The Squall from the East

Untitled Part 1

The Squall from the East

If Latin Europe hadn't been filled to the brim with its own woes, it wouldn't have disregarded the latest developments in the Far East.

There, on the far side of the inhabited world, the emerging superpower, which had managed to unite diverse groups of pastoral nomads, launched a sequence of military campaigns, wiping out neighboring states one by one.

All of a sudden, the 'devil's horsemen' broke into Eastern Europe. The Russian chronicler found it difficult to identify unfamiliar assailants who had scared the Rus' traditional rivals, the Cumans, out of their wits, coercing them into a strained alliance with their traditional adversaries. Nothing could halt the incomprehensible fit of the wrath. The learned cleric was baffled by the intruders' origin, religion, or vernacular: "unknown tribe came, which no one exactly knows, who they are, nor whence they came out, nor what their language is, nor of what race they are, nor what their faith is." (1)

However, their names would run ahead of their galloping steeds. The well-versed people dubbed them 'Tartars'-in tune with the legendary denizens of hell.

Fifteen years later, while the same invaders were making their second incursion into Europe and the mortal threat was already hanging upon the entire population of the Rus' principalities, the same writer added two macabre features to their group portrait: their overwhelming quantities: "came in countless numbers like locusts" and their ruthlessness: "cutting down everybody like grass." (2)

The monastic author reviewed the outcome of a thoroughly-planned Mongol campaign carried out by a well-greased military machine. The winners exercised the mass slaughter of the civilian population without distinction of age, rank, or sex. Those who stayed alive were subjected to heinous humiliation, like raping girls in the presence of their mothers. Being unable to comprehend this outburst of rage against innocent people, the monk explains the event in terms of an ecological disaster (the invasion of insects) or as an apocalyptic incident (the retribution for sins).

The same year the bell tolled for the Latin Christendom. The head of the terrible Assassins and the Crusaders' bitter enemy, nicknamed 'the old man of the mountain', dispatched ambassadors to the French and English kings, urging them to weld an alliance against "the fury of the Tartars." The Saracen envoys elaborated that the leader of these rascals claimed to have received the divine mandate to conquer any race that would oppose his will. He was the self-proclaimed God's messenger "sent to subdue the nations who rebelled against him."

To lay it on thick, the Muslim envoys described the Mongols as the "monstrous and inhuman race of men" that built up a reputation of "incomparable archers" but stained it by eating raw meat, sucking blood, and practicing cannibalism. They broke through the Caspian Mountains and spread like a pandemic: "sent as a plague on mankind." (3)

All these warnings had fallen on deaf ears. Very soon, the West had to experience the same stinking odor of disaster. The steppe horsemen knew no mercy: they put to the sword the royal armies and reduced the cities to ashes. They may have breached the legendary Alexander Gate (4), which the Greek conqueror (that is European and thus legitimate) erected to separate the civilized and nomadic realms: "to shut [barbarians] up... by walls cemented with bitumen." (5)

No European force could defy the intruders' military prowess and thwart their further thrust. Their narrow eyes could spot Vienna through the smoke of blazing cities and the stench of bodies left unburied. The hooves of their mounts trampled on the Adriatic seaboard of Dalmatia in search of the fleeing Hungarian king.

The entire Latin world seemed unable to cope with the vigor of the unleashed hordes and resigned itself to the fate of its orthodox coreligionists. The contemporary English chronicler, Friar Matthew Paris, presents the Mongol onslaught as a blend of natural calamity akin to a volcano eruption, an eschatological mystery (breaking through the impenetrable hurdle), and a moral disaster (their fearless warriors act as the epitome of monstrosity). (6) Although they didn't seem to care, the encroachers had always had bad press.