Friday, May 24, 2019

The Scourge of God


Image: The Fair Death of Prester John in a Mounting Battle Against Chinggis Khan 

The following chapter ushers in a new metamorphose of Prester John's character. A powerful potentate functions as an underdog in his fight against the Mongols. The new episode is connected to the all-out war in the eastern steppes, in the course of which Chinggis Khan managed to unite 'felt-walled' nomads into an invincible army. Here goes an extract:

“A clever fighter is one who not only wins but excels in winning with ease.” (-Sun Tzu) 

     The steppe is a swath of grasslands extending east and west for thousands of unbroken miles between Manchuria and Hungary. The poor soil unable to sustain peasants toiling in their allotments suffers from the scorching sun in mid-summer and freezing cold in mid-winter.

     The Mongols were a mixed blend of pastoral groups and individuals of diverse ethnic origin. From times immemorial they had followed their flocks and herds in a constant quest for tasty grass and sweet water, moving across the prairies at a pace of swapping seasons. Not as organized as professional soldiers and not as drilled as reserve units, they maintained their own merits like amazing endurance to hardships and expertise at horseback shooting.

       Intrepid hunters, they often merged into para-military factions to plunder the people of the sown. Nomadic assaults against settled quarters had always brought grave damage. However, both the ability of the ground troops to repel these incursions and the willingness of cautious leaders to buy the obedience of mounted archers kept the vandalism at the tolerable level.

      The vagaries of the nomadic lifestyle dispersed these hunters and herders throughout the length and breadth of the boundless steppe. It took the genius of the leader in the making to consolidate them into the well-oiled military machine braced for carrying out his legacy: to incorporate the fearless warriors into the ruling elite of the largest intact land empire on earth. He strove to switch the military strategy from episodic mounting raids in time of need to the full-time occupation of the controlled territories.

       The world still remembers Chinggis Khan by his resounding title which means the ‘ruler  of the universe’.  It might have been copied from the Son of Heaven, the Chinese royal designation which denotes a semi-divine sovereign possessing a cosmic mandate of absolute power.

     The realm into which the infant called Temujin was born shaped him as the unchallenged leader of the people residing in felt-walled tents. The third son of his father, Temujin endured a tempestuous childhood. At the age of nine, he was bereft of his father while his immediate family-two widows with seven kids on their hands- were abandoned by their clan. With nothing to fall back on hard times, they lived on the edge, sustaining on fishing, hunting, and scrounging to meet the needs of basic existence.

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