Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/87

THE TUBES 53 victories facilitated the migration of his own subjects into the newly conquered territories and hastened the departure of large bodies of men, who fled before the terrible massacres which marked the progress of their ever victorious armies. A branch of the same great horde, under the leadership of Subutai, destroyed Moscow and Kiev in a campaign con- ducted with striking ability and ending in 1239, and settled in Russia. Poland, aided by French Knights Templars and the Grand Master of the Teutonic order, had put forward all her strength to resist the same division of the all-devouring army, while another wing attacked the Hungarians with half a million of men. Their entry into Europe was in such numbers and the excesses of cruelty committed by them were so alarming that their advance everywhere created terror. The Tartars — coming from Tartarus, as some of the Crusaders believed — were so little known, says Pachymer, that many declared they had the heads of dogs and fed upon human flesh. 1 Seen nearer, they were less formidable as individuals, though infernal, terrible, and invincible as an army. In 1258, the year before the recapture of Constantinople and the destruction of the Latin empire by the Greeks, Houlagou, the grandson of Genghis Khan, captured Bagdad, and deposed the last of the Bagdad caliphs. He extended his conquests over Mesopotamia and Syria to the Mediter- ranean. Damascus and Aleppo were sacked. Houlagou sought to ally himself with the Crusaders in order to over- throw the Saracens aftd the sultan of Egypt. When Houlagou turned his attention to Asia Minor, he The Seiju- found among the Christian populations a division of the Turkish race known as Seljuks, whose sultan resided at Konia, and called himself sultan of Roum. 2 He attacked and inflicted injuries upon them from which they never recovered. It is difficult to state precisely what were the boundaries of the Seljuks and of other Moslem or partly 1 Pach. ii. 25. 2 ' Roum ' is still the Turkish form of ' Rome,' and exists in the names Erze- roum, Roumelia, <fec.