124 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC — who carried with therri all the homes they had — who could subsist wherever their cattle and their horses could find pasture ; it was no less superior to the troops of other nations by its warlike habits and the rapidity of its movements, than by the stern discipline that Tchinguiz-Khan had introduced into it. It was with these Mongol hordes that Tchinguiz- Khan successively subjected all the nations of Tartary, and annihilated empires, " as you might tear up grass."* Far from paying homage at that time to the sovereigns of Northern China, to whom the Tartar tribes had before betn tributary, he rushed down upon the empire at the head of a numerous body of his horsemen, and carried his devastations to the banks of the Yellow River. Master of an immense booty, he then quitted China, but it was only to fly to other conquests. Central Asia was subjected to his laws ; he desolated Trans-Oxiana, Khorassan, and Persia, and whilst his armies were on one side ravaging the Chinese empire, on the other they were sacking the country of Sinde and the banks of the Euphrates, penetrating through Georgia to the northern shores of the Black Sea, pouring over the Crimea, laying waste a part of Russia, and attacking the Bulgarians on the Upper Wolga. The destructive progress of the Mongols among the nations of Western Asia, spread terror even to Byzantium; The Emperor John Ducas reinforced all his garrisons; and his subjects, terrified by the rumours of the atrocities com-
- " Since the commencement of the world no nation has ever been
as powerful as the Mongols are at present. They annihilate empires as one tears up grass. Why does Heaven permit that?" — Toung- Kien-Kan Mou, " Annals of China."
