THE TARTARS
As though poor, dishevelled Germany had not troubles sufficient of her own, she suffered also in this century from the last of the great Asiatic invasions. About the year 1200 a remarkable military leader, Genghis Khan, appeared among the Tartars, a Mongol race of Northern Asia.[19] He organized their wild tribes and started them on a bloody career of rapine and conquest.
He became emperor of China; his hordes spread over India and Persia. In 1226 they entered Russia, and after an heroic struggle the Russian duchies and republics were forced into submission to the Tartar yoke.[20] For nearly two centuries Russia became part, not of Europe, but of Asia, and her civilization received an oriental tinge which it has scarce yet outgrown.
The huge Tartar invasion penetrated even to Silesia in Eastern Germany, where the Asiatics defeated a German army at Liegnitz (1241). But so great was the invader's loss that they retreated, nor did their leaders ever again seek to penetrate the "land of the iron-clad men." The real "yellow peril" of Europe, her submersion under the flood of Asia's millions, was perhaps possible at Liegnitz. It has never been so since. In the construction of impenetrable armor the inventive genius of the West had already begun to rise superior to the barbaric fury of the East. The arts of civilization were soon to soar immeasurably above mere numerical superiority.
In Asia the Tartar power probably reached its greatest height under Kublai Khan, the Emperor of China whom Marco Polo visited.[21] And it is worth our modern notice that Kublai failed in an attempt to conquer Japan. Russia fell a victim to the Tartar hordes; Japan repelled them.[22]