The Tartars inhabited the vast regions which lie between ancient Emaüs, Siberia, China, and the Sea of Kamschatka; they were divided into several nations, which all boasted of having the same origin; each of these nations, governed by a khan, or supreme leader, was composed of a great number of tribes, each tribe commanded by a particular chief, called Myrza. The produce of the chase, the milk of their mares, and the flesh of their flocks, satisfied the simple wants of the Tartars; they lived under tents with their families; and moveable dwellings, drawn by oxen, transported from one place to another their wives, their children, and all they possessed. In summer, the whole tribe drew towards the northern countries, and encamped upon the banks of a river or a lake; in winter, they directed their course southward, and sought the shelter of mountains that could protect them from the icy winds of the north.
The Tartar hordes assembled every year, in either autumn or spring. In these assemblies, which they called Couraltaï, they deliberated on horseback, upon the march of the tribes, the distribution of the pasturages, and peace and war. It was from the bosom of this tumultuous assembly that issued the legislation of the people of Tartary; a simple and laconic legislation, like those of all barbarous nations, whose only objects are to maintain the power of the leaders, and keep up discipline and emulation among the warriors.
The nations of Tartary acknowledged one God, the sovereign of heaven, to whom they offered up neither incense nor prayers. Their worship was reserved for a crowd of genii, whom they believed to be spread through the air, upon the earth, and amidst the waters; a great number of idols, the rough work of their own hands, filled their dwellings, followed them in their courses, and watched over their flocks, their slaves, and their families. Their priests, brought up in the practices of magic, studied the course of the stars, predicted future events, and employed themselves in abusing the minds of the people by sorcery. Their religious worship, which inculcated no morality, had neither softened their rude manners nor ameliorated their character, which was as boisterous and unkindly as their climate. No monument raised under the auspices of religion, no book inspired by it, reminded them of deeds of glory, or laid before them precepts and examples of virtue. In the course of their wandering life, the dead, whom they sometimes dragged with them in their waggons, appeared to them an annoying burden, and they buried them in haste in retired places; where, covering them with the sands of the desert, they were satisfied with concealing them from the eyes or the outrages of the living.
Everything that might fix them to one spot rather than another, or lead them to change their manner of living, excited the animadversion and disdain of these races. Of all the tribes that inhabited Mogul Tartary, one alone was acquainted with writing, and cultivated letters; all the rest despised commerce, arts, and learning; which constitute the true splendour of polished societies. The Tartars disdained the idea of building; in the twelfth century their vast country contained but one city,[263] the extent of which, according to the monk Rubruquis, did not equal that of the little town of Saint Denis. Confining themselves to the care of their flocks, they regarded agriculture as a degrading occupation, only fit to employ the industry of slaves or conquered people. Their immense plains had never become yellow with harvests sown by the hand of man; no fruit had there ripened which he had planted. The spectacle most agreeable to a Tartar was the desert, upon which grass grew without cultivation or the field of battle covered with ruin and carnage.
As the limits of their pastures were under no regulation, frequent quarrels necessarily arose among the Tartars; the spirit of jealousy constantly agitated the wandering hordes; the ambitious leaders could endure neither neighbours nor rivals. Thence civil wars; and from the bosom of civil wars issued a fully-armed despotism, to support which the people flocked with cheerfulness, because it promised them conquests. The entire population was military, to whom fighting appeared to be the only true glory, and the most noble occupation of man. The encampments of the Tartars, their marches, their hunting-parties, resembled military exhibitions. Habit imparted so much ease and firmness to their seat on horseback, that they took their food, and even indulged in sleep, without dismounting. Their bow, of an enormous size, announced their strength and skill; their sharp steel-headed arrows flew to an immense distance, and struck down the bird amidst its rapid career, or pierced through and through the bear or tiger of the desert; they surpassed their enemies in the rapidity of their evolutions; they excelled them in the perfidious art of fighting whilst flying; and retreat was often, for them, the signal of victory. All the stratagems of war appeared familiar to them; and as if a fatal instinct had taught them all that could assist in the destruction of the human race, the Tartars, who built no cities, knew how to construct the most formidable machines of war, and were not unacquainted with any means that could spread terror and desolation among their enemies. In their expeditions, their march was never impeded by the inclemency of seasons, the depth of rivers, the steepness of precipices, or the height of mountains. A little hardened milk, diluted with water, sufficed for the food of a horseman during several days; the skin of a sheep or a bear, a few strips of coarse felt, formed his garments. The warriors showed the most blind obedience to their leaders, and, at the least signal, were ready to encounter death in any shape. They were divided into tens, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands; their armies were composed of all that could handle the bow or lance; and what must have caused their enemies as much surprise as terror, was the order and discipline that prevailed in a multitude that chance seemed to have gathered together. According to their military legislation, the Tartars were never allowed to make peace but with a conquered enemy; he who fled from battle, or abandoned his companions in danger, was punished with death; they shed the blood of men with the same indifference as that of wild animals, and their ferocity added greatly to the terror which they inspired in their enterprises.
The Tartars, in their pride, despised all other nations, and believed that the whole world ought to be subject to them. According to certain opinions, transmitted from age to age, the Mogul hordes abandoned the north to the dead they left behind them in the deserts, and kept their faces constantly directed towards the south, which was promised to their valour. The territories and the riches of other nations excited their ambition; and, possessing neither territories nor riches themselves, they had almost nothing to fear from conquerors. Not only their warlike education, but their prejudices, their customs, the inconstancy of their character, everything with them seemed to favour distant expeditions and warlike invasions. They carried with them neither regrets nor endearing remembrances from the countries they abandoned; and if it be true, when we say that country is not within the walls of a city, or the limits of a province, but in the affections and ties of family, in the laws, manners, and customs of a nation, the Tartars, when changing their climate, had always their country with them. The presence of their wives, of their children; the sight of their flocks and their idols, everywhere inflamed their patriotism, or love of their nation, and sustained their courage. Accustomed to consult their own inclinations, and take them for their sole rule of conduct, they were never restrained by the laws of morality or by feelings of humanity; as they had a profound indifference for all the religions of the earth, this indifference even, which aroused no hatred in other nations, facilitated their conquests, by leaving them the liberty of readily receiving or embracing the opinions and creeds of the people they conquered, and whom they thus completely subjected to their laws.
In very remote antiquity, the hordes of Tartary had several times invaded the vast regions of India, China, and Persia, and had extended their ravages even into the West: the ambition or the caprice of a skilful leader, excess of population, want of pasturage, the predictions of a wizard, were quite sufficient to inflame this tumultuous race, and precipitate them in a mass upon distant regions. Woe to the people whom the Tartars encountered in their passage! At their approach, empires fell with a horrible crash; nations were driven back upon one another, like the waves of the sea; the world was shaken and covered with ruins. History has preserved the remembrance of several of their invasions; the most remote posterity will never pronounce without a species of terror the names of the Avari, the Huns, the Heruli, of all those wandering nations who, some flowing from the depths of Tartary, and others dragged in the wake of the conquerors or driven before them, poured down upon the tottering empire of the Romans, and divided the spoils of the civilized world amongst them: in the middle ages, the wars of the Tartars were compared to tempests, inundations, or the bursting forth of volcanoes; and the resigned nations believed that the justice of God held these innumerable swarms of barbarians in reserve in the north, to pour out his anger upon the rest of the earth, and chastise corrupted nations by their hands.
The Tartars never proved themselves more redoubtable than under the reign of Gengiskhan. Temugin, which was the first name of the heroic barbarian, was born of a prince who reigned over some hordes of ancient Mogulistan.[264] Traditions relate that the seventh of his ancestors was engendered in the womb of his mother by the miraculous influence of the rays of the sun. At the birth of Temugin, his family remarked with joy some coagulated blood in the hands of the infant, a sinister presage for the human race, in which flattery or superstition saw the future glory of a conqueror. Some historians inform us that nothing was neglected in the education of Temugin; others, more worthy of faith, affirm that he could not read; but all agree in saying that he was born for war, and to command a warlike people. Endowed with great penetration of mind, and with a sort of eloquence, knowing how to dissemble in season, skilful in working upon the passions, uniting bravery to a boundless ambition, that was never checked by any scruple, he had all the qualities and all the vices which lead to empire among barbarians, and sometimes even among polished nations. His natural propensities developed themselves in adversity, which hardened his character, and taught him to brave everything in order to carry out his designs. From the age of fourteen, despoiled of his paternal heritage, and a fugitive with the khan of the Karaïtes, he sacrificed without pain the most holy duties of hospitality to his future grandeur. The khan of the Karaïtes was known by the name of Prester John among the Christians of the middle ages,[265] who celebrated his conversion to Christianity, and considered him as one of the most fervent apostles of the Gospel, which, doubtless, he never had known. He confided the care of his states to young Temugin, who insinuated himself into the favour of the army, and dethroned his benefactor. As he had outraged all the laws of morality to usurp empire, he violated all the laws of humanity to maintain himself in it. Seventy of his enemies plunged into seventy caldrons of boiling water, and the skull of the chief of the Karaïtes enchased in a golden box, announced very plainly what the master was whom fortune was about to place over the nations of Asia.
Victory was to achieve what treachery, violence, and ingratitude had begun; the arms of Temugin and his lieutenants subdued successively all the hordes whose camps arose between the wall of China and the Volga. Temugin was the all-powerful leader of many millions of shepherds and warriors, impatient to quit their own climate and invade the regions of the south. In order to attach the companions of his victories to his fortunes, he was desirous of reigning by their suffrages, and called together a couraltaï or general diet, in which he was proclaimed sovereign of the Moguls. The ambition of Temugin did not neglect the influence of superstition; he took the title of Gengis, king of kings, or master of the world, and fame gave out that he had received this pompous title from a prophet who descended from heaven upon a white horse.