Grassland Empire

Author: René Grousset (France)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-04-01
Features: Attila, Genghis Khan, and Timur—names that are widely known. Western chroniclers and Chinese or Persian chroniclers have narrated their stories, making them famous. These great barbarians invaded developed historical civilizations and, within a few years, reduced Rome, Iran, or China to ruins. Their arrival, motives, and disappearance are so difficult to explain that even today, historians tend to accept the conclusions of ancient writers, viewing them as the Scourge of God, sent to punish ancient civilizations. However, like these people, we are not children of the earth; rather, we are more the products of our environment. Nevertheless, as we gradually learn about their way of life, their behavior, and their motivations, they become clear. Their sturdy and agile physiques (which made them invincible in such harsh environments) are the product of the steppe. The biting winds and extreme cold and heat of the plateau have shaped their features: their raised eyes, prominent cheekbones, and curly hair, as well as their strong bodies. The need to migrate seasonally in pursuit of pastures determined their unique nomadic lifestyle; the urgent demands of nomadic economics determined their relationship with settled peoples; this relationship alternated between timid imitation and bloodthirsty raids. These three or four great Asian nomads tore through the fabric of history, suddenly approaching us, leaving us astonished—only because of our own ignorance. For these three individuals, who became the astonishing image of world conquerors, how many Atillas, how many Genghis Khans failed? Failure, that is, means that they had to do more than establish a limited empire that included a quarter of Asia, with borders stretching from Siberia to the Yellow River, from the Altai Mountains to Persia—yet, one must admit, this was already a significant achievement. I would like to introduce to you this great barbarian people, led by these three giants—Attila, Genghis Khan, and Timur—because they marched through history for ten centuries, their activities extending from the borders of China to the borders of Europe. We should make a strict definition of the term "barbarian." Classical antiquity came into contact with various barbarians, that is, the peoples so named by their neighbors. For the Romans, the Celts were barbarians for a long time, just as the Germans were to the Gauls, and the Slavic world was to the German regions. Similarly, the areas later known as southern China were long considered barbarian lands by the Chinese, who originated in the Yellow River basin. However, because the geographical conditions of all these regions led their inhabitants to adopt a farming lifestyle, they gradually overcame backwardness and integrated themselves into agricultural life, so that by the late Middle Ages, almost all of Europe, West Asia, Iran, India, and China had reached the same material civilization stage. Yet, one important region did not undergo this transformation process, namely the vast area stretching from the northeastern border of China to Budapest, along the northern part of the Central Asian continent. This is the grassland, where the Siberian forests extend from its northern edge. The geographical conditions of the grassland only allow for a few patches of arable land to exist, so the inhabitants are forced to adopt a nomadic pastoral lifestyle, just like other humans in the late Neolithic era. Some of these tribes (i.e., those in the forest regions) indeed remained stuck in the cultural stage of Magdalenian hunters. Therefore, the grasslands and forests remained in a state of barbarism—not to say that the people living there were less intelligent than those in other regions, but rather that, due to the natural conditions of this region, it long retained a lifestyle that other regions had already abandoned. When the rest of Asia had entered the advanced agricultural stage, these pastoral peoples survived, and this fact played a very important role in historical drama. A temporal shift occurred between neighboring peoples. People of the second millennium BCE coexisted with those of the 12th century CE. Nomadic peoples moved from one tribe to another—those from southern Outer Mongolia would reach Beijing, or those from the Kirghiz steppe would ascend Isfahan. Sudden changes occurred, and they were full of danger. For settled peoples in China, Iran, and Europe, the Huns, Turkmen, and Mongols were indeed barbaric. They were frightened by the weapons they were shown, attracted by glass beads and titles of nobility, and maintained a certain distance from the farmland. The attitude of the nomads is easy to imagine. These Turkic-Mongol pastoralists crossed one dry ditch after another in drought-stricken years, risking traversing the desolate grasslands to reach the edge of the farmland, standing in shock at the gates of settled civilization—mature crops, villages filled with grain, and magnificent cities. This miracle, or its secret—the hard work required to sustain human prosperity—was beyond the understanding of the Huns. If he was tempted, he would act like his totem, the wolf, sneaking into the farm in a snowstorm, spying on the prey within the bamboo fences. He also harbored the ancient urge to break into the fences, raid, and escape with the spoils. The pastoral-hunting communities that survived alongside agricultural communities, or, to put it another way, the agricultural communities that developed in areas where they could see and interact with other pastoral peoples (who endured the horrifying famine inherent in the grasslands during drought periods) continued to thrive. Not only did these communities exhibit significant economic disparities but also more brutal social disparities. Let me repeat, the problem of human geography became a social problem. The mutual attitudes between settled peoples and nomadic peoples remind us of the relationship between the capitalist upper class and the proletariat in a modern city. The agricultural communities that cultivated the fertile yellow soil of northern China, the gardens of Iran, or the fertile black soil of Kyiv were surrounded by a barren pasture, where the climate was often harsh. The pasture experienced droughts every ten years, water sources dried up, pastures withered, livestock died, and with them, the nomads themselves died. Under these conditions, the regular advance of nomadic peoples into agricultural regions became a natural law. Moreover, these nomads, whether Turkic or Mongol, were highly intelligent, calm, and pragmatic. Trained by the harsh realities of their environment, they were always ready to obey orders. When settled communities, usually those in decline, surrendered under their fierce attacks, they entered the cities. After the initial hours of slaughter, they took over the positions of the defeated rulers without much difficulty, shamelessly occupying the historically and revered thrones of the Great Khans of China, the Kings of Persia, the Emperors of India, and the Sultans of Rum, adopting titles appropriate to themselves. In Beijing, he became half-Chinese, and in Isfahan and Rayy, he became half-Persian. Was the long-term harmony between the grassland and the city the final result? Absolutely not. The irresistible laws of human geography continued to operate. Even if the Chinese- or Iranian-ized khans were not overthrown by local resistance (whether slow or sudden), new nomadic tribes from the depths of the grassland—i.e., the hungry tribes—would appear on their borders, viewing them as just another Tajik or Tuoba, a Persian or Chinese, and repeating this adventure, putting them in a disadvantageous position. How could these adventures mostly succeed? How could the same melody repeat itself over the entire 13 centuries, from the Huns entering Luoyang to the Manchus entering Beijing? The answer is: although the pastoralists developed more slowly in material culture, they always possessed significant military advantages. They were mounted archers. This specialized unit consisted of archers with exquisite archery skills and cavalry with incredible agility, giving them a huge advantage over settled peoples, just as cannons gave modern Europe an advantage over the rest of the world. In fact, neither the Chinese nor the Iranians had overlooked this cavalry. The Chinese adopted their horse-riding attire as early as the 3rd century BCE. The Persians had long appreciated the of the rain of arrows shot by cavalry in retreat during the Parthian era. However, in this field, the Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Poles, and Hungarians never matched the Mongols. From childhood, they were trained to run across the boundless grasslands chasing deer, accustomed to patient stalking and skilled in the various tricks of capturing prey (their food source). They were invincible. It is not that they often encountered enemies, but rather that after launching a sudden attack on their enemies, they disappeared, then reappeared, relentlessly pursuing them, never allowing themselves to be caught, tormenting and exhausting their opponents until their opponents were exhausted. This cavalry's deceptive agility and omnipresent illusion, once mastered by Genghis Khan's two great generals, Jebe (Chubei) and Subutai, gave it a collective wisdom. Plano Carpin and Rubruquis witnessed this cavalry in battle and were stunned by its decisive technical superiority. The Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legion had perished because they were products of Macedonian and Roman regimes, the result of organized state deployments. Like all states, they rose, developed, and perished. Meanwhile, the mounted archers of the grasslands ruled over Eurasia for 13 centuries, because they were natural products of the earth, the product of hunger and desire, the pastoralists who had survived the years of famine. When Genghis Khan successfully conquered the world, he could do so because, even as an orphan abandoned on the Kerulen grasslands, he and his brother Turgut had brought back enough game daily, ensuring they were not starved to death. For antiquity and the Middle Ages, the arrows shot and hurled by the mounted archers were a non-direct combat weapon, one that had the power to destroy enemy morale at the time, almost as effective as the bullets of modern marksmen. What factors ended this advantage? Since the 16th century, how did pastoral peoples no longer dominate settled peoples at will? The reason is that the latter used cannons against them. Overnight, they suddenly gained an overwhelming advantage over the pastoralists. The long-standing reversal of positions had occurred. Ivan the Terrible drove the last successors of the Golden Horde away with the sound of cannons; the Kangxi Emperor of China intimidated the Kalmyks with the sound of cannons. The rumble of cannons marked the end of a period in world history. The military advantage, second and will forever shift, with civilization becoming stronger than barbarism. In just a few hours, the traditional advantage of the pastoralists had become an apparently unrealistic past. In 1807, on the battlefield, the romantic Tsar Alexander called up the Kalmyk archers to fight Napoleon, like hunters of the Magdalenian era, outdated. However, since these archers ceased to be world conquerors, it has only been three centuries.