GENGHIS KHAN

GENGHIS KHAN

 FOREWORD THE MYSTERY SEVEN

 hundred years ago a man almost conquered the earth. He made himself master of half the known world, and inspired mankind with a fear that lasted for generations. In the course of his life he was given many namesthe Mighty Manslayer, the Scourge of God, the Perfect Warrior, and the Master of Thrones and Crowns. He is better known to us as Genghis Khan. Unlike most rulers of men, he deserved all his titles. We moderns have been taught the musterroll of the great that begins with Alexander of Macedon, continues through the Caesars, and ends with Napoleon. Genghis Khan was a conqueror of more gigantic stature than the well-known actors of the European stage. Indeed it is difficult to measure him by ordinary standards. When he marched with his horde, it was over degrees of latitude and longitude instead of miles ; cities in his path were often obliterated, and rivers diverted from their courses ; deserts were peopled with the fleeing and dying, and when he had zx I4 GENHGIS KHAN appear to be the most brilliant of Europeans. But we cannot forget that he abandoned one ajmy to its fate in Egypt, and left the remnant of another in the snows of Russia, and finally strutted into the debacle of Waterloo. His empire fell about his ears, his Code was torn up and his son disinherited before his death. The whole celebrated affair smacks of the theatre and Napoleon himself of the play-actor. Of necessity we must turn to Alexander of Macedon, that reckless and victorious youth, to find a conquering genius the equal of Genghis Khan Alexander the god-like, marching with his phalanx toward the rising sun, bearing with him the blessing of Greek culture. Both died in the full tide of victory, and their names survive in the legends of Asia to-day. Only after death the measure of their achievements differs beyond comparison. Alexander's generals were soon fighting among themselves for the kingdoms from which his son was forced to flee. So utterly had Genghis Khan made himself master from Armenia to Korea, from Tibet to the Volga, that his son entered upon his heritage without protest, and his grandson Kubilai Khan still ruled half the world. This empire, conjured up out of nothing by a barbarian, has mystified historians. The most recent general history of his era compiled by learned persons in England admits that it is an inexplicable fact. A worthy savant pauses to wonder at " the fateful personality of Genghis Khan, which, at bottom, we can no more account for than the genius of Shakespeare. 11 Many things have contributed to keep the per- GENGHIS KHAN 15 sonality of Genghis Khan hidden from us. For one thing the Mongols could not write, or did not care to do so. In consequence the annals of his day exist only in the scattered writings of the Ugurs, the Chinese, the Persians and Armenians. Not until recently was the saga of the Mongol Ssanang Sctzen satisfactorily translated. So the most intelligent chroniclers of the great Mongol were his enemies a fact that must not be forgotten in judging him. They were men of an alien race. Moreover, like the Europeans of the thirteenth century, their conception of the world as it existed outside their own land was very hazy. They beheld the Mongol, emerging unheralded out of obscurity. They felt the terrible impact of the Mongol horde, and watched it pass over them to other lands, unknown to them. One Mohammedan summed up sadly in these words his experience with the Mongols, " They came, they mined) they slew trussed up their loot and departed" The difficulty of reading and comparing these various sources has been great. Not unnaturally, the orientalists who have succeeded in doing so have contented themselves mainly with the political details of the Mongol conquests. They present Genghis Khan to us as a kind of incarnation of barbaric power a scourge that comes every so often out of the desert to destroy decadent civilizations. The saga of Ssanang Setzen does not help to explain the mystery. It says, quite simply, that Genghis Khan was a bogdo of the race of gods. Instead of a mystery, we have a miracle. The medieval chronicles of Europe incline, as we 16 GENGHIS KHAN have seen, toward a belief in a sort of Satanic power invested in the Mongol and let loose jan Europe. All this is rather exasperating that modern historians should re-echo the superstitions of the thirteenth century, especially of a thirteenth-century Europe that beheld the nomads of Genghis Khan only as shadowy invaders. There is a simple way of getting light on the mystery that surrounds Genghis Khan. This way is to turn back the hands of the clock seven hundred years and look at Genghis Khan as he is revealed in the chronicles of his day ; not at the miracle, or the incarnation of barbaric power, but at the man himself. We will not concern ourselves with the political achievements of the Mongols as a race, but with the man who raised the Mongols from an unknown tribe to world mastery. To visualize this man, we must actually approach him, among his people and on the surface of the earth as it existed seven hundred years ago. We cannot measure him by the standards of modern civilization. We must view him in the aspects of a barren world peopled by hunters, horse-riding and reindeer-driving nomads. Here, men clothe themselves in the skins of animals, and nourish themselves on milk and flesh. They grease their bodies to keep out cold and moisture. It is even odds whether they starve or frdcze to death, or are cut down by the weapons of other men. " Here arc no towns or cities," says valiant Fra Carpini, the first European to enter this land, " but everywhere sandy barrens, not a hundredth part cf GENGHIS KHAN 17 the whole being fertile except where it is watered by rivers, which arc very rare. " This land is nearly destitute of trees, although well adapted for the pasturage of cattle. Even the emperor and princes and all others warm themselves and cook their victuals with fires of horse and cow dung. " The climate is very intemperate, as in the middle of summer there arc terrible storms of thunder and lightning by which many people are killed, and even then there are great falls of snow and such tempests of cold winds blow that sometimes people can hardly sit on horseback. In one of these we had to throw ourselves down on the ground and could not sec through the prodigious dust. There are often showers of hail, and sudden, intolerable heats followed by extreme cold " : This is the Gobi desert, A,D. 1162, the Year of the Swine in the Calendar of the Twelve Beasts.