THE

CHINESE REPOSITORY.

VOL. III. FEBRUARY, 1835. - No. 10.

ART. I. The Mongols: their conquests; Genghis combines the tribes and extends his dominions; his sons follow him; Kublai subdues China; Hulagu adds Persia to his empire; Batu advances into Europe, and conquers Poland; Tamerlane comes to the throne, and consolidates the empire; takes Delhi and defeats Bajazet; dies, and the empire of the Mongols falls to pieces.

FEW of the nomadic tribes that emerged from central Asia have extended their ravages so widely as the Mongols. In vain do we attempt, at the present day, to trace out the origin of all the tribes comprehended under the general name of Mongols; nor is it easy to account for the remarkable impulse which led them to aspire after the dominion of the world. As a nation, they were rude, scarcely having knowledge of any country beyond their own dreary deserts; having few wants, they could satisfy them without recourse to rapine; their martial spirit was not excited by their domestic feuds; their weapons of war were inferior even to the Chinese. All they could boast of was their swift horses, hardy and inured to want, able to carry their riders to the distant parts of Asia without endangering their lives, or hazarding their safety in the territory of the enemy. Poor as they were, without even a cottage to shelter themselves from the rigor of winter on the elevated stepps of the north, possessing nothing but cattle, they had little to lose by adventure, every thing to gain; and the world lay before them. To whatever part they chose to emigrate, the change was necessarily for the better. With scarcely a village or city within the circumference of thousands of miles, there was little to fix them on their native soil, or to bid them return when they had forsaken-those barren regions. In addition to 57

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these disadvantages, if a season of unusual scarcity visited their bleak territory, they were compelled to save themselves by emigration. But wo to the country on which they fell, like a cloud of locusts; where the hoofs of their horses once trode, there no grass grew any more. It seems to have been their delight and their aim to lay desolate the countries into which they made inroads, so that they might resemble their native de erts. Should we be surprised, therefore, when we read that a Mongol conqueror once proposed in council to slaughter all the Chinese northward of the Yangtsze keäng, to burn and raze their villages and cities, and thus convert the fertile provinces of Honan and Keängnan into fields for pasturage?

Such were the messengers of divine wrath, sent forth to execute vengeance on the Mohammedans and Christians of the dark middle ages, and to chastise China with a rod of iron. If the predictions of the Holy Scriptures respecting the nations of Gog and Magog have been fulfilled, it was by these savages. Thus said the divine oracle; “Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, and thy bands, and many people with thee. Thus saith the Lord God; It shall also come to pass that at the same time, shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought, and thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages.* And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army." Ez. xxxvii. 10, 15. This host appeared and laid the nations waste; yet divine mercy bridled their relentless fury, and 'put a hook into their jaws and turned them back.' China, Bukharia, India, western Asia, and eastern Europe felt this dreadful scourge. Never was a greater conquest achieved, but it was speedily divided and lost. Their hords, like an overwhelming torrent, swept away every trace of civilization in their course; twice their power was exerted for the ruin of mankind, but as soon as the flood had passed away, the torrent flowed back to its source, and the stream dried up. Those savages, who had burned cities, butchered the young men who defended their hearths, enslaved their widows and the robust population to sell again to bondage, and on the remainder imposed a heavy tribute, considered it their interest, after having satiated their blood-thirsty cruelty, to adopt the manners of civilized life. The rude conqueror became a lawgiver, the brawny soldier a cultivator of the soil, and the country destroyed by their hands began gradually to revive under their fostering care. Such is the extraordinary change which marked the most conspicuous sovereigns of this race. We have a similar instance in the Mantchous, the preseut rulers of China, who after a few generations are found as civilized as their Chinese subjects.

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Like the convulsions, which at the deluge agitated the natural world and gave to the earth its present aspect, the Mongol conquests shook the political world to its centre; ancient states were whelmed in the ruins. These great events were brought to pass by a man, who might have died an obscure nomadic prince, if the designs of

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Divine Providence had not raised him from that abject state into which he was thrown at his early youth, and by which he was prepared, through experience of severe trials, to be the conqueror of

nations.

Genghis, "the most great," whose name was Temujin, was left an orphan in his infancy. His father had reigned over thirty or forty thousand families; but a large proportion of these refusing to pay homage to the youth, he fought against them, was defeated, and obliged to flee for his life. In his exile he gathered around him a band of partizans, pledged himself to divide with them the sweet and the bitter of life, and sacrificed a horse to ratify his league. After his first victory over his rebellious subjects, he cast seventy of the most guilty of the rebels into chaldrons of boiling water. His ambition grew with his fortune; the prudent submitted to him, and the proud he destroyed. The skull of Prester John' he preserved enchased in silver, for his drinking goblet. Thus feared and respected, he united his inferior chiefs, bound them together by equitable laws, and established an excellent discipline among them. In a general diet, seated on a felt, he was solemnly proclaimed 'grand khan,' or emperor of the Mongols and Tartars. Temujin did not disdain the arts of superstition; for he accepted from a naked prophet, who pretended to hold converse with heaven, the title of Genghis, 'the most great;' and a divine right to the dominion of the earth.

After the Mongol emperor had become the monarch of all the northern pastoral world with its numerous millions, his thoughts turned towards China. His ancestors had been tributaries to the emperor, and he himself had been disgraced with a title of servitude; but now the haughty court of Peking was surprised to receive an embassy from its vassal, demanding in turn obedience and tribute. Hitherto the court, by rich presents and by sowing dissentions among the frontier tribes, had devised means to avert danger from China and to assume a tone of authority; but haughty words were now of no avail against the stern demands of Genghis. To convince the Chinese that he was no longer a tributary, his squadrons passed the great wall in a. D. 1212, and the provinces of Shanse and Shense fell before him; ninety cities were stormed or starved, and only ten escaped. The price of his retreat was a princess of China, with a dowry of three thousand horses, and other disgraceful terms acceded to by the Chinese emperor. But the family of Sung, then seated on the throne of China had degenerated, and its weak monarchs were swayed alternately by priests, women, and eunuchs; the people were enervated, and there was nothing to oppose the impetuosity of the barbarians. After repeated treaties broken at the convenience of either party, Genghis penetrated to the Yellow river and subjected five provinces to his sway. His dominions now extended from the eastern ridge of the Caucasus to the ocean, and from Tibet to the Frozen sea. But he stopped not here. Countries, the very names of which had been unknown to the savage chief, were to be numbered among his conquests. In former instances, the Chinese bad averted the

Huns and Turks from their purposes of invasion; but at this time, contrary to their customary policy, they invited the entrance of the Mongols, in order to oppose them to the approach of the Niutchi, or eastern Tartars. After successfully opposing the eastern barbarians, the Mongols turned their arms against their allies, the Chinese, and drove the emperor beyond the Yellow river southward.

When Genghis had humbled the proud monarch of China and taken possession of five provinces, he turned his steps westward. There his dominions bordered on the territory of the mighty Mobammed, sultan of Khowaresm. One of Genghis' caravans with three embassadors was arrested and murdered by order of Mohammed'; redress was haughtily refused, and it was not till after three days fasting that Genghis appealed to the god of battles. Himself and his four sons led forward an army, said to have amounted to seven hundred thousand, to the extensive plains northward of the Sihon, where they were encountered by four hundred thousand soldiers of the sultan. In the first battle one hundred and sixty thousand Khowaresmians were slain, and Mohammed withdrew, trusting to his strong fortresses to check the victorious enemy. But Scythian hardiness, aided by the ingenuity of Chinese engineers, soon reduced them. Intercourse with the Chinese had acquainted the Mongols with some of the arts and means of civilized warfare, and thus the strong holds of Otrar, Bokharia, Khowaresm, Herat, Samarcand, Balkh, and Kandahar soon fell before them. Then followed the conquest of the flourishing regions between Turkestan and India, which Genghis so utterly desolated that centuries were necessary to repair the ravages done in as many years. Mohammed died unpitied on a desert island of the Caspian sea'; but his son often checked the Mongols, retreating and fighting to the banks of the Indus. Here the enriched followers of the insatiable victor, by their murmurs, induced Genghis to lead them back to their native land, where he overthrew the last independent power of Tartary, and found himself sole master of central Asia. But death arrested his course in 1227, and he departed, with his last words exhorting his sons to complete the conquest of China.

Four of his sons, Tushi, Jagatai, Oktai, and Tuli inherited their father's spirit and empire. By the consent of the three, Oktai was proclaimed grand khan of the Mongols and Tartars. Contrary to the result common at a conqueror's death, the sons of Genghis peacefully divided the power, and remembered their father's dying charge. Yet diverted often by foreign wars, they proceeded slowly in their operations on China, until Kublai, the son of Tuli, obtained the sceptre of the northern provinces. Determined to fulfill the wishes of his grandfather, he resorted to an artful policy as well as to the sword. Tootsung, the reigning emperor, was a weak monarch. Whilst Kublai bent on the conquest of the empire, gained over to his side the exiled and disaffected grandees, Tootsung found himself destitute of friends, and a mere tool in the hands of his ministers. Thus circumstanced, Kublai advanced boldly to the Yangtsze keäng, and added

the fertile province of Keängnan to his dominions. He took prisoner Kungtsung, the successor of Tootsung, and banished him to the desert of Shamo or Gobi to spend his days. Hangchow, the capital fell into the conqueror's hands. The liberality of Kublai had drawn into his service European and Arabian engineers, by whose assistance he was successful in his sieges. Twantsung, the successor of the last emperor, was but eleven years old, and was compelled to flee to the province of Kwangtung, where he lost the remainder of his once numerous army, and himself died of hunger. When finally the last remnant of the imperial family betook themselves to the sea, and were met and surrounded by the fleet of Kublai: the prime minister, who held the infant emperor in his arms, seeing no escape, plunged into the ocean with his precious charge. The other members of the imperial family followed the example, and the remaining Chinese were either sunk, or submitted to the conqueror, and Kublai remained master of the whole Chinese empire, in 1279.

Though unsuccessful in an attack upon Japan, and in two expeditions to the Indian archipelago, he succeeded so far as to render tributary the kingdoms of Tungking, Cochinchina, Siam, Bengal and Tibet; and the name of Kublai was celebrated over all Asia. Even at the present day, when the Chinese empire has extended its sway over the greatest part of civilized Asia, it does not equal in extent the conquests of Kublai, under whose administration China reached the acme of its greatness and glory. Kublai was greater as a statesman than as a conqueror; and though the arms of his hords laid China waste, yet under his fostering hand, and guided by his genius, it was soon restored to prosperity. Never had this country seen such a reformer, and had his successors trodden in his steps, the face of this ancient empire might have been completely changed.

The conquest of Persia was achieved by Hulagu khan, also a grandson of Genghis, and cousin of Kublai. Mostasem then sat upon the throne of the califs, a mere shadow of royalty; he encountered the Mongols with weak arms and haughty words. "On the divine decree," said Mostasem, "is founded the throne of the sons of Abbas; and their foes shall surely be destroyed in this world and the next. Who is this Hulagu that dares to rise against them? If he be desirous of peace, let him instantly depart from the sacred territory, and perhaps he may obtain from our clemency the pardon of his fault." In this truly Chinese mode of warfare he persevered, till Hulagu took the city of Bagdad by storm, sacked it, and pronounced sentence of death on the last of the temporal successors of the impostor. All the countries beyond the Euphrates were conquered by the sword, and the Seljukian name exterminated. In Egypt, the Mongols met their equals in the Mamelukes, who saved that country from the invaders.

When Oktai had achieved the conquest of northern China, about the year 1235, he then turned his arms towards Europe. For this expedition he selected his nephew Batu, the son of Tuli, and en-trusted to him an army of 500,000 Mongols and Tartars.

After a