Mongol Empire

“ The order to slay the Tangut sovereign and the people of the city was carried out strictly, and the kingdom of Tangut was added to the Mongol Empire.
“Since the beginning of time,” writes the Chinese historian, “no barbarous people have ever been so mighty as the Mongols are at present. They destroy empires as a man plucks out herbs by the roots, such is the power in their possession. Why does Heaven let them have it?”
The remains of the great Khan were taken back to his birthplace. Lest his death might be known the troops who conducted them slew every person whom they met as they traveled. ”

“ We also see the rising of mighty temples and monumental buildings, but this again only contributed to the denudation of the country. The Mongol epoch was thus one of continual and rapid [Pg 238] impoverishment in China, simultaneously with a great display of magnificence. The enthusiastic descriptions of the Mongol empire in China offered by travellers from the Near East or from Europe, such as Marco Polo, give an entirely false picture: as foreigners they had a privileged position, living in the cities and seeing nothing of the situation of the general population. ”

“ The amount of yearly tribute was settled for the first time since the Mongol conquest. In the west it was a tax on every male person of legal age. In China the system of the [144] country was chosen and the tribute was levied on houses. Lands taken from the Kin dynasty were divided into ten provinces; in each of these was established a tribunal for assessment and collection of tribute. Chu tsai even proposed to the White Khan to use in governing his possessions the rules of Confucius. “The Empire has been conquered on horseback,” said the sage, “but no man can rule it from the saddle.” ”

“ These centuries were the Age of the Mongolian peoples. Nomadism from Central Asia dominated the known world. At the crest of this period there were rulers of Mongol or the kindred Turkish race and nomadic tradition in China, India, Persia, Egypt, North Africa, the Balkan Peninsula, Hungary, and Russia. The Ottoman Turk had even taken to the sea, and fought the Venetian upon his own Mediterranean{v2-140} waters. In 1529 the Turks besieged Vienna, and were defeated rather by the weather than by the defenders. The Habsburg empire of Charles V paid the Sultan tribute. ”

“ The richness of the pastures, and the abundance of water supplied by the larger rivers, and by the mountain streams that are found in every ravine, afford sustenance for unlimited herds and flocks. The first Huns had their head-quarters not far from Urga long before the Christian era. The site of the old Mongol capital of Kara Korum is about 160 miles from Urga in a south-west direction. Thence the Mongols issued forth to conquer Asia and Europe, and thither they returned, when driven out of China in 1368, to found the new empire of the Yuen of the north, under a Grand Khan of the Kalkas. ”

“ The monks have a patriarchal look, like the Chinese pictures of the saint Dharma. They live on vegetable diet and spend their whole time in religious contemplation.
On the ancient Mongol map given to the world by the late Dr. Bretschneider [33] Cashmere is placed outside the empire, whilst K'o-pu-li (Cabul) , K'o-tsi-ning (Ghazni) , and Badakshan are included in the middle empire of Jagatai, instead of in Hulagu's empire.
The Ming dynasty of native Chinese, which ejected the Mongols in 1368, had extensive relations with Tamerlane's empire, and also with India by sea. ”

“ In 1259 Mangu died, and in 1260—for it took the best part of a year for the Mongol leaders to gather from the extremities of this vast empire, from Hungary and Syria and Scind and China—Kublai was elected Great Khan. He was already deeply interested in Chinese affairs; he made his capital Pekin instead of Karakorum, and Persia, Syria, and Asia Minor became virtually independent under his brother Hulagu, while the hordes of Mongols in Russia and Asia next to Russia, and various smaller Mongol groups in Turkestan became also practically separate. ”

“ On learning what had been done, the Mongols at once hurried forward reinforcements and prepared for an immediate and vigorous assault on this final stronghold of the empire of China. The attack was made with the impetuous courage for which the Mongols had become noted, but the works were bravely held, and for two days the struggle was maintained without advantage to the assailants. On the third day the Mongol admiral resumed his attack, and a fiercely contested battle took place, ending in the Chinese fleet being thrown into confusion. ”

“ The first half of the fourteenth century, which witnessed the gradual decline of Mongol influence and power, was further marked by the birth of a humble individual destined to achieve a new departure in the history of the empire. ”

“ Mongols, a great Asiatic people having their original home on the plains E. of Lake Baikal, Siberia, who first rose into prominence under their ruler Genghis Khan in the 12th century; he, uniting the three branches of Mongols, commenced a career of conquest which made him master of all Central Asia; his sons divided his empire, and pursued his conquests; a Mongol emperor seized the throne of China in 1234, and from this branch sprang the great Kublai Khan, whose house ruled an immense territory 1294-1368. ”

“ In Asia and Eastern Europe scarcely a dog might bark without Mongol leave, from the borders of Poland and the Gulf 10of Scanderoon to the Amur and the Yellow Sea. The various Mongol Sovereignties in Asia and Eastern Europe.The vast empire which Chinghiz had conquered still owned a nominally supreme head in the Great Kaan, [2] but practically it was splitting up into several great monarchies under the descendants of the four sons of Chinghiz, Juji, Chaghatai, Okkodai, and Tuli; and wars on a vast scale were already brewing between them. ”

“ This Mongolian pride makes most Mongols, even those that try to be calm and well-balanced, to be pitied for their narrow-mindedness and petulance, in spite of all their other numerous good qualities. A Mongol has it in him to become a great leader like Genghis Khan ”

“ There is almost nothing of Mongolian manufacture,—just rugs and felt and saddles; and most of the work is done by the women. Nor does the Mongol till the soil; nothing is found growing near his yurt. Unlike the rice-eating people just across the Great Wall, his diet is almost wholly meat, and milk in some form or other,—cheese, curds, koumiss. The tea which he drinks in enormous quantities, so that even my "boy" opened his eyes, is brought by the Chinese traders.
The Mongol has great endurance; days in the saddle are nothing to him, and he sleeps as soundly on his camel as on the ground. ”

“ The Mongols are strangers to every kind of industry. Some felt carpets, some rudely tanned hides, a little needlework and embroidery, are exceptions not deserving of mention. On the other hand, they possess to perfection the qualities of a pastoral and nomad people. They have the senses of sight, hearing, and scent prodigiously developed. The Mongol is able to hear at a very long distance the trot of a horse, to distinguish the form of objects, and to detect the distant scent of flocks, and the smoke of an encampment. ”

“ It runs its way like a shuttle through all the broad lands of the earth, waving an eternal, unbreakable fabric. Time and again, in the past, the Mongol power has gone down before the gathered strength of other races, snatching at and taking the luring jewel of dominion. Time and again we returned to the attack; we shivered the fetters; we enslaved the enslavers. Time and again, in the future, the Mongol power shall go down before the gathered strength of other races, snatching at and taking the luring jewel of power. ”

“ But Toghon Timur by a hasty flight escaped from his enemies, and sought safety on the shores of the Dolon-nor in Mongolia. For a time the western provinces of China continued to hold out against the rebels, but with the flight of Toghon Timur the Mongol troops lost heart, and in 1368 the ex-Buddhist priest ascended the throne as the first sovereign of the Ming or “Bright” dynasty, under the title of Hung-wu.
Thus ended the sovereignty of the house of Jenghiz Khan in China, nor need we look far to find the cause of its fall. Brave and hardy the Mongols have always shown themselves to be ”

“ They are susceptible of the greatest enthusiasm, and at a word from their chiefs they would be ready to follow them to death or glory. A few years of fighting would render the Mongol hordes as formidable to a non-military nation like the Chinese, as they were in the days of the terrible Genghis Khan. In the present enfeebled condition of China an irruption of Mongols would be irresistible, and would sweep everything before it like a flood. The Chinese government are quite alive to such a possible contingency, and hence the care they take to conciliate the Mongols. ”

“ With or without government aid the Chinese are coming in. They get land from the Mongols very much, I imagine, as did the first English settlers in America, buying for a song what the owner does not know he is selling. And once established they are not easily dislodged, for they are good farmers, thrifty and untiring. In the end they will oust the Mongol from the best lands as sure as fate, unless Russia first ousts them, as apparently she is doing. ”

“ Mongolia extends for 1,500 miles along the northern frontier of China, and as its eastern border is coterminous with Manchuria, a few words regarding the Mongols may not be out of place in these notes. The race is said to come with the Manchus from a common Tartar stock, but, except in colour and features, there is little resemblance between the two races. The Mongol is essentially a nomad, hating towns and houses. He prefers to wander about the steppes, pitching his 'yourt,' or felt tent, wherever water and pasture are for the time most plentiful. ”

“ It is particularly remarkable that India beyond the Punjab was never invaded by the Mongols during this period, and that an army under the Sultan of Egypt completely defeated Ketboga, Hulagu’s general, in Palestine (1260) , and stopped them from entering Africa. By 1260 the impulse of Mongol conquest had already passed its zenith. Thereafter the Mongol story is one of division and decay.
The Mongol dynasty that Kublai Khan had founded in China, the Yuan dynasty, lasted from 1280 until 1368. ”

“ The Mongols often lost considerable time in breaking down these ramparts. But feebly held cities were rendered defenseless far more frequently through treason and bribery than mere weakness of their fortifications.
The goal of the dreadful Mongol Horde was the Uhri (Hungary) , then a rich and prosperous country inhabited by a race closely related to the Mongolian whom the great Jinghis Khan had, in an act of self-aggrandizement, ambitiously asked to surrender themselves. ”

“ At last the brave garrison made a great sally on foot and on horseback; the horsemen escaped to the mountains, but the foot forces were like wild beasts at bay; they fought till the enemy had slain every man of them. The Mongols then burst into the city; they spared no living soul in it and left not one stone on another.
While the Khan’s army was destroying Nusrat i kuh, Tului [122] returned to his father after wasting Khorassan, the richest and most beautiful part of the Empire. ”

“ If ye act with me faithfully, that same Heaven will grant a glorious triumph over China. Through this triumph the Mongols will win the greatest wealth and magnificence; their fame will never cease among nations.”
All were delighted, all praised their conquering ruler. They agreed with him then to send an envoy to the Altyn Khan (Golden Khan) 1 with the following message: “Of course it has come to thy knowledge that we, by Heaven’s favor, have been chosen from among all the Mongols to hold the reins of Empire and of guidance. The fame of our conquering host has gone forth, and is spreading. ”

“ CHAPTER V THE MONGOL CONQUEST OF CHINA While the Kins were absorbed in their contest with the Southern Chinese, they were oblivious of the growth of a new and formidable power on their own borders. The strength of the Mongols had acquired serious dimensions before the Kins realized that they would have to fight, not only for supremacy, but for their very existence. ”

“ In India, whose most striking history in modern ages is Mongol, nearly all populations save Aryans and Semites are classified with Mongols. In Persia where the dynasty is Mongol that race is preponderant in places and important throughout the whole kingdom, [2] though in a minority. In Asia Minor the Mongol is master, for the Turk is still sovereign, and will be till a great rearrangement is effected.
Five groups of Mongols have made themselves famous in Europe: the Huns with their mighty chief Attila, the Bulgars, the Magyars, the Turks or Osmanli, and the Mongol invaders of Russia. ”

“ Though the Mongol wave retired, as it seemed almost by an immediate act of Providence, when Europe lay at its feet, it had levelled or covered all political barriers from the frontier of Poland to the Yellow Sea, and when western Europe recovered from its alarm, Asia lay open, as never before or since, to the inspection of Christendom. Princes, envoys, priests—half-missionary, half-envoy—visited the court of the great khan in Mongolia; and besides these, the accidents of war, commerce or opportunity carried a variety of persons from various classes of human life into the depths of Asia. ”