Genghis proclaimed himself the scourge of God, and he did in fact
realize the vastest empire known to history, stretching from the Blue
Sea to the Baltic, and from the vast plains of Siberia to the banks of
the sacred Ganges. The most solid empires of the ancient world were
overthrown by the tramp of his horsemen and the shafts of his archers.
From the tumult into which he threw the western continent there issued
certain vast results: the fall of the Byzantine empire, involving the
Renaissance, the voyages of discovery in Asia, undertaken from both
sides of the globe--that is to say, Gama and Columbus; the formation of
the Turkish empire; and the preparation of the Russian empire. This
tremendous hurricane, starting from the high Asiatic tablelands, felled
the decaying oaks and worm-eaten buildings of the whole ancient world.
The descent of the yellow, flat-nosed Mongols upon Europe is a
historical cyclone which devastated and purified our thirteenth century,
and broke, at the two ends of the known world, through two great Chinese
walls--that which protected the ancient empire of the Center, and that
which made a barrier of ignorance and superstition round the little
world of Christendom. Attila, Genghis, Tamerlane, ought to range in the
memory of men with Caesar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon.
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