THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 188

The Nomadic Way of War

12-15. The Nomadic Way of War

The high figures in the chronicles are fictions exaggerated by terror and imagination, seeing that large troops of horsemen, who recklessly destroyed everything around them, would not have found in a narrow space even the necessary pasture for their many horses. Each Mongol under Chinghiz Khan, for example, was obliged to take with him 18 horses and mares, so as always to have a fresh steed and sufficient mare's milk and horse's blood for food and drink. Two corps under the command of Sabutai and Chebe sufficed this great conqueror for the overthrow of West Asia. In four years they devastated and in great part depopulated Khorasan, North Persia, Azerbaidjan, Georgia, Armenia, Caucasia, the Crimea, and the Volga territories, took hundreds of towns, and utterly defeated in bloody engagements the large armies of the Georgians, Lesghians, Circassians, and Cumans, and the united forces of the Russian princes.

But they spared themselves as much as possible, by driving those of the subjugated people who were capable of bearing arms into the fight before them (as the Huns and Avars did previously), and cutting them down at once when they hesitated. But what the Altaian armies lacked in numbers was made up for by their skill in surprises, their fury, their cunning, mobility, and elusiveness, and the panic which preceded them and froze the blood of all peoples.

On their marvellously fleet horses they could traverse immense distances, and their scouts provided them with accurate local information as to the remotest lands and their weakness. Add to this the enormous advantage that among them even the most insignificant news spread like wildfire from aul to aul by means of voluntary couriers surpassing any intelligence department, however well organised. The tactics of the Mongols are described by Marco Polo in agreement with Piano Carpini and all the other writers as follows:

“They never let themselves come to close quarters, but keep perpetually riding round and shooting into the enemy. And as they do not count it any shame to run away in battle, they will sometimes pretend to do so, and in running away they turn in the saddle and shoot hard and strong at the foe, and in this way make great havoc. Their horses are trained so perfectly that they will double hither and thither, just like a dog, in a way that is quite astonishing Thus they fight to as good purpose in running away as if they stood and faced the enemy, because of the vast volleys of arrows that they shoot in this way, turning round upon their pursuers, who are fancying that they have won the battle. But when the Tartars see that they have killed and wounded a good many horses and men, they wheel round bodily and return to the charge in perfect order and with loud cries; and in a very short time the enemy are routed. In truth they are stout and valiant soldiers and inured to war. And you perceive that it is just when the enemy sees them run, and imagines that he has gained the battle, that he has in reality lost it; for the Tartars wheel round in a moment when they judge the right time has come. And after this fashion they have won many a fight.”

The chronicler, Peter of Zittau, in the year 1315, described the tactics of the Magyars in exactly the same way.

When a vigorous conqueror like Attila or Chinghiz arose among the mounted nomads and combined several hordes for a cyclonic advance, they swept all before them on the march, like a veritable avalanche of peoples. The news of the onward rolling flood scared the bravest people, and compelled them to fly from their homes; thus their neighbours, too, were set in tumultuous motion, and so it went on until some more powerful State took defensive measures and stemmed the tide of peoples. Now the fugitives had to face the assailant. A battle of nations was fought, the flower of famous peoples strewed the field, and powerful nations were wiped out. The deserted or devastated territories were occupied by peoples hitherto often quite unknown, or settled by nations forcibly brought there by the conqueror; States, generally without duration and kept together only by the one powerful hand, were founded. The giant State, having no cohesion from within, fell to pieces at the death of the conqueror or shortly after; but the sediment of peoples, together with a stratum of their nomad oppressors which remained from the flood, could not be pushed back again, and immense areas of a continent received once again an entirely new ethnography— the work of one single furious conqueror.

Oftener and longer than in Europe successive Altaian empires held together in Asia, where the original population had long become worn out by eternal servitude and the central zone of the steppes supplied a near and secure base for plundering hordes. That some of these Asiatic empires attained to a high degree of prosperity is not due to the conquerors, who indeed quickly demongolised themselves by marriage with aliens, but was the consequence of the geographical position, the productivity of the soil, and the resigned tractableness and adaptability of the subjugated who, in spite of all the splendour of their masters, were forced to languish in helpless servitude.

Out of Central Asia from time immemorial one nomad horde after another broke into the steppes of South Russia and of Hungary, and after exterminating or pushing out their predecessors and occupying their territories, used this new base to harry and enslave the surrounding peoples far and wide, forcibly transforming their whole being, as in Ferghana. But the bestial fury of the nomads not only laid bare the country, recklessly depopulated enormous tracts, dragged off entire peoples and forcibly transplanted and enslaved them, but where their sway was of any duration they brought their subjects down to the level of brutes, and extirpated every trace of nobler feeling from their souls. Central Asia of today, as Vambery states from personal observation, is a sink of all vices.

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