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.