The Probert Encyclopaedia of People

GENGHIS KHAN

Genghis Khan was a Mongolian chieftain and warrior. He was born in 1162 and died in 1227. His father was chief over thirty or forty clans, but paid tribute to the Tartar Khan. He succeeded his father when only fourteen years of age, and made himself master of the neighbouring tribes. A great number of tribes now combined their forces against him. But he found a powerful protector in the great Khan of the Karaite Mongols, Oung, or Ung, who gave him his daughter in marriage. After much intestine warfare with various Tartar tribes Genghis was proclaimed Khan of the United Mongol and Tartar tribes. He now professed to have a divine call to conquer the world, and the idea so animated the spirit of his soldiers that they were easily led on to new wars.

The country of the Uigurs, in the centre of Tartary, had long excited his ambition. This nation was easily subdued, and Genghis Khan was now master of the greatest part of Tartary. Soon after several Tartar tribes put themselves under his dominion, and in 1209 he passed the great wall of China. The conquest of China occupied the Mongols more than six years. The capital, then called Yenking, now Beijing, was taken by storm in 1215 and plundered. The murder of the ambassadors whom Genghis Khan had sent to the King of Kharism (now Khiva) occasioned the invasion of Turkestan in 1218 with an army of 700,000 men; and the two cities of Bokhara and Samarcand were stormed, pillaged, and burned. Seven years in succession was the conqueror busy in the work of destruction, pillage, and subjugation, and extended his ravages to the banks of the Dnieper.

In 1225, though more than sixty years old, he marched in person at the head of his whole army against the King of Tangut (South-western China), who had given shelter to two of his enemies, and had refused to give them up. A great battle was fought, in which the King of Tangut was totally defeated with the loss of 300,000 men. The victor remained some time in his newly-subdued provinces, from which he also sent two of his sons to complete the conquest of Northern China. At his death his immense dominions were divided among his four sons.
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