MONGOLS--HISTORICAL NOTES.
A peculiar interest surrounds these wandering tribes of the desert.
In them we see the living representatives of the ancient Huns, and
of the yet more ancient Scythians. Of them came Attila, "the Scourge
of God," who with his barbarian hordes shook the foundations of
Europe in the fifth century, and accelerated the downfall of the
old Roman empire; of them came also the redoubtable warriors who
desolated Asia and Europe six hundred years ago.
The Mongol tribes are exceedingly conservative in their habits;
their fashions never change. A description of their manners in the
time of Genghis, or even of Attila, is equally applicable now.
Everything goes to show that in the form of their tents, in their
dress, their social customs, and their mode of life, the Mongols
of to-day have changed but little since they first became known to
history.
The early history of the Huns is involved in obscurity. They appear
to have existed as a pastoral people, inhabiting the east of the
desert of Gobi from about 1200 B.C., during which time they were
frequently at war with the Chinese. The first authentic accounts of
them date from about the year 200 B.C., when they greatly extended
their empire, and became very formidable neighbours to China. It was
in the third century before the Christian era that the Chinese built
the famous wall as a protection from the inroads of the warlike
Huns, who, notwithstanding, laid China under tribute.
Vouti, of the Han dynasty (died 87 B.C.), gained a bloody victory
over the Huns, and was the first to break their power in China. He
followed up his military success by the application of the craft
for which his race was, even at that early date, distinguished. By
diligently promoting dissension among the tribes he succeeded in
severing many of them from their allegiance to the Tanjou, the title
then adopted by the kings of the Huns. The Tanjou himself became
afterwards a vassal to the Chinese emperors, and was fain to lick
the dust for a dependent kingship.
About 100 years after the birth of Christ, the Huns were broken up
and scattered. The Huns of the South, who had previously seceded
from the main body, and had established their dynasty in alliance
with China, held together till the year 216 A.D. The Northern Huns,
being distressed by a great famine, were attacked by the tribes
whom they had so long oppressed, and were compelled to seek safety
in flight. From that era we must date the migrations of the Hunnish
tribes. They were again subdivided. One branch wandered to the coast
of the Caspian Sea, where they settled, and became modified in their
character under the influence of a more genial climate; their nomad
habits were gradually abandoned; and they became civilised. These
were called the White Huns.
Another branch migrated in a north-westerly direction, and in their
march had to contend with a more rigorous climate. Exasperated
by their struggles with the elements and with many enemies, they
retained all their savageness in their new settlement on the Volga.
These restless warriors had barely secured their own existence
in the west, when they began to attack their neighbours. After
conquering the Alani, a nation only a little less barbarous than
themselves, and adding to their own forces those of the vanquished
tribes, the Huns became the terror of the Goths, and these also fell
a prey to the invaders before the end of the fourth century of the
Christian era.
But the power of these wandering tribes was always liable to be
paralysed by the jealousies of rival chiefs. Their notions of
government were crude; hereditary succession was held of little
account among them. The Huns were only formidable to their
neighbours when they were under the leadership of chiefs who
possessed sufficient vigour to rise pre-eminent over all others, and
the talent or the craft to secure to themselves absolute power.
Attila was one of these. The Huns were already in the ascendant
when he came to the throne; but his genius, energy, and insatiable
ambition soon rendered them the terror of all Europe, and himself
the greatest barbarian that ever wielded the sceptre. Attila had a
body-guard of subject kings. His effective force has been variously
estimated at half-a-million and at seven hundred thousand men. He
enriched himself with the spoils of all nations; yet in the height
of his barbaric pride he retained in camp the simple habits of his
ancestors. Having subdued every hostile tribe within his reach, and
incorporated their armies with his own, he threw the whole weight
of his forces on the corrupt and degenerate Roman Empire, which
was brought to the feet of the conqueror and compelled to accept
conditions of peace the most degrading that the insolence of the
invader could dictate.
Desolation everywhere followed the march of Attila, for destruction
was ever the glory of the barbarians. As the old Huns lived by
predatory warfare, so the hosts of Attila were actuated, only in a
higher degree, by the savage instincts of wild beasts. But their
power only held together while there was food for pillage, and a
master mind to direct their enterprise. And thus their reign of
terror in Europe was of brief duration. A heavy debauch cut short
the career of Attila, and he died an inglorious death in his own bed
from the bursting of an artery. The empire of his creation collapsed
after his death amid contending factions; and in A.D. 468, just
fifteen years after the death of Attila, the empire of the Huns was
utterly destroyed, and their name disappeared from history.
The shepherds tended their flocks in the steppes of Tartary,
and 700 years passed away before another chief arose to summon
the scattered tribes to his standard. During that period sundry
insignificant dynasties succeeded each other on the outskirts of
the Chinese dominions. The Turks also appeared in the interval, and
established a formidable power, which lasted from the sixth to the
eighth century. They issued from the Altai mountains, where they
had served the Geougen Tartars who had overwhelmed the Huns after
the death of Attila. The Turks, or Turki, reduced the Geougen, and,
it is said, almost extirpated them. These Turks have been supposed
to have been identical in race with the Huns who preceded, and the
Mongols who followed, them.[10] But there is much reason to doubt
their consanguinity.[11] The great skill in iron working for which
the original Turks were distinguished, seems sufficient to mark a
difference between them and the ancestors of the pure Mongols. They
shaved the beard also in token of grief, and were considered by the
Persians handsome men.[12] The Huns and Mongols had almost no beard,
and in the eyes of all writers who have thought it worth while to
describe their persons, they were remarkable for their deformity.
[10] De Guignes. Hist. des Huns.
[11] Memoirs of Baber. Erskine's Introd.
[12] Un Hist. vol. iii. p. 365.
It would, however, be a hopeless task to unravel the descent of
the various races miscalled Tartars. The old Chinese records have
preserved little more than the catalogue of kings and battles,
and of the rise and fell of dynasties. The Tartar powers that
have successively risen up in Asia have never been composed of
a homogeneous race. Their names, even have generally been taken
from some small tribe or family which accident rendered prominent;
and the names Tartar, Turk, and Mongol, have been perpetuated
and misapplied to armies and confederations of mixed races. The
wanderings of these mixed tribes, the dissolution of empires which
arose among them, and the reconstruction of these empires under
new combinations, have constantly tended to the amalgamation in
blood and language of races distinct in origin, but following the
same nomadic habits. Their mode also of dealing with prisoners of
war, and the conditions which they imposed on conquered nations,
conduced still more to the fusion and confusion of races. It was
unusual with the Huns or Mongols to spare their prisoners, unless
they could employ them either as slaves or soldiers, or make profit
by their ransom. The men were massacred, and the eligible women
were appropriated by the conquerors. A supply of women was exacted
as tribute from subject states. This gross indignity was ruthlessly
imposed on the Chinese; and "a select band of the fairest maidens
of China was annually devoted to the rude embraces of the Huns."[13]
These practices must have tended greatly to enhance the perplexity
of ethnologists in attempting to analyse the masses of men who, by
the vicissitudes of war, were from time to time assembled under one
standard, and received the name of the dominant family.
[13] Gibbon, vol. iii. p. 363.
When the Huns appeared in Europe, however, they were portrayed by
the Goths and Romans in graphic but distorted terms. Through the
haze of these hideous caricatures,[14] and the fabulous origin which
fear and hatred attributed to the Huns, we cannot fail to identify
in them the form and features of the modern Mongols. Whatever be
the descent of the numerous Turki tribes, and whatever changes may
have been brought about by intermixture, change of climate, &c.,
in the pastoral peoples, the great race of the Mongols has in the
main preserved its manners and its characteristics through all
its revolutions and migrations, and has proved its unity in blood
with the Huns of Attila. The Mongols are certainly far from being
a handsome people, but the Romans, themselves models of symmetry,
greatly exaggerated their deformity. The barbarians were esteemed
so fiendish in their aspect, that the Goths, to account for the
phenomenon, were obliged to invent the fable of the descent of
the Huns from the unholy union of Scythian witches with infernal
spirits. They were inhumanly ugly. Attila himself was hideous. Yet
that did not deter the young Princess Honoria from betraying, or
feigning, a passion for him. That spirited lady, with a courage
worthy of a better cause, found means of secretly communicating with
the king of the Huns, and urged him to claim her as his bride.
[14] Ibid. p. 371.
In the thirteenth century, Genghis became Khan[15] of all the
Mongols, who under him were once more the terror of the world.
Genghis had already conquered the Naimans, a powerful people in
their day; and invaded Tangout. When he had assembled under his
standard the tribes of his own people and of the nations whom he
had conquered, he was impelled by his restless ambition to keep
them in motion. The lust of conquest became his ruling passion, and
every new trophy added fuel to its flame. He first invaded Kitai, or
northern China, overran the territories of the then powerful Kin,
desolated their cities and villages, and massacred their people,
and then retired to the river Tolla to recruit, having added to his
army many Chinese of all ranks. The seven years' campaign in the
west followed shortly after, during which Genghis conquered Persia
and Bukhara, destroyed many populous cities, and put to the sword
prodigious numbers of human beings. His lieutenants extended their
ravages still further westward, while Genghis himself returned
to his head-quarters at Kara-Korum. Kitai was again invaded, and
Tangout subjugated. On the death of Genghis, in 1227, the succession
to the Khanate fell to his son Oktai, who followed up the conquest
of China according to instructions delivered by Genghis on his
death-bed. But the empire had become so unwieldy, and the distances
that separated the divisions of it so vast, that it could no longer
subsist in its integrity. It was soon split up into sections, which
were parcelled out to the descendants of Genghis. Some reigned in
Persia, and some in Kapchak, a territory stretching from the Caspian
Sea to Kazan, and covering a large portion of the steppe of the
Kirghis. The little dynasty of the Nogai Tartars was also founded
in Europe by a descendant of Genghis. The Tartar kingdoms of Kazan
and the Crimea were both offshoots from the khans of Kapchak. Batou,
Khan of Kapchak, or the Golden Horde, took Moscow and wasted the
Russian provinces. Kublai, who succeeded to China, was the greatest
of them all. In addition to that country, he possessed Pegu, Thibet,
and the whole of Tartary; while Cochin China, Tonquin, and Corea
paid him tribute. He was, moreover, acknowledged by all the other
khans as their chief. But the whole continent of Asia lay between
him and his vassals, and his suzerainty soon became a name only, and
in course of time the form also was discontinued.
[15] The title of Khan was first assumed by the Geougen, in the
fifth century.
The Mongols were, however, incapable of maintaining a settled
government. The expeditions to subjugate Japan having proved
fruitless, there was no other country left for them to conquer;
this quiescent state was unnatural to them, and Chinese culture
demoralised them in less than a hundred years.
Russia was held by a tenure more suitable to the nomad habits of the
Mongols. Armies had to be maintained, and the khans of the Golden
Horde found occupation in keeping down the Russian princes. They
therefore held their supremacy in Europe, until they did the work of
their enemies by quarrelling amongst themselves, but their yoke was
not finally shaken off till the fifteenth century.
Before the empires founded by the family of Genghis had been wholly
broken up, another great Mongol conqueror appeared in the person of
Timour, or Tamerlane. Born under happier auspices, and brought up
in contact with more civilised people, Timour added to the native
ferocity and the ambition of universal empire of his ancestors, the
arts and some of the refinements of education. He was, moreover,
a zealous Mahommedan, and drew from the Koran encouragements in
his career of conquest, and excellent moral maxims which seemed
in strange contrast with his life. In a military point of view,
Timour's life was a brilliant success. Before his death he placed
twenty-seven crowns on his head; he conquered India, and boasted
that he had penetrated northwards to the region of perpetual day.
His conquests outstripped those of Alexander. "On the eastern bank
of the Hyphasis, on the edge of the Desert, the Macedonian hero
halted and wept; the Mogul entered the desert, reduced the fortress
of Batnir, and stood in arms before Delhi."[16] He captured Delhi,
and "purified his soldiers in the blood of the idolaters." Timour,
when he was seventy years old, resolved to re-conquer China, from
which country the family of Genghis had been recently expelled.
He despatched his armies from Samarcand for the expedition, but he
himself died on the way, in 1405, and his empire fell to pieces
through the incapacity of his sons.
[16] Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 10.
Timour had perhaps the honour of shedding more blood than any of
his predecessors; but, like them, he was incapable of governing
what he had conquered. His boast that a child might carry a purse
of gold from the east to the west, could be justified only on the
supposition that he had pacified Asia by making it a solitude.
He was considered a usurper by the Mongols of his day. He made
war on his own people because they were idolaters; yet the modern
Mongols worship him, beguiling their long evenings in their tents by
chanting invocations to his memory.
The next great Mongol who left his mark on the world was Timour's
great-grandson Baber, who conquered Delhi in 1528, and founded
there the dynasty of the Great Mogul. But Baber was ashamed of his
descent, and despised the Mongol character. It was probably to his
throwing off the barbarism of his ancestors, that his family owed
the permanence of their Indian empire. The last scion of this royal
house died in misery at Rangoon, in 1862.
On the disruption of the Mongol empire, founded by Genghis, and
built on by his successors, the tribes who composed it were
dispersed far and wide over Europe and Asia, from the Great Wall
of China to the Volga and the Black Sea. Their dynastic divisions
were numerous, but the Mongol blood was soon lost in many of these.
The Khans were often followed into conquered territories by a small
proportion only of their own race, sometimes by a few families,
and sometimes by a few individuals only, their armies being mainly
composed of alien elements. These handfuls of men soon lost their
national characteristics under the influence of a settled life,
and contact with races better trained in the arts of peace. The
numerical superiority of the people among whom they lived, must
necessarily have absorbed them; and it would be hard now to trace
the Mongol blood in the descendants of the Tartars of the Crimea, of
Kazan, of Nogai, or of Kapchak.
The homogeneous race of the Mongols may now be divided into the
Kalkas, the Kalmuks, and the Bouriats. The Kalkas, who take their
name from a small river rising in the Siolki mountains in Manchuria,
are a numerous people, occupying the north of the Great Desert. They
may be called the Mongols proper, if any are entitled to that name.
The Kalmuks, so nicknamed by the Mahommedan Tartars, inhabit the
Russian province of Astrakhan. A remarkable exodus of these people
took place in 1770-71, on which occasion half a million of the
Kalmuks of the Volga fled from the tyranny of Catherine II., and
directed their march eastward by the route by which their ancestors
had so often travelled to Europe. During their eight months'
pilgrimage they were goaded to despair by hunger, weariness, and
savage enemies; and when they at last found shelter in the dominions
of the Emperor of China, they had been reduced to half their number.
The Emperor Kienloong allotted to them a settlement in the province
of Dsungaria, on the north-west of the desert. The Eleuths on the
south-east of the desert are also of the race of the Kalmuks. The
black Kalmuks are settled near the sources of the river Obi, north
of the Altai mountains.
The Bouriats in the Siberian province of Trans-baikal, although of
true Mongol origin, do not appear to have been much mixed up in
the military movements of the other tribes. They were nevertheless
a warlike people, were subdued by the family of Genghis in the
thirteenth century, and made a respectable stand against the
Russians in the seventeenth.
There are other tribes of Mongols within the modern limits of China
proper, though north of the Great Wall. Some of these till the
ground, but they are principally kept up as the reserve army of
China.
From the earliest times, these wandering tribes, when not united in
a crusade against the human race at large, were constantly at war
with each other. These feuds were continued with varying results
for several centuries after their empire was broken up; but the
adroitness of the Chinese on the one side, and the brute force of
Russia on the other, have subdued the turbulent spirit of the Mongol
hordes, who for the last hundred years have been quiet subjects of
these two empires.
The Mongols, Kalmuks, and Bouriats are all Bhuddists, while the
other Tartar tribes, with whom the Mongols have been associated in
their wars, are almost all Mahommedans.
The history of the wars of the Huns and Mongols exhibits some
curious psychical phenomena. First, we see these barbarous tribes,
living in the most primitive condition, ignorant of everything
beyond the range of animal instinct, vanquishing in fair fight the
most warlike and civilised nations that then existed. By the weight
of their masses, and the impetuosity of their onslaught, stimulated
by the ferocity of fanaticism, the barbarians broke in on the old
empires, which they overwhelmed like a flood. Civilisation bowed the
neck to barbarism: matter triumphed over mind.
And yet the materials of which these formidable hosts were composed
were in themselves feeble and innocuous. When we see the descendants
of the Huns quietly feeding their sheep in their native deserts,
harmless and kind-hearted, simple and contented, it is hard to
conceive that out of such a race could have come the conquerors of
the world. Their power indeed was a matter of pure accident, that is
to say, it lay dormant until accident raised up men with ability to
use it. The shepherds have little power of reasoning, and no notions
of self-government; but they are willing machines in the hands of
a man of strong intellect, who can exact from them the worship due
to a divinity. Under such a leader they can be handled like a pack
of hounds, with which they have a close affinity in the instinct
of obedience and unreasoning courage: animal qualities which are
invaluable to the schemes of the master-mind.
The heroes of the Mongol tribes have been few and far between.
The marvel is that such a people could produce heroes at all.
Their great conquerors were not men of ordinary ability, but of
vast genius, rendered all the more conspicuous by their untutored
barbarism. None but great minds could have controlled and directed
the movements of such multitudes. The words of the khan were
inexorable laws; without the ruling spirit nothing could be done.
China was saved from a second conquest by the accident of the death
of Timour; and it has been said that the fate of Europe at one
time depended on the digestion of a barbarian under the Great Wall
of China. Nor were the Mongol leaders animated by blind ferocity.
They had an object in their wars, which was nothing less than
the sovereignty of the world. Their courage was high, and they
occasionally fought desperate battles. But that was not their usual
custom. Attila, and Genghis, and Timour, all showed remarkable
caution. They calculated the chances of a battle or a campaign with
the deliberation of experienced generals, and declined engagements
against heavy odds when they could effect a retreat without
discouraging their troops. Attila, the rudest of them all, was a
skilful diplomatist. He penetrated into Gaul, not so much by force
of arms as by the craft he displayed in playing off one faction
against another, and so distracting the counsels of his enemies.
The secret of the ascendency of the Mongol chiefs lay mainly in the
skill with which they used the potent instrument of superstition.
The shepherds, illiterate and brutish, had a blind awe of the
supernatural, which it was the policy of their leaders to encourage.
Attila became miraculously possessed of the sword of the Scythian
Mars, and thenceforth bore a sacred character which was confirmed
to him by his early successes. A divine origin was attributed to
the ancestors of Genghis. He was styled the son of God, and was
popularly believed to have been born of a virgin.[17] The Turks
traced their descent from a youth who was nursed by a she-wolf, a
fable probably borrowed from that of Romulus and Remus.
[17] Gibbon, vol. iv. p. 322, and note.
The kings of the Huns and Mongols excited the enthusiasm of their
armies by the use of omens. When unfavourable to their plans, the
omens were either disregarded or explained away by the chiefs,
who were probably incredulous, but at all events possessed the
resolution to rise superior to the oracles. Thus when Attila had
raised the siege of Orleans, and was pressed in his retreat by a
powerful army of Goths and Romans, the auguries were against him,
and his troops were dispirited. But Attila, considering that a
defeat would be less disastrous to him than flight, rallied the
sinking courage of the Huns by an eloquent oration, in which, with
consummate ingenuity, he turned the very advantages of the enemy
into encouragements to himself. Their well-chosen posts, their
strict alliance and close order, he affected to attribute to fear
alone. He plied his people also with arguments from the doctrine of
fate, and persuaded them that they were as safe in the thick of the
fight as in their own tents. In the desperate battle which ensued,
Attila outdid himself in personal valour, and the Huns fought
furiously; the slaughter on both sides was prodigious; but when
night came Attila was fain to retire within his camp. The result of
the action was nevertheless creditable to his sagacity, for he was
still so formidable in defeat that his enemies compared him to a
lion at bay, and they dared not renew the attack.
Timour, who lived in a more enlightened age, or rather among a more
enlightened people, and was himself educated in Mohammedanism, rose
to a higher flight in the use and contempt of auguries. Instead of
examining the entrails of animals, he consulted the planets and the
Koran. When marching on Delhi his astrologers could not educe any
favourable indication from the stars, but Timour refused to hamper
his plans by such considerations, telling his astrologers that
fortune does not depend on the stars, but on the Creator of them.
The Huns and Mongols were distinguished from other men, chiefly by
their waste of human life. They may be said to have depopulated
Asia. The flourishing cities that once existed in the deserts of
Tartary have been utterly destroyed; the history of many of them has
been lost; and where large populations cultivated arts and industry,
one may now see only the tent of a herdsman in the vast solitude.
The savages boasted that grass never grew where the feet of their
horses had trod, and that a horse might run without stumbling over
the places where the great cities had stood. The conquerors built
towers and pyramids of the heads of their enemies, that is, their
prisoners--not soldiers only--but whole populations whom they
massacred in cold blood.
But yet, though ferocious, the barbarians were not, strictly
speaking, cruel. Their systematic slaughter must be otherwise
accounted for, and in a way even more humiliating to human nature.
The morality of the kings, khans or emperors may be assumed to
have been on a par with that of the people; it was in intellect
only that they were pre-eminent. Attila, in the midst of his sins
against mankind, was accessible to pity. His own people loved him.
Genghis aspired to the honour of a wise legislator, and primitive
though his code was, his motives for devising it were honourable. He
encouraged trade so far as he knew how; patronised the sciences, and
favoured the missionaries of all persuasions. He was both just and
generous, and if he had but governed, instead of killing, the people
he conquered, it is possible that he might have been a benefactor to
mankind. Yet, in three cities alone, Genghis caused more than four
millions of people to be slaughtered.
But the strange paradox comes out in more vivid colours in the
character of Timour, who, compared with his predecessors, was
civilised and humane. Amongst his exploits was the massacre of
one hundred thousand people at Delhi. He exacted from Ispahan a
contribution of seventy thousand, and from Bagdad of ninety thousand
human heads to build towers with. Although a Mahommedan he did not
spare his co-religionists, but slew indiscriminately all who seemed
to stand in his way. When he grew old, and was satiated with blood
and glory, he repented. But his repentance was the most curious
episode in the monster's history. He planned a pious mission to
China, and in announcing his resolve to his council, he told them
that the conquests he had made were not obtained _without some
violence_, which had occasioned the death of a great number of God's
creatures. To atone for past crimes he determined to perform some
good action, namely, to _exterminate the idolaters of China_.[18]
[18] Un. Hist. vol. v. p. 57.
By what law or standard of ethics can such an abuse of the moral
faculties be judged? And how can such antagonistic traits of
character be reconciled?
The Mongols did not practise the cruelties that have so often
disgraced more refined peoples. Tortures were exceptional among
them, perhaps because their invention had not risen to such a
pitch. Noble captives were paraded in chains, but that was done
rather to glorify the victor than to punish the victim. The Mongol
massacres seem to have been dictated less by positive than negative
considerations. Their low estimate of the value of human life lay
at the bottom of it all. The slaughter of the population of a great
city was no more in their eyes than the destruction of so many
vermin. Their towers of human heads were to the primitive barbarians
what the trophies of the chace are to sportsmen. Being guided by
animal instincts alone, they were unconscious of any wrong. So
low is the moral condition of uncultivated races, "the children
of nature," that human feelings can only grow in them after ages
of gradual education. The social virtues, and even the natural
affections, are only developed in their full force by means of
artificial or civilised life, just as the perfectability of plants
is only attained by the aid which art gives to nature. So, then, the
artificial state is in a sense more natural to man than the natural
or primitive condition of savages. His moral nature needs culture as
much as his intellect does; and artificial life alone can bring out
man's natural qualities. The affections of the Huns and Mongols were
little more than such as they possessed in common with the lower
animals. They loved their children after a fashion, and sometimes
they loved a favourite wife. But if we desire to test the quality of
the paternal affection of such people, let us look at the half-tamed
barbarian Peter the Great, who condemned and executed his own son,
after inviting him to surrender under the promise of a full pardon.
The theory has been advanced that the exclusively animal diet of the
shepherds rendered them ferocious,[19] and that their familiarity
with the blood of their sheep excited their passion for the blood of
their fellow-creatures. But neither of these hypotheses is founded
on fact. The elaborate cruelties of the vegetarians of China and
Japan supply a sufficient answer to the first. The Chinese have
racked their ingenuity to multiply tortures, and a fat rice-eater
will sip up his tea and fan himself with perfect _sang-froid_, while
he causes the nails of a victim to be pulled out. When their blood
is up the Chinese are as savage as the Mongols, and by so much the
more cruel as their superior intellects supply to them varieties in
the enjoyment of their blood-thirstiness.
[19] "Il est certain que les grands mangeurs de viande sont en
général cruels et féroces plus que les autres hommes. Cette
observation est de tous les lieux et de tous les temps; la barbarie
anglaise est connue."--Emile de Rousseau. Gibbon, iii. p. 350.
To the second observation it may be replied that the professional
butchers are not the least humane class of civilised society; their
occupation does not impair their human sympathies. A wild beast may
be excited by the taste of blood, but it is merely from the instinct
that impels him to seek his natural food.
The brutalising influence of war itself is well known. To this rule
there are few exceptions. Even among Christian nations, in whom the
degrading tendency is counteracted by education and social culture,
the hero of many battles is but too apt to value his men at so much
per head. Barbarians, with no controlling power to check the natural
bent of their passions, exhibit the full dehumanising effects of
war. They glory in the mere shedding of blood, as a hunter delights
in the death of his game. Yet this savage passion is far removed
from simple cruelty, and may be quite compatible with a low form of
goodness of heart.
Although at first sight the simple life of pastoral peoples does not
seem likely to produce a race of warriors, yet the very simplicity
of their habits peculiarly adapts them for warlike enterprises.
The incentives to war would not be wanting to wandering tribes
with no fixed boundary; for they would be constantly invading each
others' pasture grounds. Hence, the habits of predatory warfare
would be induced. Their hardiness and endurance would enable them
to sustain the fatigue of long marches, privations and exposure.
Such a community needs no commissariat. Their food is the flesh of
their cattle or horses, which, being accustomed to eat grass only,
can always feed themselves on the way. Their tents might even be
dispensed with, and the ground would serve them for a camp. Their
indifference to life renders unnecessary any provision for the care
of the sick or the wounded. They are not hampered in their movements
by any tie to localities. The whole world is alike to them. Their
life in war, involving the long marches and countermarches which
wear out other troops, was little different from their ordinary
habits in peace. Their enthusiasm made them formidable. Their
ignorance rendered them unscrupulous. They destroyed the noblest
monuments of learning and industry with the same wantonness that
prompts a child to pull to pieces the finest piece of mechanism.
They set no value on anything, and it was a pleasant recreation for
them to destroy what they could neither appreciate nor understand.
The spoils of civilisation allured them to new conquests. Victory
inflated their fanaticism. Defeat subdued their spirit for the
time, but they had always a retreat open in the deserts of Asia
where they were at least safe from the retaliation of the civilised
nations whom they had oppressed. In their career of devastation they
were often stimulated by necessity. When their earlier successes
had attracted great numbers to the victorious standard, it was
impossible to maintain the vast multitude stationary. First, their
pastures would soon become exhausted; and, secondly, their leaders
could only maintain their own character and their ascendency over
their followers by active operations. The alien troops, who entered
largely into the composition of their armies, were always ready
to secede from their forced allegiance. Any symptom of weakness
or incapacity in the chief would be the signal for a general
disruption. Out of this necessity for perpetual motion doubtless
arose the Mongol vision of universal empire.
The military enthusiasm in the Mongols is only dormant, not
dead. We have seen, four or five years ago, with what alacrity
Sang-ko-lin-sin, himself a Kalka Mongol, and one of the forty-eight
kings, brought a force into the field to bar our entrance into
Peking, and with what zeal and energy the Mongol troops acquitted
themselves. Given a sufficient motive, and a man to lead them, and
the shepherds could soon be put in motion again. By nature they are
faithful to their chiefs, and their head lama has but to hold up
his finger to stir up the sleeping prowess of the shepherds. Nor is
it likely that the sanguinary passions, common to barbarians, have
been eradicated in the Mongols. Quiet and peaceful as they are among
their flocks, they would be as fierce in war as in the bloodiest
days of their history.