Although this despot had an ungovernable temper and a wrath that could terrorize the strongest, he also had the capacity to make firm and lasting friends and loyal followers. He spoke thoughtfully and deliberately and is said to have remarked many times, “Monasteries and Temples breed mildness of character, but it is only the fierce and warlike who dominate mankind.” His eloquence could spellbind the masses.
He was an expert with the bow and arrow. His physical strength made him the leader of the wrestlers. He had been known to pick up an opponent, hold him high above his head, then break his back as though it were a bamboo reed! He enjoyed wrestling matches only when they rivaled the Roman gladiators, when the bones of the weaker adversaries were broken and crushed. He despised weakness of any kind, for he himself was a match for any man, and he had never been bested at any sport. Born of a race unwashed and illiterate, he raised his tribe of unknown barbarians to a position of world renown. Believing firmly that the Mongols were the natural masters of the world, he also was convinced that he had been chosen by Destiny to lead and control them. Thus impelled, this amazing barbarian, starting with only a tribe of wild nomads, finally conquered everything from Armenia to Korea, and from Tibet to the Volga River.
After Genghis Khan had subdued all of China, he settled down and developed into a typical oriental potentate. He lived in splendor on the present site of Peking, a far cry from his earlier primitive tent on the Gobi desert. Just so, in 1949, Mao Tse-tung sprang from the mud caves of Yenan to the palaces of Peking as China’s Number One dictator. Here, in this ancient city, Genghis, as Emperor, surrounded himself with courtiers and officials, as well as with wives, concubines and slaves.
He held high court and worked on affairs of state in a high pavilion of white felt, lined with treasured silk. Here also he entertained his friends and kept a silver table on which sat vessels of fermented mare’s milk and bowls of meat and fruit for their pleasure. Dressed in a lavishly embroidered robe and wearing a long and flaming beard, he sat at state functions on a dais at the far end of the pavilion. With him on a low bench sat Bourtai, his favorite wife. She was the real love of his life, and he claimed only the children born by her as his own. The Empress was small and dainty, with beautiful features and long hair braided with jewels and heavy coins. She was the mother of three sons who were destined to rule at a later period a domain larger than Rome’s. Other wives and concubines grouped themselves at his left, on lower platforms. His nobles sat on benches around the walls of the building, wearing long coats, bound around with enormous bright-colored silken girdles, and large, uptilted felt hats. In the center of the pavilion glowed a great fire made of thorns and dung. There was utter silence when Genghis spoke. His word was absolute law. It is said, “Any who disobeyed his word was like a stone dropped into deep water, or as an arrow among the reeds.”
Genghis Khan was almost as superstitious as he was brilliant. Believing that the character of every animal was in its heart, he hunted lions and tigers with great zest, preferring to capture them alive. He tore them open with his bare hands, pulled out the heart, and ate it while it was still throbbing. Convinced that this gave him the courage of a savage beast, he compelled his men to follow his example.
A military genius, he is known as the greatest guerilla fighter in history, but his real life work was the molding together of his vast hordes into a disciplined, well equipped, highly trained, and completely organized army. He used the forced labor of subjugated people—a significant parallel to the present day methods of Stalin, who, in order to increase the efficiency of his armies, drafted into them German scientists, artisans and technicians, as well as thousands of humbler laborers.
Genghis acquired, ultimately, over four hundred thousand warriors, countless elephant and camel trains loaded with the wealth of Croesus, and multitudes of armed slaves. “Unmatched in human valor,” it is said, “his hordes overcame the terrors of barren wastes, of mountains and seas, the severities of climate and the ravages of famine and pestilence. No dangers could appall them, no prayer for mercy could move them.”
Genghis Khan was the symbol of a new power in history. The ability of one man to alter human civilization began with him and ended with his grandson Kublai Khan, when the Mongol empires began to crack. It did not reappear again until the rise of Stalin to power.
The vast empires that Genghis established, with their accompanying devastation, was not all that he achieved. Had this been so, he would have been merely another Attila destroying with little or no definite purpose. His genius for organization and his clever statesmanship made him the model of kings, although he could not read or write when he drew up the incomparable “Yassa,” or code of conduct. This curious document, not unlike the dictates of Stalin, had three main purposes: to ensure absolute obedience to Genghis Khan; to bind together all the nomad clans for the purpose of making war; and to punish swiftly and mercilessly, anyone who violated the law, civil, military or political. With the “Yassa,” he and his heirs ruled their empires for three generations. The lash of its ruthless authority held it together.
Genghis died in 1227 A. D., leaving the greatest empires and the most destructive armies the world had ever known to that day. Not until the advent of the Tartars, a few centuries later, did another Asiatic tribe rise to world power. Led by fearless Tamerlane, they also laid waste everything in their path, in the savage manner of their predecessors. Once again the pattern was repeated. It is characteristic of the empires built by the steppe nomads that they were not the result of gradual development and expansion, but the product of a rapid growth under the leadership of a single powerful man. These men all seem to have had an evil genius for political intrigue, for exacting fanatical loyalty among their followers, and for devising ways to conquer many times their own numbers.