equivalent to Mesopotamia, Entre Rios, and the Doub in other countries, bounded on the north by the Jaxartes or Sihun, on the south by the Oxus or Jihun, and on the east and west by the mountains of Pamir and the Khorasan sand-wastes respectively. The Mongol army was divided into four corps, the first of which commanded by Jagatai and Ogotai, the sons of Genghis, invested Otrar. Planted as a garrison on this frontier were a body of Kankalis under their chief Inallzik, who had been granted the title of Gur Khan by the former chief of Kara Khitai, and who had precipitated the war as I have described by putting the envoys of Genghis to death. His army mustered about 50,000, and he was now reinforced by a further body of 10,000, who were sent him by Muhammed under Karadshar Hadshib, who was his vizier.

The army that marched against Otrar was commanded by Jagatai and Ogotai, the second and third sons of Genghis. After a siege of five months, from the end of November, 1218, to the end of April, 1219, the garrison became hard pressed, and as Inallzik refused to surrender, Karadshar, with the élite of the soldiers, left the town at night, and deserted to the Mongols. They were put to death—the Draconic sentence of the Mongols being that one who was faithless to his own sovereign would prove so to them. Inallzik, with 20,000 of his followers, now took refuge in the citadel, where he held out for two months. The place was then stormed and its garrison put to death. Inallzik escaped with two men to his home, and when they were killed the story goes that he hurled bricks at his pursuers, which were handed to him by his wife. He was at length captured alive, and was put to death by having melted silver poured into his ears and eyes, a retribution it is said for his avarice. The walls of Otrar were razed and the place was pillaged, but the lives of the inhabitants were spared; but the siege had already cost the lives of 100,000 soldiers and 200,000 civilians. While this siege was going on Juji, who had defeated the Khuarezmian army as I have described, proceeded to subdue and overrun the country of Eastern Ferghana. Among its towns most celebrated in later days was Sighnak, which Wolff identifies with the Senderach of Edrisi and the Senkharab or Sengar of other authors, which is situated four or five miles south-east of Ush on the mountain road to Kashgar. It was afterwards the capital of the White Horde; Juji was ordered to treat the inhabitants with tenderness. He sent forward one Hassan Hadji, or the pilgrim, who had traded with the Mongols, to summon the town. Treating him as a traitor, the inhabitants put him to death. To revenge this, Juji pressed the attack with vigour, and after seven days of severe fighting captured it and made a general massacre of its inhabitants. He then captured and pillaged Uzkend, Barkhaligkend, and Eshnass. The strong city of Jend was his next goal. Its governor, Kutluk Khan, deserted it in the night. This caused great confusion inside, and prevented preparations for defence. Its high walls were speedily scaled; the lives of its inhabitants were spared, but they were driven into the open country for nine days, while the town was given up to pillage. Juji appointed Ali Khodja of Bokhara to be its governor. He then captured the town of Yengigent (Newtown), situated on the Jaxartes, at two days’ journey from its outlet into the sea of Aral.

We are now told that the Ulus Bede, probably the Uighurs, desiring to return home, were sent back to Karakorum, and were replaced by 10,000 Turkomans. (Von Hammer and D’Ohsson say expressly it was 10,000 Uighurs who thus returned home.) These Turkomans were sent with other troops into Khuarezm, but having killed their commander, they were attacked by the other Mongols and dispersed. The remnant sought refuge at Amuyeh and Meru. As a diversion to draw off some of the troops of Ferghanah from attacking Juji, Genghis had despatched a third army, consisting of 5,000 men, under Suktu Buka and Alan Noyon, who first captured the old city of Aksi, formerly the capital of Ferghanah, they then attacked Benaket which was garrisoned by some Kankalis. After a short resistance they surrendered, hoping for mercy, but it availed them nothing. As the town had not surrendered at once the soldiery were put to death, the artisans were divided as prisoners among the Mongols. This division then attacked Khodjend, a beautiful town on the Jaxartes, famous for its gardens and fruits, for its trade, and the bravery of its inhabitants. Its governor was an intrepid warrior, called Timur-Melik, he retired with 1,000 men to a small island in the Jaxartes, out of reach of weapons from either bank. The Mongols forced the country people to carry stones to make a causeway to the island. Meanwhile Timur-Melik was indefatigable in destroying the besiegers’ works. He built twelve large boats, protected by felts and other coverings from the stink­pots of the Mongols; with these he made raids on the besiegers and their workmen, but hard pressed he was at length obliged to fly. Having embarked his troops and valuables on seventy boats, he trusted himself to the river. He broke past Benaket, where a chain had been stretched across. At Jend a bridge of boats had been built as a barrier, and balistas and other primitive cannon were planted on the banks. These forced him to land, he gave battle to the Mongols several times, but his force gradually diminished until he was left alone, and alone he reached Urgendj. Having collected a few troops, he returned and surprised Yengigent, and killed its governor, a nominee of the Mongols. He afterwards joined his master, the Khuarezm Shah. His intrepidity was long remembered. Oriental historians quote the adage that “if Rustem were still alive he might be his page.”

While these three divisions were successfully overrunning the country watered by the Jaxartes, Genghis and his younger son Tului advanced with the main army towards Bokhara. With him went two bodies of balisters, the primitive artillery of the Mongols. The towns of Tashkend (not Sertak, as the translator of Abulghazi says) and Nur or Nurata surrendered as he approached; the inhabitants were well treated, merely paying a ransom and supplying a contingent of young men to the Mongol army. Genghis ordered the name of the former town to be changed to Kutluk balig, i.e. Lucky city. At the latter we are told that the ear-rings of the women collected on the spot made up one-half the amount of 1,500 dinars, which was claimed as ransom. This is no bad evidence of the prosperous condition of the inhabitants.

Bokhara was defended by 20,000 soldiers. It was then a very large and magnificent city. “Its name, according to the historian Alai-ud-din, is derived from Bokhar, which in the Magian language means the ‘centre of science’.” In the time of Ibn Haukal it was surrounded by two walls, the inner, one parasang in circuit, the outer, twelve parasangs; between the two were palaces, parks, gardens, and villages. The river of Sogd traversed its faubourgs. It was on the 19th of June, 1219, that Genghis appeared before the city.

After several days’ siege the garrison despairing of success forced its way through the Mongol lines, but was subsequently attacked and almost destroyed. The next day the Imams and great men came to surrender the city. The Mongol chief, we are told, entered it to see; arrived at the great mosque, he asked if this was the Sultan’s palace; on being told it was the house of God he dismounted, climbed the steps, and said in a loud voice to his followers, “The hay is cut, give your horses fodder.” They easily understood this cynical invitation to plunder, and meanwhile the boxes in which the korans were kept were converted into mangers; the sacred books were trampled under the horses’ hoofs. As if this was not enough insult, the floor of the mosque was strewn with wine skins, singing-women were introduced into the building, and a scene of debauchery ensued, during which the Imams, doctors of the law, &c, were compelled to hold the horses’ bridles. Genghis Khan then collected the chief inhabitants in the Mosalla or place set apart for public prayer, and thus addressed them, “You have committed great faults, and the chiefs and leaders of the people are the greatest criminals. If you need any proof of my statement, I answer that I am the scourge of God. If you were not great criminals, God would not have permitted me to have thus punished you.” He further bade them disclose all their hidden treasure, and not mind making any return about that that was not hidden, as he could easily find that. The inhabitants were ordered to leave the town in a body, with only their clothes, so that it might be more easily pillaged, after which the spoil was divided among the victors. “It was a fearful day,” says Ibn al Ithir, “one only heard the sobs and weeping of men, women, and children, who were separated for ever; women were ravished, while many men died rather than survive the dishonour of their wives and daughters.” The Mongols ended by setting fire to all the wooden portion of the town, and only the great mosque and certain palaces which were built of brick remained standing.

Von Hammer compares with force the accounts of the capture of Bokhara given by the Mussulman historians with the Byzantine descrip­tions of the capture of Constantinople. The Kankalis who garrisoned Bokhara were as usual put to death, according to Erdmann to the number of 30,000, and the city remained desolate for a long time. The young men were sent to do sappers’ work at the siege of Samar­kand, to which Genghis now turned. He advanced along the beautiful valley of Sogd, the paradise described so enthusiastically by Persian authors. Muhammed had sometime before deserted his capital and retired across the Oxus towards Termed.

Samarkand was not only the capital of Trans-Oxiana, but also one of the greatest entrepots of commerce in the world. Three miles in cir­cumference, it was surrounded with a wall having castles at intervals, and pierced by twelve iron gates; was then garrisoned by 110,000 men, of whom 60,000 were Turkomans and Kankalis, and 50,000 Tajiks or Persians. There were also twenty war elephants attached to the army. Genghis was joined by the three armies that had overrun Northern Trans-Oxiana, which converged upon the doomed town, and an immense body of men invested it. The Turkish mercenaries, who thought they would be treated as compatriots by the Mongols, deserted in a body with their families and property. Upon this the Imams and chief men came out and offered to surrender. The inhabitants were, as before, told to go out of the city while it should be plundered; 30,000 artisans were assigned as slaves to his several sons, an equal number were set aside for military works, transport service, &c., while 50,000 were permitted to re-occupy the ruined city after paying a ransom of 200,000 pieces of gold, and the province of Samarkand was almost depopulated. The hardest fate was that of the Kankalis who had deserted. Having separated them from the Persians, they were lulled into security by being ordered to adopt the military dress of the Mongols, and then slaughtered to the number of 30,000, with their principal chiefs Barishniaz Khan, Togai Khan, Sarsig Khan, Ulag Khan, &c. It is hard to divine a reason for this barbarous act, unless it was a fear of the turbulence of these mercenaries. Mean­while, Muhammed had deserted his richest province. As the Mongols advanced into Trans-Oxiana he retired to Nakhsheb, his irresolution being increased by the divergence of his councillors. As he retired he recommended the inhabitants to submit, as his soldiers could not protect them. When he reached Balkh he was joined by one of his viziers called Amad-ul-mulk, who persuaded him to retreat to Irak Adjem. His Turkish soldiers began to be treacherous, and he had to change his tent every night to escape assassination. On the eighteenth of April he halted at Nishapoor, and on the twelfth of May, having heard that the Mongols had crossed the frontier of Khorasan, he hastily left that town with a small retinue under the pretence of a hunting expedition.

After the capture of Samarkand Genghis remained in its fruitful neighbourhood until May, 1220, when having sent on three armies in pursuit of Muhammed, as I shall presently describe, he himself moved a short distance southwards, and spent the summer in the beautiful district of Kesh or Shehr Sebz, the Green town, situated on the river Koshka or Kasaban. In the autumn he broke through the pass in the Karatag chain, called the Derbend Kaluga or Iron Gate, and advanced upon Termed, situated on the north bank of the Oxus. Having refused the summons to open its gates and to demolish its walls and citadel, it was captured after a siege of nine days. Its inhabitants were ordered to evacuate it and were all slaughtered.

An incident of the capture is worth repeating, an old woman on the point of being killed, said she had a magnificent pearl which she would give them if they spared her, when they demanded it she told them she had swallowed it, upon which she was disembowelled. Genghis ordered the other corpses to be dealt with in the same way and searched for similar treasure.

While near Termed he ordered a grand hunt to be held. Such a hunt will be described below. This one was on a very large scale, and lasted four months. After the hunt he ravaged the districts of Kunkurt and Saman, and sent an army to conquer Badakshan. He was now master of the wide country north of the Oxus. All Turan was his, and having no enemy to dread in his rear, he determined to cross the Oxus. He first destroyed or dispersed the fleet which defended it by means of showers of burning missiles, probably stink-pots, which were supplied him by one of his Chinese officers, named Ko-pao-yu. Having crossed the river, he advanced against Balkh, the cradle of the earliest traditions of the Arian race, a very populous and wealthy city, then containing 1,200 medsheds or great mosques, besides lesser ones, and 200 public baths. It was unfortified. The inhabitants sent him presents and sub­mitted to him, but he was afraid to leave it behind him. On pretence of numbering its inhabitants he enticed them out of the city and then slaughtered them; the city itself was reduced to ashes. A fearful treat­ment for so slight a pretext.

Genghis now sent his son Tului with 70,000 men to ravage Khorasan, while he himself went eastward to Tokharistan to lay siege to Talikhan.

While Genghis loitered with his forces in the beautiful meadows of Sogd, after the capture of Samarkand, he despatched Chepé Noyan and Subutai Behadur, two well-tried chiefs, each with a tuman, i.e. 10,000 men, in pursuit of Muhammed. Erdmann’s mention of a third tuman under Tuktai is, I believe, a mistake. He ordered them to chase Muhammed wherever he should go. They crossed the Oxus at Punjab, making trunks out of branches covered with hides in which they placed their arms and valuables, and fastening them to the tails of their horses forded the river.

Khorassan was then a rich and prosperous province, divided into four departments, whose chief towns were Meru, Herat, Nishapoor, and Balkh.

Balkh submitted at the approach of the Mongols, who appointed a governor, and hearing that Muhammed had fled westward, they passed on to Andekuh, and thence advanced to Herat, whose governor, Amin Malek, sent out envoys offering to hold himself as the slave of the Grand Khan, and bearing presents. Chepé and Subutai upon this again advanced. A small town in the neighbourhood of Herat, called Zaweh, now known as Turbut Haidari, dared to beard them, and its garrison reviled them from the ramparts. Three days sufficed for its capture. Its inhabitants were put to death. On the 5th of June the Mongol advanced guard arrived before Nishapoor. On being summoned, the governor replied that the city had been entrusted to him by the Sultan, that he was an old man, and that he only knew how to use the pen. “Speed on after him,” he said, “when you have overcome him then will I be your man.” Meanwhile he sent envoys to the Mongol camp with presents. A letter of Jingis Khan’s, written in the Uighur character, and phrased as follows, was sent to the inhabitants:—“Commanders, elders, and commonalty, know that God has given me the empire of the earth from the east to the west, whoever submits shall be spared, but those who resist, they shall be destroyed with their wives, children, and dependents.” The town was spared on this occasion. Having victualled their troops there, and having thus warned them the Mongol army, which was joined by bands of brigands and renegade Turks, moved on in pursuit of Muhammed. He had retired from Nishapoor under pretence of a hunting excursion, leaving a considerable garrison there, and having placed his wife and his youngest son, Ghiazzedin, in the fort of Karendar, deemed the stronghold of Khorasan, went to Bostan, on the borders of Khorasan and Mazanderan and thence to Kazvin. The two Mongol commanders followed in his wake. They scoured the country effectually; crossing the mountains they appeared before Thus or Toos, whose inhabitants were not submissive, and they consequently ravaged the district terribly. They then passed through the beautiful wooded district of Radegan to Koochan or Kabooshan, plundering and appropriating such food and clothing as they needed, and leaving commanders or deputies in each town. Their way led them through Bostan. There apparently the two commanders separated. Subutai marched through the district of Kumuss towards Jeferan, and savagely attacked Sarabad (? Shah-rood), Dameghan, and Semnoon. Chepé made a detour through Mazanderan, where he captured the principal city, which was probably Sari; then crossing the Elburz chain, through the mountain region of Bariyan, and past the fortress of Ilak, probably the modern fort of Ask or Asek, eight or nine miles south of Amok. This fortress was protected by its position, and the Mongols passed it by, unaware it would seem that Turkhan Khatun, the Sultan’s mother, and her young children were then hiding there. Their next goal was the fortress of Rudin, the modern Rudehan, not far from Demavend. Muhammed had meanwhile fled in the direction of Hamadan, and Chepé set out in pursuit of him, while Subutai marched upon Kazvin. Both were towns of Irak Adjem, a province separated by deserts from Khorasan, Fars, and Kerman, and crowded with mountains, many of which are snow-covered, whence its Arab name of Jibal. The army of Irak, 30,000 in number, was collected under the walls of Kasvin, under the command of Rokn-ud-din, the son of Muhammed. Chepé captured Kum, then advanced to Rudbar and Hamadan; the latter was a famous and rich town of Irak. Its governor sent him presents and was submissive, and thus saved its inhabitants from attack. Chepé now seems to have rejoined Subutai before Kazvin, which was captured and 50,000 people slaughtered. Meanwhile Muhammed escaped to Maradaulat-abad, south-east of Hamadan, where he and his son collected an army of from 20,000 to 30,000 men. This was attacked and dispersed. Rokn-un-din, the Sultan’s son, fled to Kerman, the Sultan himself went first to Kurdistan and then to the strong fort of Karend, on the road from Kermandshah to Baghdad. There he was met by Hezar-Asb, the Prince of Luristan, a skilful commander. He tried to persuade his suzerain to retire behind the range that divides Fars from Luristan, where he might rely on the assistance of the Kurdish mountain tribes, but Muhammed was suspicious of this advice and preferred to make a stand in Irak; but the Mongols were at his heels. He passed through Mazanderan and Ghilan, where he arrived almost alone. At length he reached a village called Istidura by Abulghazi, and Astadad by Nissari. It is now called Astara, and is situated on the south-western shore of the Caspian. Thence he escaped to a small island in that sea, which is probably to be identified with Abiskhum, a day’s journey from Astrabad. The Caspian is constantly shallowing, and it is now a peninsula, and called Gumish Tepe, the Silver Hill. Ruins and many silver coins are found there. Muhammed was suffering from an attack of pleurisy, and feeling his end approach he nominated his son Jelal-ud-din as his successor, declaring that he was the only one able to save the empire; he girded his sword on him and ordered his younger sons to do him homage; he died directly after and was buried in the island. So poor was he that it is said he was buried without a shroud, and merely in his shirt. The date of his death was the 10th of January, 1221. A date which has a terrible sound in it as it marks the rapidity with which so mighty a potentate as he was, was hunted down and destroyed.

Persian historians are much divided in their estimate of Muhammed; some endowing him with many soldierly virtues, others accusing him of love of luxury and dissipation. There can be little question about his wavering and decrepit conduct in the presence of the Mongols.

Let us again revert to Subutai and Chepé. Having captured Ardebil, the chief town of Eastern Azerbaijan, they followed the Sultan to the southern coast of the Caspian, and then marched eastward again into Northern Khorasan, to cut off the retreat of the Khuarezmian princes. There they suffered some loss from an irregular chieftain named Inandj, who had assembled some troops in the mountains, at the sources of the rivers Gurgan and Attrek; but having been joined by a reinforcement of 10,000 men, they made him retire to Nessa.

When Muhammed retired behind the Oxus, he sent word to his mother, Turkan Khatun, who governed at Urgendj (the modern Khiva), and with whom he was not on very good terms, to retire into Mazanderan. Genghis, who knew of the ill-feeling, tried to cajole her into deserting the cause of her son, and promised her the government of Khorasan. She did not reply however to his advances, and when she heard that Muhammed had retreated she murdered the several princes whose dominions Muhammed had occupied, and who were retained as prisoners at Urgendj; they were drowned in the Oxus, among these were two sons of Thogrul, the last Seljuk sultan of Irak, the prince of Balkh and his son, the lord of Termed, the princes of Bamiran and of Vakhsh, the two sons of the lord of Sighnak, the two sons of Mahmud, the last prince of Gur, and many others. She then retired into Mazanderan, where she shut herself up in the fort of Ilak or Elek, now Al Ask. Subutai and Chepé returned once more to Kumuss, where they found the town of Dameghan deserted by its inhabitants, who had fled to the mountains. They attacked and plundered in their savage way Amol and other towns of Taberistan, and at length sat down to besiege the fortress of Ilak.

It was situated in a rainy district, and its builders had not made provision for a droughty season, which this proved to be; want of water compelled a capitulation after a resistance of three months. The Sultana and the Sultan's harem were sent as prisoners to Genghis Khan, who was then besieging Talikhan. Two of the princesses became wives of Jagatai; others were given to Mongol officers. A son of Muhammed, who was still with the harem, was put to death. Two chests-full of precious stones also fell into the hands of the victors. The rapid, persistent, and ubiquitous pursuit of Muhammed and his family, through an unknown and difficult country, may be read with profit by military critics, and speaks not less for the skill of the two Mongol commanders than for the discipline, courage, and endurance of their men.

The death of Muhammed and the capture of his harem by no means completed the work which the Mongols had prepared for themselves. It was their aim to tear up by the roots not only the main trunk but also the subordinate branches of the ruling family of Khuarezm. Several of Muhammed’s sons were still at large and long and successfully evaded capture, but they were hotly pursued notwithstanding, and when we .read the frightful chapter of human history which I shall presently shortly epitomise, and which describes the practical depopulation and destruc­tion of the beautiful province of Khorasan, we must remember that the probable motive of it all was the assistance the fugitive princes ever received in this centre of their faith and of their race, and although the wolfish greed of blood and massacre, which must sicken every reader who follows the story, cannot be defended, yet it must be allowed that the treachery, fanaticism, and want of spirit of the Tajik and Turk frontagers of Persia—their ruling vices still—made the sword of terror the only means the isolated Mongols had of producing quiet and order, and in themselves invited at one time or other a fitting retribution. On the death of his father, Jelal-ud-din, who, as I have said, had been named his successor, made his way to Mangushlak, on the Caspian, whence he sent his two brothers Uzlak Sulan and Ak Sultan to Urgendj, where the Mongols had not yet appeared, to announce his accession. He shortly after followed. An army of 90,000 Kankalis was assembled there. These unruly troops either feared the strong hand of Jelal-ud-din, or despised his youth, or favoured some other pretenders, and plotted against his life. He fled with 300 companions, led by the brave defender of Khodjend, Timur Melik. Genghis, whose forces were now encamped near Naksheb, sent a large force under three of his sons to capture Urgendj, the capital of Khuarezm, and ordered the troops which had traversed Khorasan to form a cordon round the southern edge of the desert. Jelal-ud-din crossed the desert in sixteen days, and arrived at Shadbash, in the neighbourhood of Nessa. Here he charged bravely into a body of Mongols, and managed to get away, and escaped to Ghazni. His two brothers, who soon after followed him, were less lucky. They were captured and beheaded, and their heads were shown about on spears. With them was taken much valuable booty.

We are told that the peasants of the canton of Vesht were greatly enriched by the number of precious stones captured from the Khuarezmians, which the Mongols, who did not know their value, sold them at an absurdly small price.

Meanwhile (in May, 1220) the Mongol army marched upon Urgendj, the modern Khiva, the capital of the rich cluster of cities that then bordered the Oxus, a river very like the Nile in forming a strip of green across two sandy deserts which bound it on either hand. The Kankalis I have named were then its garrison. The Mongols were led by Juji, Jagatai, and Ogotai, the three eldest sons of Jingis, Juji having the supreme command. He summoned the inhabitants to surrender, offering them easy terms. His father, he told them, had made him a present of their country, and he wished the city to preserve its beauty and prosperity. The summons was without avail, and the siege pro­ceeded. For lack of stones the Mongol catapults were served with balls made out of the neighbouring mulberry trees, hardened by being soaked in water. The quarrels of Juji and his brother Jagatai interfered with the progress of the siege, discipline was loosened, and the Mongols after six months’ labour had lost a great number of men. Jingis, when he heard of the quarrelling, appointed a younger son, Ogotai, to superintend the work. It was now pushed on with vigour; the Mongols at length assaulted the town, fired its buildings with naptha, and after seven days of desperate street-fighting captured it. This was probably in December, 1220. They sent the artisans and skilled workmen into Tartary, set aside the young women and children as slaves, and then made a general massacre of the rest of the inhabitants. They destroyed the city, and then submerged it by opening the dykes of the Oxus. The ruins are probably those now known as Old Urgendj.

Raschid says that over 100,000 artisans and craftsmen were sent into Mongolia, the rest of the inhabitants were divided among the conquerors, and so numerous were they that twenty-four Mussulmans fell to the lot of each Mongol. The soldiers, as usual, were put to death. After the capture of Urgendj the Mongols joined Jingis before Talikhan. That obstinate fortress resisted the besiegers for nearly seven months. The Mongols freely used their prisoners in the first ranks of the assaulting force, and raised a great mound of earth on a wooden platform, on which they planted their siege artillery. The place at length fell. Some of the cavalry escaped to the mountains ; of the rest of the inhabitants not a soul escaped slaughter. The town itself was razed to the ground.

After the death of Muhammed the Mongols adopted a scientific strategy to break down the power of his sons. As I have said, one army under the sons of Genghis marched upon Urgendj, or Khuarezm, the capital of their dominions, it gave its name to the empire of Khuarezm, of which they were the rulers. Other Mongol troops, under Subutai and Chepé, formed a ring round the southern edge of the desert. A third force, com­manded by Tului, advanced into Khorasan, whose cities had been sub­missive enough to the Mongols when in pursuit of the Sultan Muhammed, as we have already related. Khorasan was then one of the richest and most prosperous regions on the earth’s surface; its towns were very thickly inhabited, and it was the first and most powerful province of Persia. The Mongol invasion altered all this, and the fearful ravage and destruction then committed is almost incredible. It was to capture the heir of Muhammed, the Sultan Jelal-ud-din, that Tului set out on his terrible journey. He marched at the head of 70,000 men. This was in the autumn of 1220. He sent on an advance guard under Tugachar Noyan, his brother-in-law. As this approached Nessa, one of its divisions was assailed by a shower of arrows from the walls, and its leader, Balgush, was killed. To avenge his death the Mongols attacked the town.

The siege has been told by one of its contemporary chieftains, Muhammed of Nessa. After fifteen days’ pounding from twenty catapults, which were served by prisoners, a breach was made, the walls were stormed, the inhabitants ordered to evacuate the city, they were then told to lie down side by side, and were tied together with cords, then the Mongols destroyed the whole, men, women, and children, with showers of arrows. This horrible hecatomb destroyed 70,000 people. The historian Muhammed, with many fugitives, had taken refuge in the impregnable fort of Kharender. When the Mongols saw they could not take it they consented to retire on the payment of 10,000 cotton garments. According to their custom, they massacred the two old men who had volunteered on the dangerous errand of carrying this booty to their camp. They then, says Muhammed of Nessa, spread over Khorasan. When they arrived in a district they assembled the peasants, and marched them off to the town they meant to attack, to employ them upon the siege works. The terror and desolation were so general that the captive was deemed luckier than he who lived at home. The chieftains also were obliged to assist with their retainers in the siege of the towns. Those who refused were attacked in their castles, and with their clients were put to the sword.

From Nessa Tugachar advanced to Nishapoor. This was in November, 1220. On the third day of the siege, however, he was killed by an arrow shot from the ramparts. The general who succeeded him deeming his army too weak to capture the city, raised the siege and divided his army into two sections. One laid siege to and captured Sebzevar, whose inhabitants to the number of 70,000 were destroyed. The other overran the district of Thus or Toos, and captured the strongholds there. Inter alia the forts of Kar and Nokan. The inhabitants were pitilessly slaughtered. This body of Mongols now seems to have joined Subutai and Chepé Noyan.

Meanwhile Tului was advancing with the main army. He successively occupied Andekuh and Serukhs and proceeded to attack Meru Shahjan, i.e., Meru the king of the world, one of the four chief cities of Khorasan, and one of the oldest cities in the world. It had been the capital of the great Seljuk Sultans Melikshah and Sanjar, and was very rich and populous. It was situated on the banks of the Meri el rond, also called the Murjab. It was at this time troubled by internal dissension, and by the attacks of neighbouring Turkomans. The Mongols first attacked and destroyed or dispersed the Turkomans who camped outside the city. The siege commenced on the twenty-fifth of February, 1221. The governor of the town was Mojir-ul-mulk. After attempting two unsuccessful sorties he sent a venerable imam as an envoy to the Mongol camp. He returned with such fair promises that the governor himself repaired to the camp, and was loaded with presents; he was asked to send for his chief relations and friends; when these were fairly in his power, Tului ordered them all, including the governor, to be killed. The Mongols then entered the town, the inhabitants were ordered to evacuate it with their treasures; the mournful procession, we are told, took four days to defile out. The Mongol prince was seated on a golden throne in the midst of the plain, and ordered the principal military chiefs to be decapitated before the people. The rest of the captives were dis­tributed among the army, and a general and frightful massacre ensued; only 400 artisans and a certain number of young people were reserved as slaves. The author of the Jhankushai says that the Seyid Yzz-ud-din, a man renowned for his virtues and piety, assisted by many people, were thirteen days in counting the corpses, which numbered 1,300,000. Ibn al Ethir says that 700,000 corpses were counted. The town was sacked, the mausoleum of the Sultan Sanjar was rifled and then burnt, and the walls and citadel of Meru levelled with the ground.

The ferocity of the massacre can only be appreciated by its mere afterthought, 5,000 poor wretches had escaped in holes and corners of the city. They some time afterwards ventured out and were put to the sword by the detachments sent to recruit Tului’s army. Tului next advanced upon Nishapoor, the ancient capital of Khorasan. Its name in Persian means the city of Sapor. It is situated twelve days’ journey from Meru. It had been twice destroyed in less than a century; in 1153 by the Oghuz Turks, who had revolted against the Sultan Sanjar, and in 1208 by an earthquake. Its inhabitants had not spared the various bodies of Mongol troops that came their way, and they now prepared a vigorous defence. Their ramparts were armed with 3,000 ballisters to shoot javelins with and 500 catapults. Tului, who was exasperated by the death of Tugachar Gurgan, his brother-in-law, who had been killed by an arrow from the ramparts while laying siege to the town the previous year, collected a great siege train, 3,000 ballisters, 300 catapults, 700 machines for throwing naptha (? Greek fire), 4,000 ladders, and 2,500 loads of stones, and he proceeded to lay waste all the province of which Nishapoor was the capital. The inhabit­ants began to grow frightened, and sent an embassy of imams and notables, having at their head the chief judge of Khorasan, to offer to surrender the city, and to pay an annual tribute. Tului refused all terms, and ordered the assault; after two days’ cannonade the walls were pierced with seventy breaches, and the Mongols rushed in on every side; a terrible combat ensued in the streets, the widow of Tugachar, daughter of Genghis, at the head of 10,000 men leading the avenging force; the carnage lasted four days. To prevent the living hiding beneath the dead, Tului ordered every head to be cut off, and separate heaps to be made of men’s, women’s, and children’s heads. The destruction of the city occupied fifteen days; it was razed to the ground, and its site was sown with barley, only 400 artisans escaped, and they were transported into the north. According to Mirkhond 1,747,000 men lost their lives in this massacre. The capture of Nishapoor took place in April, 1221, two months after the death of the Sultan Muhammed. Four or five years later the Sultan Jelal-ud-din, who had recovered possession of Persia, farmed out the right to seek for treasure among the ruins of Nishapoor for 30,000 dinars a year, and as much as this sum was sometimes recovered in one day.

Tului now marched upon Herat, situated five days’ journey south-east of Nishapoor, a beautiful city surrounded with villages and gardens. On his way thither a detachment of his forces destroyed, near the town of Thus, the tomb of the Kaliph Harun el Raschid, and that of Ali el Razi, a descendant of the Kaliph Ali, for whom the Persian Mahometans or Shias had an especial veneration. Another detachment ravaged Kuhustan. At length Tului appeared before Herat. After eight days’ attack and the death of its governor, it offered to capitulate. Tului promised to spare the lives of its inhabitants if they surrendered immediately, and he was so far honest on this occasion that he contented himself with destroying only 12,000 men, the dependents and soldiers of the Sultan Jelal-ud-din. He appointed a Mahometan prefect and a Mongol governor to the town, and eight days later received orders to join his father at Talikhfin.

The effects of such a devastation of a whole province cannot be properly estimated in these latitudes. In Khorasan the desert has ever been encroaching more or less on the cultivated land, and it is only by the persistent labour of many hands that it is held back at many points, and when these hands are destroyed by the hundred thousand, the ruin must become deplorable.

When the Mongols were overrunning Khorasan a small tribe of Turkomans called Kayi Kankali fled and took refuge in Asia Minor; they became the nucleus of the Ottoman Turks.

Jelal-ud-din, after his flight from Urgendj, had reached Ghazni in safety. There his partisans hastened to meet him. His father-in-law, Khan Melik, the late governor of Meru, brought him 40,000 horsemen, probably Kankalis; Seif-ud- din Agruk, a Turkoman chief, brought his Turkomans and Kalladjes (the latter a mixed race of Arabs and Turko­mans who wandered between the Indus and Ganges); the governor of Kabul and Aazam Melik brought their forces; and thus Jelal-ud-din found himself at the head of from 60,000 to 70,000. When Genghis, who had captured Talikhan and summered his cavalry in the Kunduz mountains around it, heard of this he set out for Bamian, in the Hindu Kush, but he found it a more difficult place to capture than he expected. The inhabitants had laid waste the country for four or five miles round, and also removed the stones from its neighbourhood, so that the Mongols might have no missiles. As it was likely that he would be delayed there, he sent on a contingent of 30,000 men, under Siki Kutuktu and four other generals, to attack the young Sultan, who was encamped with his troops at Peruan or Birwan, one day’s march from Ghazni. A fierce and well-contested battle was fought for two days between the rival forces, when the Mongols at length gave way and fled, and most of them were killed in the broken ground that hindered their retreat. They were always great at ruses, and on this occasion are said to have stuffed manikins made of felt with straw and put them on horseback, to increase the apparent strength of their army. Genghis Khan, like all great commanders, was very lenient to his beaten generals. He knew too well the fickleness of fortune in war, and he seems to have contented himself on this occasion with a homily on the danger of officers who were intoxicated with victory growing careless.

The Sultan was prevented from improving his victory by the quarrels of his subordinates. Amin Melik and Seif-ud-din Agruk disputed about an Arab horse, part of the captured booty, and the former struck the latter on the head with a whip, and as he could not get redress, he retired with 20,000 to 30,000 Kankalis into Baluchistan. Amin Melik shortly after also left him, and retired to Herat.tMeanwhile Genghis had pressed the siege of Bamian and had captured it. Moatugan, son of Jagatai, and one of his favourite grandsons, perished during the siege, and a terrible vengeance was extorted. Every living creature, including animals and plants as well as human beings, was destroyed, a heap of slain was piled up like a mountain; and the site of the desolated town was renamed Mobalig, the city of woe. The mother of Moatugan especially distinguished herself by her ferocity. It remained a desert for 100 years. Having captured Bamian, Genghis pressed on to retrieve the disaster which had overtaken his forces near Ghazni. In going over the battlefield, he pointed out to his officers what he considered to be the mistakes in the conduct of the unfortunate battle. He advanced rapidly, and his troops for two days had not time to cook food. He arrived at Ghazni fifteen days after the Sultan had left it, and having left a governor there he marched on towards the Indus. Jelal-ud-din had not yet crossed the river; his little army was surrounded by the Mongols, whose forces were disposed in semicircles round it, having their wings resting on the river, which thus formed a chord. The fighting was desperate, but the Turks were everywhere beaten. The Sultan made a last desperate charge, which was unavailing; he then mounted a fresh horse, and having taken off his cuirass, he jumped with it into the river, which flowed twenty feet below, and with his shield on his back and his standard in his hand he thus swam across. Genghis Khan could not help admiring the deed from the banks, and pointed it out to his sons for an example. Muhammed of Nessa tells us that Jelal-ud-din kept his faithful charger till the taking of Tiflis in 1226 without mounting him, in remembrance of his services on this occasion.

This struggle took place in the month Redsheb of the year 618 of the Hegira, in August or September, 1221. The Sultan’s harem fell into the hands of the Mongols, who killed all his sons. He had cast much gold and treasure into the river, and a portion of it was recovered by means of divers.

Jelal-ud-din reached the opposite bank of the Indus in safety. There he was joined by the feeble debris of his army (chiefly Khuarazmiens) which had been able to cross the river. He made a raid into the country for arms and clothes, defeated an Indian prince, and on the news that the Mongols were still pursuing, he retired towards Delhi. Genghis sent his two generals Béla and Durbai in pursuit; they proceeded to invest Multan, but as it held out bravely, and they were afraid of the terrible summer weather there, they retired again to Ghazni, after ravaging the provinces of Multan, Lahore, Peshawar, and Melikpur.

Genghis now determined to retire towards the north along the banks of the Indus, but in order that the Sultan Jelal-ud-din might find no strong­hold he despatched his son Ogotai to destroy Ghazni. According to Mongol habit, the inhabitants were ordered to leave the city, and were then murdered.

While Genghis retired northwards his son Jagatai made a raid into Kerman in pursuit of Rokn-ud-din, a brother of Jelal-ud-din. He advanced as far as Tez, on the borders of the Indian Ocean, passed through Baluchistan, where he wintered, and where he also lost a large number of his soldiers, and returned by the mountain land of the Afghans, were he was joined by Béla Noyan, who had been sent across the Indus, as I have mentioned. Having made this hazardous and difficult excursion, he rejoined his father in the early part of 1222. Of the vast dominions of the Khuarezm Shahs the only portion that had not felt the pressure of the Mongol heel was that comprised in the provinces of Fars, Luristan, Kuhistan, and Kurdistan.

I have yet to describe one of the most savage and terrible acts of the invaders.

When the news of Jelal-ud-din’s victory over the Mongol Siki Kutuktu reached Herat it rebelled and appointed its own governor. Jingis blamed Tului for not having swept out its inhabitants when he captured it. He sent his general Ilshidai Noyan with 80,000 men against it, who blockaded it on all sides. The defence was kept up with spirit, and the besiegers suffered great loss. But, as usual, dissensions broke out in the garrison, and after a siege of a little more than six months Herat was captured.

For a whole week the Mongols ceased not to kill, burn, and destroy, and it is said that 1,600,000 people were killed; the place was entirely depopulated and made desert. The Mongols then retired. Soon after they sent back a body of 2,000 to seek out and destroy any of the inhabit­ants who had escaped the former massacre. Over 2,000 were thus dis­covered and put to death. After the Mongols had fairly retreated, forty persons assembled in the great mosque—the miserable remnants of its once teeming population. Of the celebrated men who had formerly lived at Herat only one survived, namely, Khalib Mulawa Scheref-ud-din.

Meru had been partially reoccupied, and had received a garrison com­manded by an officer of Jelal-ud-din. This was enough to bring down upon it the vengeance of the Mongols; a detachment was sent against it, who searched its corners for forty days to find victims, and slaughtered them mercilessly. Some of the inhabitants hid away in the ruins; the barbarous general ordered the muezzin to be sounded, and as each Mussalman emerged to go to prayer he was killed; only a few individuals remained among the ruins, and Meru continued to be a mere collection of debris until the day of Shah Rukh, the son of Timur, who had it rebuilt

Genghis Khan did not stay long near the Indus, he was afraid the deadly summer heats might destroy his army. He would seem also to have been nervous about a revolt near his home land, viz., in Tangut or Hia. He retired to Peruan, where he spent the summer of 1222; there he began his administrative measures by appointing civil governors (Darugas) to the various conquered towns; he wintered about the sources of the Indus, where an epidemic attacked his army. He now determined to return home to Mongolia, and before setting out disencumbered his army of prisoners by a general massacre, whose ferocity may be judged of by the fact that in each tent there were, ten or twenty captives. Having crossed the mountains of Bamian, he passed the summer in the district of Bakalan, where he had sent his principal baggage. In the autumn he resumed his march, on passing Balkh he killed the miserable and starving wretches who had occupied its ruins; he then crossed the Oxus and advanced to Bokhara; there he summoned the Muhammedan doctors to explain to him their faith, of which he generally approved, except of the pilgrimage to Mecca, saying that the whole world is the house of God, and that prayers will reach Him wheresoever they rise. On his arrival at Samarkand he ordered the public prayers to be said in his name, as he had conquered the Sultan Muhammed. Before he crossed the Jaxartes he ordered the mother and other members of the family of Muhammed to wail a long farewell to Khuarezm, while the army defiled past.

The scene of desolation that must have presented itself in the northern borderland of Persia at this time is terrible. From the banks of the Oxus to Asterabad every town of any importance was reduced to ruins, and its inhabitants slaughtered. Von Hammer has extracted two pathetic passages from two of the lucky authors who escaped the general slaughter, namely, the celebrated mystic Sheikh Nedshmeddin Daye and the geo­grapher Jakut, which describe with all the pathos of the Persian language the desert created by the Mongols.

Juji, the eldest son of Jingis, had never forgiven his brother Jagatai their quarrel before Khuarezm, which led to him, the eldest son, being supplanted as commander by his younger brother Ogotai. He had nursed his rage in the deserts of Kipchak. Genghis ordered him to join him at a place called Kelan Bashi, and to drive before him a grand battue of game, that he might enjoy his favourite sport of hunting. He did not go, but his troops formed a grand circle, according to the Mongol custom, and enclosed a vast area of country, the circumference was gradually drawn in and the game, chiefly wild asses, driven towards the spot fixed upon by Genghis, where he sported to his heart’s content

About the same time Jagatai and Ogotai went to hunt Kukus and Karaguls (wild swans and antelopes), and sent their father a present of fifteen camel loads of the former. On the banks of the Imil he was met by two of his grandsons, afterwards very celebrated, namely, Kubilai and Khulagu, one eleven, and the other nine years old. They had killed their first game, and according to Mongol custom, Genghis pricked their middle fingers to mix some blood with their food and drink, a kind of baptism of the chase. Later on he gave his army a fête, in a place called Buka Suchiku, and reached his Ordu or home in the month of February, 1225.

On the way he was joined by his two generals Chepé and Subutai, who after their pursuit of the Sultan Muhammed had made a daring expedition into the west, which I must now describe.

We have traced their steps as far as the capture of Ilak, where the dowager Sultana and the Sultan’s harem were captured. Thence they marched against Rai, the ancient Rages, whose ruin-heaps still remain not far from Teheran. There they found the inhabitants engaged in one of those religious feuds which disintegrate Muhammedan society so seriously. Among the Muhammedans there are four orthodox rites:—1, That of the Imam Abu Hanefi; 2, That of Ibn Hanbal; 3, That of Shafei; and 4, That of Melek, and they are divided chiefly in regard to the inter­pretation of the Koran. At this time the Abu Hanefi and the Shafei sects at Rai were engaged in a great feud. With abominable treachery, the Kadhi of the town, who was a Shafeit, had two of the gates opened, the Mongols were let in and let loose upon the rival sect, who constituted one-half of the inhabitants, and who now perished miserably. The Mongols then turned on the traitors, arguing plausibly that they could not count on the fidelity of those who thus deceived their own brothers. The same feud led to the same result at Kum, some distance south of Rai. This was cap­tured by Chepé, who had separated from his companion, and afterwards continued the bloody raid upon the towns of Irak, Dinawar, Sawa, Holwa Nehawend, and the far-famed capital of the ancient Medes Ecbatana. Meanwhile Subutai captured Kazvin, and then advanced, plundering, through the province of Dilem upon Azerbaijan, which, together with Arran, were then ruled by the Atabeg Uzbeg, an old man, and much addicted to wine; he bought off the Mongols by a present of silver, rich garments, horses, &c.

The Mongols then evacuated Azerbaijan, and wintered in the rich plains of Mogan on the shores of the Caspian. In the spring of the following year they advanced into Georgia. Their advance guard was formed of Turkish and Kurdish auxiliaries, whom they readily enlisted in a campaign against the Christian Georgians. They advanced as far as Tiflis, ravaging everywhere, and ending by severely defeating the Georgian army. They then levied a second contribution upon Tebriz, and afterwards attacked the town of Meraga. Here, as elsewhere, they placed their captives in the front rank of the attacking party, and com­pelled them to bear the brunt of the assault. So stupified had the inhabitants of Persia become by the Mongol successes, that we are told that in Meraga one Mongol entering a street where there were 100 individuals, proceeded to kill them all without any resistance. This was in March, 1222.

The Mongols now advanced upon Hamadan, whose inhabitants had killed the governor they had placed there. Headed by the Fakih they made a brave resistance, but were at length beaten; the city was taken and burnt, and its inhabitants slaughtered.

The same fate awaited Serab and Bailekan, towns of Arran, while the courage of the inhabitants of Gunja, capital of that province, and of Tabriz, was so renowned that it preserved them from a worse fate than the pay­ment of heavy contributions. Georgia, which was then governed by Ruzudan, daughter of the celebrated Queen Thamar, was overrun and terribly ravaged. The Georgian accounts say that the Mongols advanced into the country with the cross at their head, in the guise of Christians. This tradition accords well with the ever-ready and versatile strategy of those conquerors. Having ravaged Georgia, they turned upon Shirvan, captured Shamaki, its capital, and then Derbend, all except the citadel where Raschid, the Shah of Shirvan, had taken refuge. He purchased his independence by furnishing the Mongols with guides in their march across the Caucasus.

They cut off the head of one of these pour encourager les autres, if they should prove treacherous; but, notwithstanding this, we are told they led them into the dangerous defiles of Daghestan, where they were hemmed in by a combined army of Lesghs, Circassians, and a section of Kipchaks or Comans. The latter were Turkish nomades, who then lorded it over the steppes of south-eastern Russia. Caught as it were in a trap, the Mongols had recourse to their fox-like instincts. “We are Turks like yourselves,” they said to the Kipchaks, “and are you allied against your brethren with these strangers. Make peace with us, and we will give you gold and rich garments, as much as you list.” Seduced by these words, the Kipchaks deserted their allies, who were attacked and vanquished, and the towns of Tarku (the ancient Semender) and Terki, now Mosdok, were devastated.

Kotiak was then the chief Khan of the Kipchaks, Poloutsi, or Comans. He is called Kotian by the Russians, and Kothen or Kuthán by the Hungarians. The section of them in the Caucasus was commanded by Jurii Kontshakovitch, his brother, and Daniel Kotiakovitch, his son. The reward of their treachery was the usual Mongol one of being attacked and dispersed, the two princes just named being killed. The Mongols now continued their advance, plundered and partially destroyed Hadshi Tarkan, the modern Astrakhan on the Volga, and then proceeded against the main body of the Kipchaks. This was defeated. The invading army now divided into two sections, one pursued the Kipchaks to the Don, the other advanced by the sea of Azof, crossed the frozen Bosporus into the Crimea, where they plundered Sudak, the Genoese entrepôt in the Crimea, a rich and flourishing city; and then returning by way of Perekop, joined their brethren on the Don. The Kipchaks retired towards Kief and Chemigof to seek assistance from their former victims the Russians. Russia was then bounded on the south-east by the Oka; it was divided into several principalities, of which the chief at this time was that of Novgorod, whose Grand Duke Yaroslaf was more or less accepted as feudal lord over the rest.

But the most vigorous of the Russian princes, the one who stands out as a chief actor in the many civil wars that at this time desolated Russia, was Mitislaf, Prince of Gallicia, the son-in-law of the Coman Khan Kodak.

Kodak reported at Kief the advance of the terrible enemy. He pre­sented the Russian princes with camels, horses, buffaloes, and beautiful slaves, and told them the Mongols had taken their land, and that that of the Russians would suffer the same fate. The astonished princes asked who these strangers, hitherto unknown, were. Some called them Taurmains, others Petchénegs, others again Tartars. The more superstitious recounted how the barbarians, defeated by Gideon 1,200 years before Christ, were to reappear at the end of the world from their deserts and to conquer the whole earth. Mitislaf assembled the princes of Southern Russia at Kief, and it was determined unanimously to march against the invaders, much to the joy of the Comans, one of whose princes named Basti embraced Christianity. They assembled their forces at Zarub and the isle of the Varagians (places whose exact sites are unknown), on the Dnieper. There they received ten ambassadors from the Mongols, who spoke thus: “We understand that, seduced by the statements of the Comans, you are marching against us. But we have done nothing against the Russians, we have not taken your towns or villages, and our sole inten­tion is to punish the Comans our slaves. For a long time they have been enemies of the Russians. Side with us, therefore, and take a signal ven­geance upon these barbarians, and seize their wealth.” This message was accepted, says Karamzin, as a sign of weakness or as a ruse. Doubtless as the latter, for the recent treachery of the Mongols in the Caucasus must have been known. At all events, the ambassadors were barbarously murdered. Others were sent. “You have preferred the counsel of the Poloutsi, you have killed our envoys. Well, as you wish for war, you shall have it. We have done you no harm. God is impartial, He will decide our quarrel.”

The Russians assembled their forces in large numbers from Kief, Smolensk, Pultowa (?), Kursk, and Trubtchevsk. The Volhynians and Gallicians came in a thousand boats, on which they sailed down the Dniester to the sea, and then up the Dnieper to the island Chortiza, called the Isle of St. George by Constantine Porphyrogenitus. There also came some bodies of Poloutsi. The Russians numbered some 82,000 men. Mitislaf, with an advance guard of 10,000, impatient to meet the enemy, went on ahead, overtook a body of Mongols under Hamabek, and defeated them; their leader was found hidden in a ditch or hole among the kurgans or mounds on the steppe, and was beheaded. The main body now crossed the Dnieper, and after a nine days’ march (Abulghazi says ten and Raschid twelve) arrived at the river Kalka, the modem Kaleza, near Mariupol, in the government of Ekaterinoslaf. Mitislaf, who was wishful, probably, of monopolising the glory of the campaign, ventured to attack the main body of the Mongols with only one division. The Russians fought splendidly, but their feeble allies, the Poloutsi, broke away, and this caused the rest to retire also. The Mongols pursued them mercilessly. Six princes, a celebrated paladin named Alexander Popovitch, and seventy nobles perished. Of the contingent from Kief alone 10,000, says Karamzin, were left on the field of battle, while the faithless Poloutsi used the occasion for plundering their unfor­tunate allies. Mitislaf, to whom reverse was something new, seemed beside himself. Having crossed the Dnieper himself, he caused the boats to be destroyed in order to prevent pursuit. In the general route one leader held his ground, this was Mitislaf Romanovitch, Prince of Kief, who had intrenched himself on the Kalka, and resisted for three days the assault of the Mongols, they at length proposed to allow him to escape on paying a ransom; but in their usual fashion they broke faith, 2nd put him to death and slaughtered all his followers. They smothered three of the princes under planks and held a feast over their bodies.

The pursuit was again renewed. In vain the inhabitants of the towns and villages submitted, humbly going to their camp with their crosses, but no pity was shown. Their grim maxim, surely the most cynical of all ferocious war-creeds, was that “The vanquished can never be the friends of the victors, the death of the former is necessary therefore for the safety of the latter.” Luckily for the Russians their foes did not prolong their stay, but returned to meet their master. Before retiring they appear to have made a raid upon Great Bulgaria, on the Kama and Middle Volga, then the Hudson’s Bay territory of the Old World, which supplied furs, honey, wax, and fossil ivory to the luxurious courts, both Christian and Muhammedan, of the Eastern World. Gorged with booty, the two Mongol generals retired through the country of Saksin, along the river Aktuba, on whose banks Serai, the capital of the Golden Horde, was afterwards built. De Guignes says that on crossing the Volga they defeated the Kankalis there, and killed their Khan Hotose.

The victorious march of Chepé and Subutai must rank among the most wonderful military exploits related in history. A hundred years before Nusitagir Ili, the Gurkhan of Kara Khitai, is said to have performed the feat of marching round the Caspian, and it was certainly imitated 180 years later by Timurlenk; but in these two cases the conqueror was the master of a vast empire, and had not half a dozen expeditions on his hands at the same time, while Chepe and Subutai were but subordinate officers. The former did not long survive, but died shortly after his return home, with the reputation of a great warrior. The main cause of the Mongol success was doubtless the terror and panic they created by their unflinching vengeance whenever resisted.

It is marvellous how miserably decrepit the Turkish and other opponents of the Mongols had become. In 1224 a small body of 3,000 Mongols was able to once more destroy Rayi, to do the same to Kum and Kashan, and to overrun and pillage the great provinces of Irak Adjem and Azerbaijan, although opposed to much more numerous bodies of Khuarezmians and other Turks. The provinces of Khorasan and Irak Adjem were made desolate by these continued invasions; according to Juveni there did not remain one-thousandth part of their old inhabitants, and he added, that if nothing interfered with the growth of the population in these two provinces it would not between his day and the day of doom amount to one-tenth of what it did before the Mongol invasion. Their savage mode of warfare would excuse the tales that were told at Byzantium that they had dogs’ heads and lived on human flesh.

Genghis had hardly reached his Ordu before he had to deplore the death of his eldest son Juji. He left by his various wives and concubines about forty children, and his descendants, after ruling the Golden Horde for a long period, are still obeyed by the Kazaks, Uzbegs, Nogays, and other fragments of the Golden Horde.

While Genghis Khan was conquering the countries south of the Oxus, his great general Mukuli prosecuted the war in China. I have described how he set out and the troops he was entrusted with.

The former campaign of Genghis in China had only produced transient results, and the Mongols had to evacuate all their conquests there except the town of Chungtu and the northern edge of Pehchehli and Shan-si. The country was everywhere reoccupied and fortified by the Kin soldiers. During the Mongol attack, the Sung dynasty, which had its seat at Hangchau, the chief town of Chekiang, and ruled over China south of the river Hoei in Honan, refused to pay its customary tribute to the Kin emperors, and to punish this defection the latter, on the retreat of the Mongols, sent an army which ravaged the northern portion of the Sung territory. It was at this juncture, and in 1217, that Mukuli advanced against the Kin empire. He captured several towns of the province of Pehchehli. The next year he advanced into Shan-si, whose capital, Tai-tung-fu, he took after a vigorous attack, the governor committing suicide before the surrender. During the year 1218 he took the eight principal towns of Shan-si, and the following year completed the conquest of this great province, while a renegade Kin general subjected Pehchehli.

The Kin empire was being ground between two millstones, for while the Mongols were pressing it so hard in the north the troops of the Sung were harassing its southern frontier. Utubu, the Kin emperor, now sent to Mukuli asking for terms. The only terms the Mongol general would listen to were, that Utubu should content himself with the province of Honan, take the title of Prince of Honan, and resign the rest of his empire. To this he would not listen. So the Mongols continued their attack. They defeated a large army in the province of Shantung, a great number of the Kin soldiers being driven into the Yellow River. They then laid siege to Tungping, which resisted their arms for a long time, and only surrendered in June, 1221. Mukuli had now conquered nearly all the country north of the Yellow River, and he determined to invade Honan. In order to do so he required to capture several strong places in Shen-si, especially the famous pass of Tung kuan. In November, 1221, he accordingly crossed the Yellow River, probably into the modem Ortus country, then subject to the empire of Hia or Tangut. He demanded a contingent of troops from the Tangut sovereign. These were sent to him, to the number of 50,000 men, and he then proceeded to overrun Shen-si, most of whose cities he captured during the year 1222. The following year Mukuli died in the midst of his successes; on his deathbed he is reported to have said: “For forty years have I made war and fought for my master in his great enterprises, and I was never defeated. My only regret is that I have not yet captured Nanking.” A few months after his death the Kin Emperor Utubu followed him to the grave.

The Chinese annals, translated by De Mailla, praise very highly the military qualities of Mukuli, with three other of his generals, named Bugurdshin, Berkul, and Tsilaku, he was styled Polipankuliu, which in their language, he says, means the four sages. The descendants of these four Mongols had command of the Imperial body guard. They were called the four Kie sie (i.e., the four intrepid ones). De Guignes suggests that it was probably the death of Mukuli that made Genghis return home, in order that he might superintend the organization of his eastern army.

Northern China had been ruined by fifteen years of war, and the Kins had entirely abandoned it and concentrated their forces on the south of the Yellow River to defend the defile and fortress of Tung-kuan, that commanded the road from Shen-si to Honan. Here were collected 200,000 men.

Meanwhile let us turn once more to the doings of Genghis.

He had been seven years away from his country, and when he returned he appointed his son Jagatai, and Batu the son of Juji to govern his western conquests. His other sons Ogotai and Tului returned with him as did also Subutai Behadur, Chepé, Kosmeli, Kuba, the princes Pitu and Watchen, Poyaoho, son of Alakush the Ongut chief, and the Idikut of the Uighurs. He now held a grand reception.

What a wonderful gathering that must have been. We are much impressed in reading the history of the middle ages, with the effect of the Crusades, which brought the parochial-minded chivalry of Western Europe into contact with the land of so much gorgeous romance as the East, and gave an impetus to thought and action, and an enlargement of view that had more than aught else to do perhaps with the social and mental revolution of the revival of learning. But what were the Crusades as an experience to the journey of Genghis and his troops? Born and accustomed only to the dreary steppe-lands of the Gobi desert, and its girdle of pine-covered mountains, their triumphant march led them through the very garden of Asia, among its most refined and cultured inhabitants, and through its most prosperous cities. Every step must have been a new chapter of romance, such as boys in England find in the Arabian Nights, and the vast caravans of treasure that they carried back with them must have been objects of intense wonder to the wives and daughters of the returning warriors, as the tales they told of their adventures must have seemed like the romances of ballad makers rather than the truthful experiences of ingenuous soldiers. Nor were the crowds of captives, chiefly artisans, a less important, if a somewhat less picturesque, element in the cavalcade. With them there went to the furthest East all the knowledge and craft possessed by the Muhammedans, and if we find the period of Mongol supremacy in China to be a period of revival in art and manufacture, a period of great literary energy, we must not forget what a number of names in the administration of that period are Persian and Turkish; and how the rubbing together of two widely different civilisations, which have crystallised apart, such as those of China and Persia, necessarily leads to a vigorous outburst of fresh ideas and discoveries. Being the most potent example of the law con­densed for us in the venerable proverb, that iron sharpeneth iron.

The King of Hia had latterly been coquetting with the Kin Emperor, his neighbour on the east, and had refused to send his son as a hostage. He is called Li te by the Chinese writers, and is probably the same person as the Shidurgho of Ssanang Setzen. Shidurgho is a Mongol word, meaning open, straightforward, and answering to the Thibetan Srong. He had succeeded his father Li-tsun-hien only two years before, in 1223.

The empire of Hia was then very populous and very powerful. It is dear from the elaborate preparations of Jingis, and also from the traditions preserved by Ssanang Setzen, that he looked upon this his last serious campaign as a very important one. Hia, with Thibet, were the especial homelands of Northern Buddhism, and had a quasi-sacred and mysterious surrounding to the Mongols, which is curiously reflected in the tales that Ssanang Setzen has preserved. Shidurgho’s wife was a great beauty, and her fame had reached the ears of the Mongol Khan, who seems to have coveted her. He also resented the fact that the King of Hia had failed to send his son as a hostage, and he now prepared to attack him.

Ssanang Setzen tells us Shidurgho had a brown-coloured dog with a black muzzle which could prophecy. When war was impending it used to howl; when, on the contrary, peace was in store then it barked. Now that Genghis returned home the dog began to howl, his master in fancied security concluded that the beast was growing old and had lost its old power. I have said that the King of Hia was very powerful.

He could muster, according to the western writers, 500,000 men, splendidly accoutred, and consisting of Chinese, Turks, Thibetans, &c. Genghis had 180,000 men, which he divided into several divisions. 40,000 he gave to his son Jagatai, 30,000 to Chep3 and Subutai, 20,000 Khuarezmians to Ilenku, 20,000 Indians to the Noyan Bela, 30,000 Jetes and Kipchaks to Bedr-ud-din, and 30,000 Khuarezmians to Danishmend. Ogotai remained with the reserve, and Tului went off to see his family. The above enumeration gives a good idea of the heterogeneous character of the later Mongol armies and the great mixture of races that the conquests of Genghis produced.

He first detached Subutai to subdue the wild Sifan tribes dependent upon Tangut, and De Mailla tells us that the tribes Kintcha-walo and the Sessali, which had hitherto been independent, were conquered. Genghis set out from his Ordu in the spring of 1225. Having crossed the Khang-hai-Khan chain, he first held a grand hunt about the sources of the rivers Onghin and Tuigol, which lose themselves in the sands and marshes of the Gobi desert.

The Saga-loving Ssanang Setzen mentions various omens that attended the Mongol hero’s last campaign. During this hunt Jingis one day observed: “In this district is a blue wolf (Burte shino) and a white hart, catch them and bring them alive to me. Here also is a black man on a blue-grey horse, do the same with him.” These were found and brought to him. He then addressed the man,“Who are you, and why are you here? ” “I am a friend of Shidurgho’s,” he said, “and he has sent me for information. My name is Katuraktchi Kara Budung, and in all Tangut there is none superior to me. I was captured unawares while I laid my black head down to rest, and while my blue horse Guun Bolod, a racer whom no creature that has feet can catch, was tethered to the ground by his four feet.” Genghis saw he was a brave man and spared his life, and said, “People say your master is a Kubilghan (a regenerate Buddha). Into what form can he convert himself?” The man answered, “In the morning he changes himself into a black-striped snake; at noon into a tawny-striped tiger; and at night into a little child, so that man cannot injure him.”

While Genghis marched with his army through the Mona Khan mountain, which Wolff says was situated on the road from the desert to Ninghia, north-west of the great bend in the Hoangho, he remarked: “This would be a capital rallying place for a broken, and a capital camping ground for a united and peaceable people. It is a beautiful grazing ground for roebucks, and a charming resting-place for an old man.” While there Genghis noticed an owl shrieking on a bough, and he told his brother Kassar to kill it. The latter shot, but the owl escaped; meanwhile a magpie came in the line of fire, and the arrow which was aimed at the owl brought it down. This was accepted as a bad omen, and Jingis was in a great rage, and had his brother chained and watched by four men. Then came the Orluk princes to him and said, “Master, the stains of the vile ought not to foul the purity of the good. The most deserving and distinguished often have the fate of the worthless. The fate of the ill-omened owl has overtaken the magpie: let thy brother go.” Genghis would have done so, but he had become jealous of him; a slave having slandered him by accusing him of intriguing with his wife Chilian.

He then attacked the empire of Hia, first assaulting the emporium of Akatshin, otherwise called Etsina. This he captured in February 1226. He then fell upon Suhchau and Kan chau, the latter was governed by Kia-ye-kie-liu, whose son Saha had been brought up at the court of Genghis. He had persuaded his father to deliver up the town, when the latter was suddenly attacked and murdered by some rebels who defended the place for some time. When it at length fell the lives of the inhabit­ants were spared on the intercession of Saha, and only his father’s murderers were put to death. In the autumn of the same year, 1226, he captured Si-liang-fu, Tsulu, and Holo, districts of the province of Liang-chau-fu, that long finger-like western prolongation of Shensi, which projects into the west between the country of Kokonoor and the desert. He then crossed the country of Shato to the nine fords of the Hoang-ho, captured Ing-li-sien, and overran the country to the Yellow River. The land was everywhere covered with bones, and only one or two individuals in every hundred escaped massacre.

De Mailla says that Li te, the King of Hia, now died with grief at seeing his country thus desolated by the Mongols, and was succeeded by his son, whose Chinese title was Li hien. The narrative of Ssanang Setzen only mentions one king, and calls him Shidurgho. Genghis Khan continued his advance. He captured Ling-chau, a town on the eastern bank of the Yellow River, not far from Ning-hia, the capital of Tangu,t to relieve this town a large army of Tangutans marched. It is to this occasion, apparently, that we must assign the bloody battle described by Raschid as having been fought on the ice where the Hoang-ho had over­flowed its banks, and where the number of slaughtered Tangutans amounted to 300,000!!! Three of the corpses stood on their heads, says Raschid, and among the Mongols it is well established that among every 100,000 dead men on the field of battle one body is to be found which stands on its head. This tremendous exaggeration of numbers is a proof of the slight authority of the Persian historians of the Mongols in the accounts they give of their campaigns on the Chinese borderland.

De Mailla merely says that the King of Hia entrusted all the forces he Could muster to his general Seuming-ling-kong, and told him to attack the Mongols, but that Jingis crossed the Hoang ho and beat him. The story of Raschid about the man standing on his head is explained by D’Ohsson, who says that when the Mongols slaughtered a large number of people, in order to mark the number of the slain, a census in which they gloried, they put a corpse on its head on some elevated point for every thousand killed, and that on the capture of Tiflis in 1221, seven such monuments signified the death of 7,000 individuals. The Tangutan army on this occasion did not probably reach 50,000 men. De Mailla says that after this battle Genghis went and encamped at Yen-chau-tchuen. Here he received the homage of Yao-lise, the widow of the late King of Liau-tung, who now acted as regent. She was received with distinction by Jingis, who himself offered her the cup to drink out of, and made a grand eulogium on the bravery of her eldest son Hiuessé, who had accompanied him in his western campaigns. On her entreaty he appointed him King of Liau-tung, and dismissed her with a costly present of nine Chinese prisoners, nine horses, nine silver bars, nine pieces of silk, and other rich gifts in parcels of nine, which was a sacred number among the Mongols.

Leaving some troops to watch the capital of Tangut, he captured Ki-shi-chau and Liu-tao-fu; then turning to the north-west he ruined Tchao-ho-chau and Sining. At the fifth moon, says De Mailla, Li-hien, the King of Hia, unable any longer to resist the Mongols, submitted to Genghis, who carried him away in chains to Mongolia. Gaubil says, on the contrary, that he was put to death by his own people before he reached the camp of Jingis. Thus ended another empire with a long history closely interwoven with that of China, now desolated and covered with ruins, it was appropriated by the very cormorant of conquest the Mongol Khan.

Genghis retired to summer his cattle in the mountains of Liupan, situated twenty li west of Ku-yuen-chau, a town of Shan-si, in latitude 36 north, and longitude 10 west of Peking. There he received as a present from the Kin emperor, a plateau full of fine pearls, which he distributed among those of his grandees who wore ear-rings, others had their ears pierced in order to share the prize, while many remained over for a general scramble. He was there also seized with a fatal disease. Of his different sons only Tului was with him. He died on the 18th of August, 1227, at the age of sixty-six. The Chinese and Persian historians are apparently agreed in making Genghis die a natural death. This is not the universal story, however. Marco Polo and the Syrian Abulfaragius say he was shot with an arrow and killed. They probably, as Colonel Yule suggests, confused his death with that of Mangu Khan some years later. Carpino says he was killed by lightning; Haiton, the Armenian, that he was drowned; but the Mongol historian Ssanang Setzen has the queerest story—a story which illustrates well the kind of Sagas in vogue among the Lamaists. He says :—

“When Shidurgo Khakan (the King of Hia) converted himself into a snake, Genghis appeared as Garudi, the king of the birds; and when the former was changed into a tiger, the latter became the king of the four-footed beasts, the lion; and, lastly, when the former acquired the form of a boy, the latter became Khormusda, the king of the Tegri or spirits, so that Shidurgo fell into the power of Genghis without any effort Then said the former to the latter:—If you kill me, it will bring evil upon you. If you forbear, it will prove fatal to your posterity? Genghis now tried to strike, but he found he could not hurt him. He thereupon said, ‘With a common weapon you cannot harm me, but between by boot soles there is a triple dagger, made of magnet, with which I may be killed’. With these words he offered him the weapon, saying, ‘Now you may kill me. If milk flows from the wound, it will be an evil token for you; if blood, then for your posterity. Let me also counsel you. If you make my wife Kurbeldshin Goa your own, probe her previous life diligently”. When Shidurgo was pierced in the neck with the dagger he died, and Jingis appropriated his wife and people.

 “Every one wondered at the beauty of Kurbeldshin Goa, but she said: “1 was formerly much prettier, but am now grimy with dust from your troops, when I have bathed in the river I shall renew my good looks”. As she went down to the Kara Muren to bathe, a bird from her father’s house hovered over her, and allowed itself to be caught. She spoke aloud, and said, “I am ashamed of bathing before all this company, let them begone. I will bathe alone”. When they had left she called out, “I intend to seek my death in the Kara Muren. Let my body be searched for up the stream, and not down” She then let the bird escape, and it flew home to tell her father.

“When she came out of the bath she had become much more beautiful. The following night, when Genghis Khan lay asleep, she bewitched him, upon which he became feeble and ill. She then arose, went down to the Kara Muren and drowned herself, whence the Kara Muren to this day is called Chatun Eke.

“When the bird related to her father, who was called Schang-dsa-wang-Ja, of the tribe of U, he went and looked for his daughter’s body. He found it not, but found only one of her pearl embroidered socks. Over this he raised a mound of earth, still called Temur Olcho. Schmidt remarks in a note that the upper Kara Muren is undoubtedly still called Chatun Muren, or the maiden’s river, by the Mongols, and that he had found the name in several writings.”

The whole story shows the mysterious atmosphere in which the Lamaist faith surrounds its votaries, and what a peculiar halo attaches to the memory of Genghis, who stands in Mongol legend much as Theseus and other demigods did in the traditionary poetry of Greece. To continue our story

“As he lay dying on his bed the old hero addressed Kiluken Behadur, who was beside him: Be you a faithful friend to my widowed Burte Judjin, and to my two orphan sons Ogotai and Tului, and be ever true to them without fear. The precious jadestone has no crust, and the polished dagger no dirt upon it. The body that is born is not immortal. It goes hence without home or resting-place. This keep in everlasting memory, the glory of an action is that it should be complete (whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might). Firm and unbending is the heart of the man who keeps his plighted word. Be not guided by the wishes of others, so will you gain the goodwill of many. With me it is clear that I must separate from you and go away. The words of the boy Khubilai are very weighty. You, all of you, note his words. He will some time occupy my throne, and he will, as I have done, secure you prosperity? ”

Such is the story as told by Ssanang Setzen. The western chroniclers make it out that Genghis collected his children and dependents about his bed and gave them serious counsel. He bade his children cling together; we are told he repeated to them the old parable of the bundle of sticks. In his case, however, arrows took the place of sticks. He added another fable not so well known in the west, namely, that of the snake with several heads. One night during an impending frost it set out to seek shelter in a hole, but on the way the heads began to quarrel and fight with one another, and the result was that it was frozen to death; not so the snake with one head and many tails, this hid everything everyway safely io the hole and was saved. The moral is the same as in the previous fable.

He appointed his brother Utshegin with a large force to prosecute the war in China, for which he drew out an elaborate plan. He divided his dominions among his sons: to Juji and his family were assigned the country from Kayalik and Khuarezm as far as the borders of Bulghar and Saksin, wherever the hoofs of Mongol horses had tramped; Jagatai received the country from the borders of the Uighur country as far as Bokharia; Ogotai had a special province north of this in the country of Imil and Soongaria; to Tului was assigned the home-country of the Mongols, the care of the Imperial hut and family, and the archives of the State; but he set Ogotai Khan over the whole, and counselled his brothers to obey him. If we are to credit some of the historians of Timurlenk he made his sons renew the pact with the family of Kadshuli Behadur, and seal it with their tamghas or seals. He bade Jagatai, who was known to be of a severe disposition, see that his will was carried out, and he lastly urged his people to exterminate the Tanguts and make no terms with them.

His body was secretly conveyed to Mongolia, and to prevent the news of his death spreading, its escort killed every one they met. They only published the news when the procession had reached the Great Ordu of the Khan at the sources of the Kerulon. The body was successively carried to the ordus of his various wives, where his many dependents were summoned from all parts to do it honour; some had to come a journey of three months. After these funeral rites, the coffin was carried to its burial-place. Raschid tells us that its escort killed all the travellers met with on the way, ordering them to go and serve their lord in the other world, and that forty noble and beautiful girls and richly caparisoned horses were also sent for his service into the land of peace. Mandeville thus describes a funeral of one of the Grand Khans:—“At the spot where the funeral occurs they erect a tent, in which they place the corpse on a wooden couch, and arrange before him a table delicately served; into this they drive a white horse richly caparisoned and with its saddle on. They then place the tent with its contents in a hollow and cover it over, so that no one can distinguish the place? This account reads very like the accounts given by Arab writers of the Norse funerals on the Volga in the tenth century.

Ssanang Setzen describes the body of Genghis, as removed to its native land, the whole host escorting it, and wailing as they went. Kiluken Behadur, of the Sunid tribe, one of the Khan’s old comrades, lifted up his voice and sang :—

Whilom thou didst stoop like a falcon; a rumbling wagon now trundles thee off,

O my King.

Hast thou in truth then forsaken thy wife and thy children, and the diet of thy people?

O my King.

Circling in pride like an eagle whilom thou didst lead us

O my King.

But now thou hast stumbled and fallen like an unbroken colt,

O my King.

For six-and-sixty years thou hast brought thy people peace and joy, and now dost thou leave them?

O my King.

To such a chaunt did the procession move towards the mountain Mona, already named. There the wheels of the wagon sank in the blue clay so that it stuck fast and refused to move on even when the strongest horses of the five banners were fastened to it. The people began to grow dejected, when the voice of Kiluken Behadur once more arose :—

“Thou lion of the celestial Tegri. Thou son of the Tegri. My own Lord Bogda, wilt thou leave thy whole people here in this quagmire. Thy wife so equally matched with thy noble birth; thy solidly grounded state; the authority of thy laws; thy much attached people; all are at stake. Thy once beloved wife; thy golden palace; thy state founded on right; the assembled clans of thy people; all are yonder far away. Thy birthland; the water in which thou wert wont to wash; thy subjects, the fruitful Mongol people; thy many officers, princes, and nobles. Deligun bulak, on the Onop, where thou wert born. They are yonder. Thy standard made from the black horse’s tail; thy drums, cymbals, trumpets, and fifes; thy golden house and all its rich contents; the meadows of the Kerulon, the very place where thou mountedst the throne as Khakan of the Arulad; all are yonder. Burte Judjin, the choice wife of thy early days; Borchatu Khan, thy fortunate land, and all thy people; Bogordshi and Mukuli, thy two trusty friends; thy consummate adminis­tration; all are yonder. Thy heavenly-born partner, Chulan Khatun; thy lutes and flutes, and other musical instruments; thy two charming wives, Jissu and Jissuken; thy golden palace cynosure of wonders; all are yonder. Hast thou, because the district of Kargina Khan is still warm, because so many of the Tanguts are vanquished, and because Kurbeldshin Khatun was beautiful, really left thy people, the Mongols, in this fix. If we may not serve as a shield to thy noble life, we would at least bear thy remains, which are fair as the noble jade stone, to their last home, to show them to thy wife Burte Judjin, and to satisfy the wishes of all thy people.”

At the close of this monody, which has such a peculiar local colour, we are told that the wagon once more began to move, and the pro­cession, amidst cries and words of mourning, at length reached its goal. There they raised a mound over the body, and built eight white houses as places of prayer and invocation. The resting-place of the Great Khan was called Yeke Utek, and it lay between the shadow side of the Altai Khan and the sunny side of the Kentei Khan.

Raschid names the place of his burial as Burkan Kaldun (God’s Hill) or Yekek Kuruk (the great sacred or Tabooed place); in another place he calls it Nuda Undur, near the river Selinga. Burkan Kaldun is often mentioned by Ssanang Setzen, and Pallas speaks of Burgin Galdat as the place where the Onon springs.

Marco Polo names the burial-place of Genghis as the mountain Altai, situated north-east of Karakorum; Gaubil, from Mongol sources, places it at a place called Han, situated 47.54 north latitude and 9 3 longitude west of Peking; according to D’Anville’s map there is a mountain Kenteyhan on this spot, where the Onon takes its rise. This is clearly the same mountain as the Khan oola of Pallas and Timkowsky, a lofty mountain near Urga, covered with a dense forest. It is still held sacred by the Mongols and guarded from access.

Erdmann says that Genghis was buried at the foot of a tree which he had noticed once while hunting, and had chosen as his burial-place. This tree was remarkable at the time, but had been overtaken in size by the rest of the wood, and become undistinguishable.

Many of his descendants were buried on the same mountain, in the midst of this forest, which was guarded by 1,000 men of the tribe Urian, exempted from military service. Rich perfumes were burnt without ceasing before the tablets of the princes. The place was only accessible to the four great ordus of Jingis.

Genghis had nearly 500 wives and concubines, among the latter were the most beautiful captives and the most beautiful girls in the different tribes, who were always set apart for the Khan and the princes; each captain presented the fairest in his company to his colonel, the colonel to his superior officer, &c., and thus the cream of the whole nation was sifted for the choice of the Khan.

Of the wives of Genghis, five held a superior rank, the first of all was Burta, who bore the Chinese title of Judjin, she was the daughter of Dai Noyan, chief of the tribe Kunkurat, and was the mother of Juji, Jagatai, Ogotai, Tului, and five daughters; of these daughters, Kudshin Bigi, the eldest, was betrothed to Sengun, son of Wang Khan, and afterwards married Huladei Gurgan, son of Butu Gurgan, of the Kurulats. Jidjegan, the second, married Turaldshi Gurgan, of the Urauts. The third, Alakai Bigi, married Jingui, of the Onguts. The fourth, Tumalun, Shengu Gurgan, of the Kunkurats. The fifth, Atalukan Jawer Sadshan, of the Olkonods. By his second wife, Chulan Khatun, he had a fifth son named Gulgan.

I have now described the career of the great conqueror, whose renown were bound by no oath, and however solemn their promise to the inhabit­ants who would surrender, it was broken, and a general massacre ensued. It was their policy to leave behind them no body of people, however submissive, who might inconvenience their communications. “They gloried,” says the chronicler Vincent, “in the slaughter of men; blood to them was spilt as freely as waler. They employed lies and deception to delude their victims, and then destroyed them.” They had no honour and no chivalry, a ruse to them was more creditable than an open fight. If a desperate enemy resisted bravely they would open their ranks to let him escape, until the disorder of retreat made the work of destruction easy. They generally attempted to surround their enemies, and as each man had several horses, could often weary them into defeat They commenced the attack with their bows and arrows, and only used their side arms to complete the victory. Their cavalry manoeuvred by signals, and was very skilfully handled : the coward and the plunderer were equally put to death.

In their expeditions the Mongols encamped to rest and recruit their horses for a few months every year. Having laid waste a wide circle of country round their camp, they then gave themselves up to excess and debauchery, waited upon by their young and beautiful captives, one of whom, according to Vincent, was chosen before his death by each warrior to be buried alive with him. As the hard and dangerous work was done by the prisoners and captives, the lordly Mongols easily kept up their strength in the most distant expeditions.

In time of peace Genghis counselled his soldiers to be quiet and gentle as calves, but in war to rush on their enemies like hungry falcons fall on their prey.

The following reads almost like the military counsel of Napoleon; in speaking of his generals he said: “There does not live a braver man than Yissutai, no march can fatigue him, he feels neither thirst nor hunger, and he thinks his soldiers ought to be like himself; this is why he is not fit to command. It is necessary that a general should not be insensible to either hunger or thirst, for he ought to be able to feel the sufferings of his army. His marches should be moderate, and he ought to feed well both his men and horses” “What is the greatest happiness in life?” he one day asked his generals. One answered for the rest: “To go a hunting on a spring morning mounted on a beautiful horse, carrying on your hand a good falcon and watching it seize its prey.” “No,” said Jingis, “the greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”

The chase Genghis held to be the school of war, and he advised his sons to spend the time of peace in hunting. The great Mongol winter hunt was more like a military expedition than anything else. Orders were given to the different tribes a month’s journey off to extend themselves and join on to one another, and thus enclose a huge ring; the whole under the orders of skilled generals, and divided into a left and right wing and centre; the game was driven into an enclosure of two or three leagues in circuit, made of felt hung on cords. The Khan first entered the ring with his wives and suite, and when he was tired of killing, retired to an emi­nence inside the cordon and watched the great chieftains hunt; the whole concluded by a general scramble of the commonalty. When only a few victims were left, the old men came before the Khan and begged that their lives might be spared to furnish more sport the next year; eight days were thus consumed in the general holiday.

Genghis organised a postal service on the grand routes, to facilitate travellers, couriers, and public officers in their travels; the horses, carriages, and food were supplied by the inhabitants, and the safety of the road was protected by severe police regulations. For the first time probably in the history of Asia it was possible to travel with perfect safety across the steppes of Turkestan.

By his code of laws death was awarded to the homicide, the cattle-­thief, the adulterer, and those who dealt in unnatural crimes. The same punishment fell upon those who for the third time lost the captives entrusted to their keeping, those who concealed and harboured fugitive slaves or lost goods, those who did not return, if they found them, the arms of any who had lost them in combat, those who employed witch­craft to harm others, those who intervened in a struggle between two champions. Small thefts were punished with the bastinado, and torture was freely used to force confession. In his code he preserved many curious superstitious notions that the popular creed had sanctified. Thus it was forbidden to make water in a stream or on ashes, to have props or legs to a house, a table, or a chair, to wash the hands in running water. It was forbidden to wash clothes, which were to be used till worn out; cooking and domestic vessels were not to be washed, and this custom still pre­vails, according to Pallas, among the Kalmuks, who always clean these articles with dried grass or a piece of felt Carpino tells us they would not touch fire with a knife, or take their food with the same implement out of a kettle, or strike with a hatchet near a fire. To break these rules was to bring misfortune, or to cause it to thunder, in the popular eyes, and no doubt, as D’Ohsson remarks, the origin of the prohibition was originally a fear of offending the elements. In killing an animal it must be laid on its back, an incision made in its belly, and the heart tom out or squeezed with the hand; this practice is still that of the Kalmuks, who attribute its introduction to Jingis Khan. Those who killed animals in the Mussalman way must themselves be killed. The Mongols were avaricious to the last degree, they only killed animals which were sick or wounded; their hands, the chroniclers Vincent and Carpino say, were always open to take and closed to give. They ate almost anything; rats or dogs, &c., were readily consumed. Jingis enjoined upon them all hospitality, and at their feasts it was not permitted to refuse anyone to join; the host must always taste the food before the guest (surely a chivalrous notion to have been born in the desert). He set his face strongly against the Mongol weakness of drunkenness: “If you cannot refrain, get drunk only three times a month” he said, “It would be better never to get drunk at all, but,” says the philosophic and ingenuous preacher of temperance, “who can abstain altogether?”

Genghis counselled his sons to tolerate all creeds, telling them that it mattered little to the Divinity how they honoured Him. He himself believed in a Supreme Being, but he worshipped the sun, and was like his compatriots, a Shamanist. He exempted from taxes the ministers of all religions, the poor, doctors, and other wise men. The princes of the blood addressed the Khan by his name, and in his orders, diplomas, &c, this name was unaccompanied by any honorary titles. His style was simple and free from the nauseous rotundity and imagery of the Persians. One of the secretaries of the Sultan Muhammed having entered his service, he ordered him one day to write to the refractory Prince of Mosul in these terms: “God has given me the empire of the world; those who submit and let my troops pass will save their lands, their families, and goods; the others, God knows what will happen, &c.” The secretary translated this into the fulsome phrases used by the Persians; when this was literally translated to Jingis he turned round in a rage and said: “You are a traitor, you have written this letter in such a manner that the Prince of Mosul will only be more stubborn and audacious,” and he put him to death.

The laws of Genghis were written down by his orders in the Mongol language and in the Uighur character, which he had caused the young Mongols to be taught. This code was called Ulang-Yassa. It, doubt­less, like many other celebrated codes which gained for their compilers the character of originators, embodied the gathered and matured wisdom and rules of life that prevailed among his people; and what he did was probably little more than to stamp with express authority the traditional and very ancient common-law code of the desert. Copies of it were preserved in the archives of his descendants, who consulted them in all difficult matters (no copy of it is apparently extant, but many of its clauses have been preserved by Raschid-ud-din, Alai-ud-din, in Macrizi’s “ Description of Egypt,” and by the chronicler Vincent). Genghis charged his son Jagatai, who had the character of severity, to carry out his laws; he foresaw, and it needed no very great instinct to see, what would happen in one or two generations. “My descendants,” he said, “will deck themselves in brocaded robes, will feed on rich meats, ride splendid horses, have beautiful wives, and they will not think of those to whom they owe these good things.”

If it be no small thing for any man to leave his footprint in the page of history, his must surely have had an uncommon power who stamped his mark so deeply and so lastingly on such a shifting, treacherous quag­mire as the history of Asia, whose descendants ruled a very large portion of it for so long, whose memory is still the theme of so many Sagas in the lonely yurts of the scattered robbers of Central Asia; and whose institutions, if they were really his, are still the best models for a nomadic people to be ruled by. It may be that he and his followers tramped over the fairest portions of the earth with the faggot and the sword in their hands, forestalling most terribly the day of doom, and crumbling into ruin many old civilisations. His creed was to sweep away all cities, as the haunts of slaves and of luxury, that his herds might freely feed upon grass whose green was free from dusty feet. It does make one hide one’s face in terror to read that from 1211 to 1223 18470,000 human beings perished in China and Tangut alone at the hands of Genghis and his followers: a fearful hecatomb, which haunts the memory until one forgets the other features of the story. Yet although a tabula rasa was created, a fresh story was also writ upon the page. Nor must we forget, whatever creed we hold to, that whether it be by pestilence or famine, or by the hands of such as Sesostris, Sennacherib, Darius, Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Timur, Bonaparte, and their ilk, the scourges of God seem inevitably to recur at intervals to purge the world of the diseased and the decaying, the weak and the false, the worn out and the biased, the fool and the knave.

That as surely as the winter scatters the leaves, so surely does a time come in human history when the fruits of human toil, the fairest it may be that can be compassed by man, must be trodden under. The pelicans and the storks that watch over the ruins of Mesopotamia, and a hundred other such sites, are witnesses of our conclusion; grim witnesses, too, of the truth that “blood and iron” is neither a new creed nor one invented by Genghis Khan. It may be that in his hands we see the steel more bright and keen; that he did not hide his work under the fantastic guise that he was a champion of freedom, or of some other fine sounding pretence. It is natural we should revolt against being worshippers of the wolfish natures that are sent at times to fill the charnel-house of history with bones; but if we mete equal justice to the breed, and measure them not so much by the ruin they created as by what they placed in the void. If we measure them by their opportunities their antecedents, and their aims, and not by the feeble aesthetic standard some poets have created by which to discriminate between the destroyers of mankind, we shall find Genghis Khan towering head and shoulders above most of the rest. While as to his thirst for blood, and the greedy draughts he took of it, we must wait for an excuse till the great day comes when men shall know why suffering and misery are permitted at all, and why it has been allowed to so many men, who have been styled great by their followers, to put their heels upon the accommodating neck of humanity, as if it had been created to become their victim.

Note I.—The Nine Orloks.—These celebrated chieftains who accompanied the fortunes of Genghis from his early days to his days of prosperity, and whose military talent is as remarkable as that of the bevy of marshals who were the proteges of Napoleon I, are thus enumerated :

I.     Kuluk Bughurdshi, of the tribe Arulad; he was the captain over the rest. At first he was a serving man, then rose to be Gesiktu, i.e., captain of the advanced guard of the archers; then Emir Gesik, commander of that body; then Emir Tuman, i.e., chief of 10,000 men ; and lastly, Kiwang, or Grand Prince. He styled himself the unerring, and said of himself: “When the cry of the raven is false and misleading, then am I not taken in and led astray; when the grave-bird croaks unmeaningly, my head and brain remains clear; when the dust rises from the earth, or the mist comes down from heaven, I don’t lose my way. Thence men call me the unerring.” 2. Bughurul, of the tribe of Uguskin. 3. Shurkan Shireh, the Torghon Shaara of Schmidt, of the tribe Suldus; he saved his master’s life when the latter escaped from the Taidshuts, 4. Mukuli Behadur, the conqueror of Northern China. He is called Go Mukuli by Schmidt, and was of the Jelair tribe. 5. Chepé, the pursuer of Muhammed, the Dschebe or Sebe of Schmidt. He belonged to the Yissud tribe. 6. Subutai Behadur, the companion of Chepé. He is the Tso Mergen of Schmidt, who says he belonged to the Jurjid tribe. 7. Chelme Oho, i.e., the bold robber, the companion of Genghis’s first expedition, whose two sons were the leaders of the right and left wings of the body guard. He belonged to the Uriangkuts. 8. Shiki Kuttu, of the Tartar tribe. And lastly, Kara Kiragho, of the Uirat tribe.

Note 2.—The army of the Mongols consisted of very heterogeneous elements; each conquered nation supplied its contingent, and the Mongol element proper in the army was probably largely exceeded in numbers by the Turkish one. The former, however, was treated as the mainstay of the nation, and in the distribution of his forces among his relatives, by Genghis, this alone is named. The great bulk of it, with the Mongol nation and the Mongol country, was left to Tului, the hearth-child. The fol­lowing tabular statement contains an enumeration and account of the distribution of the Mongol army :—

I. The Imperial life guards, called the great Ordu; this was 1,000 men strong, and was commanded by Utsheghan, a Tangut by nation, and an adopted son of Genghis. The various couriers, runners, messengers &c., belonged to this body 1,000

2. The Centre, under Tului                                                         101,000

3. The Right Wing, under Bughurdshi Noyan                         47,000

4. The Left Wing, under Mukuli Guyaneg                                 52,000

5. The Contingent of Juji Khan                                                    4,000

6. The Contingent of Jagatai Khan                                              4,000

7. The Contingent of Ogotai Khan                                                4,000

8. The Contingent of Gulgan                                                           4,000

9. The Contingent of Utsuken Noyan                                           5,000

10. The Contingent of the sons of Juji Kassar                            1,000

11. The Contingent of Ildshidai Noyan                                          3,000

12. The Contingent of the Empress Ulun Egeh............             3,000

13. Supernumeraries                                                                             1,000

                                                                                                           230,000  

Note 3.—I have followed Ssanang Setzen in calling the first wife of Genghis, Burte Judshin. I am reminded by Colonel Yule that other authorities call her Burte Fudshin, and I may add that D’Ohsson expressly says that Fudshin (or Fou gin, as he writes it) was the title given by the Chinese Emperors to those of their wives who ranked immediately after the Empress.

HISTORY OF THE MONGOLS. CHAPTER IV. OGOTAI AND HIS DESCENDANTS