Fact check: Romney’s RNC acceptance speech
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-08-31/mitt-romney-fact-check-republican-convention/57467252/1
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Mr.V
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All posts for the month August, 2012
Battle of Crecy
During the Hundred Years War, King Edward III’s English army annihilates a French force under King Philip VI at the Battle of Crecy in Normandy. The battle, which saw an early use of the deadly longbow by the English, is regarded as one of the most decisive in history.
On July 12, 1346, Edward landed an invasion force of about 14,000 men on the coast of Normandy. From there, the English army marched northward, plundering the French countryside. Learning of the Englishmen’s arrival, King Philip rallied an army of 12,000 men, made up of approximately 8,000 mounted knights and 4,000 hired Genoese crossbowmen. At Crecy, Edward halted his army and prepared for the French assault. Late in the afternoon of August 26, Philip’s army attacked.
The Genoese crossbowmen led the assault, but they were soon overwhelmed by Edward’s 10,000 longbowmen, who could reload faster and fire much further. The crossbowmen then retreated and the French mounted knights attempted to penetrate the English infantry lines. In charge after charge, the horses and riders were cut down in the merciless shower of arrows. At nightfall, the French finally withdrew. Nearly a third of their army lay slain on the field, including Philip’s brother, Charles II of Alencon; his allies King John of Bohemia and Louis II of Nevers; and 1,500 other knights and esquires. Philip himself escaped with a wound. English losses were less than a hundred.
The battle marked the decline of the mounted knight in European warfare and the rise of England as a world power. From Crecy, Edward marched on to Calais, which surrendered to him in 1347.
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Council of Nicaea concludes
The Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical debate held by the early Christian church, concludes with the establishment of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Convened by Roman Emperor Constantine I in May, the council also deemed the Arian belief of Christ as inferior to God as heretical, thus resolving an early church crisis.
The controversy began when Arius, an Alexandrian priest, questioned the full divinity of Christ because, unlike God, Christ was born and had a beginning. What began as an academic theological debate spread to Christian congregations throughout the empire, threatening a schism in the early Christian church. Roman Emperor Constantine I, who converted to Christianity in 312, called bishops from all over his empire to resolve the crisis and urged the adoption of a new creed that would resolve the ambiguities between Christ and God.
Meeting at Nicaea in present-day Turkey, the council established the equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the Holy Trinity and asserted that only the Son became incarnate as Jesus Christ. The Arian leaders were subsequently banished from their churches for heresy. The Emperor Constantine presided over the opening of the council and contributed to the discussion.
Mr.V
Those of us who live on the main hurricane thoroughfares in Florida, the tornado alleys of the midwest, or along the geological faults of the West Coast, we have ancient brethren in Herculaneum and Pompeii.
Lead Story
After centuries of dormancy, Mount Vesuvius erupts in southern Italy, devastating the prosperous Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing thousands. The cities, buried under a thick layer of volcanic material and mud, were never rebuilt and largely forgotten in the course of history. In the 18th century, Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered and excavated, providing an unprecedented archaeological record of the everyday life of an ancient civilization, startlingly preserved in sudden death.
The ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum thrived near the base of Mount Vesuvius at the Bay of Naples. In the time of the early Roman Empire, 20,000 people lived in Pompeii, including merchants, manufacturers, and farmers who exploited the rich soil of the region with numerous vineyards and orchards. None suspected that the black fertile earth was the legacy of earlier eruptions of Mount Vesuvius. Herculaneum was a city of 5,000 and a favorite summer destination for rich Romans. Named for the mythic hero Hercules, Herculaneum housed opulent villas and grand Roman baths. Gambling artifacts found in Herculaneum and a brothel unearthed in Pompeii attest to the decadent nature of the cities. There were smaller resort communities in the area as well, such as the quiet little town of Stabiae.
At noon on August 24, 79 A.D., this pleasure and prosperity came to an end when the peak of Mount Vesuvius exploded, propelling a 10-mile mushroom cloud of ash and pumice into the stratosphere. For the next 12 hours, volcanic ash and a hail of pumice stones up to 3 inches in diameter showered Pompeii, forcing the city’s occupants to flee in terror. Some 2,000 people stayed in Pompeii, holed up in cellars or stone structures, hoping to wait out the eruption.
A westerly wind protected Herculaneum from the initial stage of the eruption, but then a giant cloud of hot ash and gas surged down the western flank of Vesuvius, engulfing the city and burning or asphyxiating all who remained. This lethal cloud was followed by a flood of volcanic mud and rock, burying the city.
The people who remained in Pompeii were killed on the morning of August 25 when a cloud of toxic gas poured into the city, suffocating all that remained. A flow of rock and ash followed, collapsing roofs and walls and burying the dead.
Much of what we know about the eruption comes from an account by Pliny the Younger, who was staying west along the Bay of Naples when Vesuvius exploded. In two letters to the historian Tacitus, he told of how “people covered their heads with pillows, the only defense against a shower of stones,” and of how “a dark and horrible cloud charged with combustible matter suddenly broke and set forth. Some bewailed their own fate. Others prayed to die.” Pliny, only 17 at the time, escaped the catastrophe and later became a noted Roman writer and administrator. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, was less lucky. Pliny the Elder, a celebrated naturalist, at the time of the eruption was the commander of the Roman fleet in the Bay of Naples. After Vesuvius exploded, he took his boats across the bay to Stabiae, to investigate the eruption and reassure terrified citizens. After going ashore, he was overcome by toxic gas and died.
According to Pliny the Younger’s account, the eruption lasted 18 hours. Pompeii was buried under 14 to 17 feet of ash and pumice, and the nearby seacoast was drastically changed. Herculaneum was buried under more than 60 feet of mud and volcanic material. Some residents of Pompeii later returned to dig out their destroyed homes and salvage their valuables, but many treasures were left and then forgotten.
In the 18th century, a well digger unearthed a marble statue on the site of Herculaneum. The local government excavated some other valuable art objects, but the project was abandoned. In 1748, a farmer found traces of Pompeii beneath his vineyard. Since then, excavations have gone on nearly without interruption until the present. In 1927, the Italian government resumed the excavation of Herculaneum, retrieving numerous art treasures, including bronze and marble statues and paintings.
The remains of 2,000 men, women, and children were found at Pompeii. After perishing from asphyxiation, their bodies were covered with ash that hardened and preserved the outline of their bodies. Later, their bodies decomposed to skeletal remains, leaving a kind of plaster mold behind. Archaeologists who found these molds filled the hollows with plaster, revealing in grim detail the death pose of the victims of Vesuvius. The rest of the city is likewise frozen in time, and ordinary objects that tell the story of everyday life in Pompeii are as valuable to archaeologists as the great unearthed statues and frescoes. It was not until 1982 that the first human remains were found at Herculaneum, and these hundreds of skeletons bear ghastly burn marks that testifies to horrifying deaths.
Today, Mount Vesuvius is the only active volcano on the European mainland. Its last eruption was in 1944 and its last major eruption was in 1631. Another eruption is expected in the near future, would could be devastating for the 700,000 people who live in the “death zones” around Vesuvius.
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http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dolley-madison-saves-portrait-from-british
What a show of respect was this act by the First Lady.
Dolley Madison saves portrait from British
On this day in 1814, first lady Dolley Madison saves a portrait of George Washington from being looted by British troops during the war of 1812.
According to the White House Historical Society and Dolley’s personal letters, President James Madison left the White House on August 22 to meet with his generals on the battlefield, as British troops threatened to enter the capitol. Before leaving, he asked his wife Dolley if she had the “courage or firmness” to wait for his intended return the next day. He asked her to gather important state papers and be prepared to abandon the White House at any moment. The next day, Dolley and a few servants scanned the horizon with spyglasses waiting for either Madison or the British army to show up. As British troops gathered in the distance, Dolley decided to abandon the couple’s personal belongings and save the full-length portrait of former president and national icon George Washington from desecration by vengeful British soldiers, many of whom would have rejoiced in humiliating England’s former colonists.
Dolley wrote to her sister on the night of August 23 that a friend who came to help her escape was exasperated at her insistence on saving the portrait. Since the painting was screwed to the wall she ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas pulled out and rolled up. Two unidentified “gentlemen from New York” hustled it away for safe-keeping. (Unbeknownst to Dolley, the portrait was actually a copy of Gilbert Stuart’s original). The task complete, Dolley wrote “and now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it by filling up the road I am directed to take.” Dolley left the White House and found her husband at their predetermined meeting place in the middle of a thunderstorm.
The next night, August 24, British troops enjoyed feasting on White House food using the president’s silverware and china before burning the building. Although they were able to return to Washington only three days later when British troops moved on, the Madisons were not again able to take up residence in the White House and lived out the rest of his term in the city’s Octagon House. It was not until 1817 that newly elected President James Monroe moved back into the reconstructed building.
Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!
How refreshing it would be to have a modern politician speak clearly and succinctly as President Lincoln. Political correctness was not Mr. Lincoln’s forte, but when he spoke or wrote you are compelled to think more deeply about the topic. By thinking deeply I don’t suggest with greater complexity. Instead, I mean to think fundamentally- basic or foundational elements. In this article, I believe you’ll see this come through.
Lincoln replies to Horace Greeley
President Abraham Lincoln writes a carefully worded letter in response to an abolitionist editorial by Horace Greeley, the editor of the influential New York Tribune, and hints at a change in his policy concerning slavery.
From the outset of the Civil War, Lincoln proclaimed the war’s goal to be the reunion of the nation. He said little about slavery for fear of alienating key constituencies such as the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and, to a lesser extent, Delaware. Each of these states allowed slavery but had not seceded from the Union. Lincoln was also concerned about Northern Democrats, who generally opposed fighting the war to free the slaves but whose support Lincoln needed.
Tugging him in the other direction were abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Horace Greeley. In his editorial, “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” Greeley assailed Lincoln for his soft treatment of slaveholders and for his unwillingness to enforce the Confiscation Acts, which called for the property, including slaves, of Confederates to be taken when their homes were captured by Union forces. Abolitionists saw the acts as a wedge to drive into the institution of slavery.
Lincoln had been toying with the idea of emancipation for some time. He discussed it with his cabinet but decided that some military success was needed to give the measure credibility. In his response to Greeley’s editorial, Lincoln hinted at a change. In a rare public response to criticism, he articulated his policy by stating, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.” Although this sounded noncommittal, Lincoln closed by stating, “I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.”
By hinting that ending slavery might become a goal of the war, Lincoln was preparing the public for the change in policy that would come one month later with the Emancipation Proclamation.
Mr.V
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/us/war-in-afghanistan-claims-2000th-american-life.html?_r=1&emc=na
Very interesting statistics presented in the article. Historically in the United States, military enlistments and the casualties that arise from conflict are reflective of societal issues. Vietnam, of course, is an intriguing comparison. In Rising Toll, Signs of a Changing Conflict
His war was almost over. Or so Marina Buckley thought when her son Lance Cpl. Gregory T. Buckley Jr. told her that he would be returning from southern Afghanistan to his Marine Corps base in Hawaii in late August, three months early.
Instead, Lance Corporal Buckley became the 1,990th American service member to die in the war when, on Aug. 10, he and two other Marines were shot inside their base in Helmand Province by a man who appears to have been a member of the Afghan forces they were training.
A week later, with the death of Specialist James A. Justice of the Army in a military hospital in Germany, the United States military reached 2,000 dead in the nearly 11-year-old conflict, based on an analysis by The New York Times of Department of Defense records. The calculation by The Times includes deaths not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and other nations where American forces are directly involved in aiding the war.
Nearly nine years passed before American forces reached their first 1,000 dead in the war. The second 1,000 came just 27 months later, a testament to the intensity of fighting prompted by President Obama’s decision to send 33,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2010, a policy known as the surge.
In more ways than his family might have imagined, Lance Corporal Buckley, who had just turned 21 when he died, typified the troops in that second wave of 1,000. According to the Times analysis, three out of four were white, nine out of 10 were enlisted service members, and one out of two died in either Kandahar Province or Helmand Province in Taliban-dominated southern Afghanistan. Their average age was 26.
The dead were also disproportionately Marines like Lance Corporal Buckley. Though the Army over all has suffered more dead in the war, the Marine Corps, with fewer troops, has had a higher casualty rate: At the height of fighting in late 2010, two out of every 1,000 Marines in Afghanistan were dying, twice the rate of the Army. Marine units accounted for three of the five units hardest hit during the surge.
Suffering the most casualties was the Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment out of Camp Pendleton, Calif. Twenty-five of its Marines died and more than 180 were wounded, many with multiple amputations, during a bloody seven-month deployment in Helmand that began in fall 2010.
The analysis also shows that Army casualties during the surge fell heaviest on two bases with frequently deployed units: Fort Campbell in Kentucky, home to the 101st Airborne Division, which recorded the most Army deaths in the surge, and Fort Drum in New York, home to the 10th Mountain Division.
The summer remained the peak season for fighting, with the single highest period for American deaths being July, August and September 2010, when at least 143 troops died. And as has been the case since at least 2008, improvised explosive devices, known as I.E.D.’s, remained a leading cause of death and injury, along with small-arms fire, the analysis showed.
But this year, a new threat emerged: attacks by Afghans dressed in the uniforms of Afghan security forces. In just the past two weeks, at least nine Americans have been killed in such insider attacks, and for the year to date, at least 39 non-Afghan troops, most of them American, have been killed by men dressed as members of the Afghan security forces, the most since the war began.
Those insider attacks have increased concerns about NATO’s ability to turn security operations over to Afghan forces by 2014, the deadline set by President Obama for withdrawing the remaining American forces. For families, the deaths have raised hard questions about whether the Pentagon is doing enough to protect its troops from their own allies.
Though Afghanistan is now considered the nation’s longest war, at 128 months and counting, the number of dead is less than half the total in the Iraq war, where more than 4,480 died in eight years. More active-duty and reserve soldiers killed themselves last year, 278, than died in combat in Afghanistan, 247.
None of that brings solace to the families of the dead. For the Buckleys, of Oceanside, N.Y., their son’s death so near the end of his tour, so late in the long war and possibly at the hand of a purported ally, was uniquely anguishing.
As Mrs. Buckley recounted things her son loved — basketball, girls, movies, the beach — bitterness choked her words.
“Our forces shouldn’t be there,” she said. “It should be over. It’s done. No more.”
A Unit Hit Hard
Eddie Goldberger contributed reporting.
The Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., was emblematic of the surge. Sent into Sangin, Afghanistan’s opium-producing heartland, in 2010, the battalion faced a formidable enemy expert in the use of I.E.D.’s., losing 25 Marines in a seven-month tour, the second most of any American unit in the entire war, a Times analysis shows.
Mark Moyar, an independent national security analyst who has studied the battalion’s operations, said that the British who had preceded the Marines in Sangin, a district in Helmand, focused on economic development and political outreach to undermine the insurgency. But the Taliban also operated with near impunity in parts of the district, he said.
The battalion took a different approach, pushing into Taliban-dominated villages and expanding the security bubble beyond combat outposts and Afghan commercial centers. Fighting was intense, with civilians often getting caught in the middle, and casualties piled up fast.
On Oct. 8, barely two weeks after the battalion landed, it lost its first Marine, Lance Cpl. John T. Sparks. Five days later, four Marines of the battalion died when their armored truck was decimated by a powerful bomb. Three more died the next day when they stepped on a mine during a foot patrol.
The rapid-fire deaths prompted calls in Washington for the battalion to pull back. But senior Marine commanders — including the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jason Morris — prevailed on Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates to leave them in place.
“Everyone was shocked, including me, that we lost that many guys that quickly,” Colonel Morris said. “But honestly, me and most of my Marines would have rather come home in body bags than let the Taliban claim a victory.”
Deanna Giles, the mother of a squad leader from the battalion, remembers those days all too well. Amid the blur of casualty reports, Ms. Giles began watching for strange cars in her neighborhood in Kankakee, Ill., fearing the next one would bear horrible news.
Anxiously seeking information or solace, she took to Facebook and Marine Corps chat rooms, forming a powerful digital bond with other families from the battalion, whom she never met in person.
“You began to care about people in a way you could not have before the Internet age,” Ms. Giles said.
Her son, Sgt. Caleb Giles, came home alive. Patty Schumacher’s son, Lance Cpl. Victor A. Dew, did not.
Ms. Schumacher had begged her son to defer enlisting until the war ended. When he refused, she urged him to take a job with a presidential security detail. He again said no, determined to be an infantryman and to go to war.
“Boy, did my heart sink,” she recalled. “But I was also proud of him for following his true desires. As a parent you just suck it up, hold your heart and take a deep breath and hope all goes well.”
In late August 2010, Lance Corporal Dew proposed to his girlfriend, then was deployed a month later. Within weeks of arriving in Helmand, he died with three other Marines in a powerful I.E.D. blast. At age 20, he became the 1,259th American to die in the war.
Inside his coffin, his fiancée placed a photograph of herself, wearing her wedding gown.
Ms. Schumacher maintains a Facebook page to keep his memory fresh, and occasionally toasts him at dinner with tequila. She still cries, too, though the tears are hard to predict, prompted by stray images and fleeting sounds that remind her of him: a smile, a song, a joke.
“When do you get better? You don’t ever get better,” she said. “You just get better in your grieving. There will always be something that triggers it. And then you are back on that emotional roller coaster.”
Attacks From Afghans
Staff Sgt. Scott E. Dickinson was coming home early. He was originally scheduled to remain in Helmand until November 2012, but the Pentagon was pulling Marines out of Afghanistan quickly, looking to get the surge forces out of the country by fall and shrink the American footprint to about 70,000 troops. He would be home in Hawaii within a week or two, he told his father early this month.
Eddie Goldberger contributed reporting.
Not long after that conversation, his father, John Dickinson, saw an article about a soldier who had died just a week before he was to come home. “I thought, ‘He’s not safe until he sets foot in Hawaii,’ ” recalled Mr. Dickinson, an architect in San Diego.
He was right. Sergeant Dickinson, 29, a supply specialist who had volunteered to help train Afghan forces, died with Lance Corporal Buckley on Aug. 10. They were among six Marines killed that day in two separate attacks by men who appeared to be Afghan security force members.
The Pentagon asserts that most of those attacks have been the result of personal grudges, disputing Taliban claims to have widely infiltrated the Afghan security forces.
But the attacks have also raised anew concerns about the integrity of the Afghan forces that NATO expects to secure the entire nation after NATO troops withdraw in 2014.
More fundamentally, the continued deaths, occurring even as American forces are conducting fewer combat missions, have prompted service members and military families alike to wonder: has the decade-long American presence in Afghanistan made a difference?
Colonel Morris, the former commander for the Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, has little doubt that it has. After months of fierce fighting, he saw clear changes when he left Sangin in early 2011. Those improvements remain, he asserts, with residents participating in elections and going to school with less fear of Taliban intimidation — though such intimidation is far from gone.
“Every single Marine in my battalion could see the impact they had,” he said. “Things had changed so dramatically, it was a validation of everything they had sacrificed for.”
Despite his son’s death, Mr. Dickinson agrees. Marina Buckley is not so sure.
She recalled how her son watched “The Notebook” five times with her because he was a romantic. “He was the most lovable, caring human being,” she said. “He wore his heart on his sleeve. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”
He had wanted to join the Marine Corps ever since 9/11, despite her many attempts to dissuade him. By the time he was in high school a Marine Corps flag hung in his bedroom and her efforts to get him to go to college — Adelphi University accepted him his senior year — had failed.
“I’d say, ‘Why the Marines?’ ” she said, and he would reply with a joke. “I can pick up a lot of chicks with that uniform,” he would say.
But his ambition was serious: he wanted to serve, then become a Suffolk County police officer. He came to relish the brotherhood of the Marines and adored his first posting, in Hawaii. But deployment was a different matter. The loneliness, the heat and the Meals Ready to Eat wore on him, Ms. Buckley said.
And he never felt secure living alongside Afghans, she said.
“If they want to kill themselves, let them,” she said of the Afghan people. “But they are killing people who shouldn’t be killed, who have lives here, and family here, and brothers and sisters here.”
Eddie Goldberger contributed reporting.
[Nat Turner's] Slave revolt erupts in Virginia
Believing himself chosen by God to lead his people out of slavery, Nat Turner launches a bloody slave insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner, a slave and educated minister, planned to capture the county armory at Jerusalem, Virginia, and then march 30 miles to Dismal Swamp, where his rebels would be able to elude their pursuers. With seven followers, he slaughtered Joseph Travis, his slave owner, and Travis’ family, and then set off across the countryside, hoping to rally hundreds of slaves to his insurrection en route to Jerusalem.
During the next two days and nights, Turner and 75 followers rampaged through Southampton County, killing about 60 whites. Local whites resisted the rebels, and then the state militia–consisting of some 3,000 men–crushed the rebellion. Only a few miles from Jerusalem, Turner and all his followers were dispersed, captured, or killed. In the aftermath of the rebellion, scores of African Americans were lynched, though many of them were non-participants in the revolt. Turner himself was not captured until the end of October, and after confessing without regret to his role in the bloodshed, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. On November 11, he was hanged in Jerusalem.
Turner’s rebellion was the largest slave revolt in U.S. history and led to a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the movement, assembly, and education of slaves.
Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!
Roanoke Colony deserted
John White, the governor of the Roanoke Island colony in present-day North Carolina, returns from a supply-trip to England to find the settlement deserted. White and his men found no trace of the 100 or so colonists he left behind, and there was no sign of violence. Among the missing were Ellinor Dare, White’s daughter; and Virginia Dare, White’s granddaughter and the first English child born in America. August 18 was to have been Virginia’s third birthday. The only clue to their mysterious disappearance was the word “CROATOAN” carved into the palisade that had been built around the settlement. White took the letters to mean that the colonists had moved to Croatoan Island, some 50 miles away, but a later search of the island found none of the settlers.
The Roanoke Island colony, the first English settlement in the New World, was founded by English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in August 1585. The first Roanoke colonists did not fare well, suffering from dwindling food supplies and Indian attacks, and in 1586 they returned to England aboard a ship captained by Sir Francis Drake. In 1587, Raleigh sent out another group of 100 colonists under John White. White returned to England to procure more supplies, but the war with Spain delayed his return to Roanoke. By the time he finally returned in August 1590, everyone had vanished.
In 1998, archaeologists studying tree-ring data from Virginia found that extreme drought conditions persisted between 1587 and 1589. These conditions undoubtedly contributed to the demise of the so-called Lost Colony, but where the settlers went after they left Roanoke remains a mystery. One theory has them being absorbed into an Indian tribe known as the Croatans.
Mr.V
Genghis Khan dies
Genghis Khan, the Mongol leader who forged an empire stretching from the east coast of China west to the Aral Sea, dies in camp during a campaign against the Chinese kingdom of Xi Xia. The great Khan, who was over 60 and in failing health, may have succumbed to injuries incurred during a fall from a horse in the previous year.
Genghis Khan was born as Temujin around 1162. His father, a minor Mongol chieftain, died when Temujin was in his early teens. Temujin succeeded him, but the tribe would not obey so young a chief. Temporarily abandoned, Temujin’s family was left to fend for themselves in the wilderness of the Steppes.
By his late teens, Temujin had grown into a feared warrior and charismatic figure who began gathering followers and forging alliances with other Mongol leaders. After his wife was kidnapped by a rival tribe, Temujin organized a military force to defeat the tribe. Successful, he then turned against other clans and tribes and set out to unite the Mongols by force. Many warriors voluntarily came to his side, but those who did not were defeated and then offered the choice of obedience or death. The nobility of conquered tribes were generally executed. By 1206, Temujin was the leader of a great Mongol confederation and was granted the title Genghis Khan, translated as “Oceanic Ruler” or “Universal Ruler.”
Khan promulgated a code of conduct and organized his armies on a system of 10: 10 men to a squad, 10 squads to a company, 10 companies to a regiment, and 10 regiments to a “Tumen,” a fearful military unit made up of 10,000 cavalrymen. Because of their nomadic nature, the Mongols were able to breed far more horses than sedentary civilizations, which could not afford to sacrifice farmland for large breeding pastures. All of Khan’s warriors were mounted, and half of any given army was made up of armored soldiers wielding swords and lances. Light cavalry archers filled most of the remaining ranks. Khan’s family and other trusted clan members led these highly mobile armies, and by 1209 the Mongols were on the move against China.
Using an extensive network of spies and scouts, Khan detected a weakness in his enemies’ defenses and then attacked the point with as many as 250,000 cavalrymen at once. When attacking large cities, the Mongols used sophisticated sieging equipment such as catapults and mangonels and even diverted rivers to flood out the enemy. Most armies and cities crumbled under the overwhelming show of force, and the massacres that followed a Mongol victory eliminated thoughts of further resistance. Those who survived–and millions did not–were granted religious freedom and protection within the rapidly growing Mongol empire. By 1227, Khan had conquered much of Central Asia and made incursions into Eastern Europe, Persia, and India. His great empire stretched from central Russia down to the Aral Sea in the west, and from northern China down to Beijing in the east.
On August 18, 1227, while putting down a revolt in the kingdom of Xi Xia, Genghis Khan died. On his deathbed, he ordered that Xi Xia be wiped from the face of the earth. Obedient as always, Khan’s successors leveled whole cities and towns, killing or enslaving all their inhabitants. Obeying his order to keep his death secret, Genghis’ heirs slaughtered anyone who set eyes on his funeral procession making its way back to Karakorum, the capital of the Mongol empire. Still bringing death as he had in life, many were killed before his corpse was buried in an unmarked grave. His final resting place remains a mystery.
The Mongol empire continued to grow after Genghis Khan’s death, eventually encompassing most of inhabitable Eurasia. The empire disintegrated in the 14th century, but the rulers of many Asian states claimed descendant from Genghis Khan and his captains.
Mr.V
