APPEARANCE IN EUROPE Meanwhile Chepe and Sabutai marched through Azerbeijan, and in the spring of 1222 advanced into Georgia. Here they defeated a combined force of Lcsghians, Circassians and Kip chaks, and after taking Astrakhan followed the retreating Kip chaks to the Don. The news of the approach of the mysterious enemy of whose name even they were ignorant was received by the Russian princes at Kiev with dismay. At the instigation, however, of Mitislaf, prince of Galicia, they assembled an oppos ing force on the Dnieper. Here they received envoys from the Mongol camp, whom they barbarously put to death. "You have killed our envoys," was the answer made by the Mongols ; "well, as you wish for war you shall have it. We have done you no harm. God is impartial; He will decide our quarrel." In the first battle, on the river Kaleza, the Russians were utterly routed, and fled before the invaders, who, of ter ravaging Great Bulgaria retired, gorged with booty, through the country of Saksin, along the river Aktuba, on their way to Mongolia.
In China the same success had attended the Mongol arms as in western Asia. The whole of the country north of the Yellow river, with the exception of one or two cities, was added to the Mongol rule, and, on the death of the Kin emperor Siian Tsung in 1223, the Kin empire virtually ceased to be, and Jenghiz's frontiers thus became conterminous with those of the Sung em perors who held sway over the whole of central and southern China. After his return from Central Asia, Jenghiz once more took the field in western China. While on this campaign the five planets appeared in a certain conjunction, which to the super stitiously minded Mongol chief foretold that evil was awaiting him. With this presentiment strongly impressed upon him he
turned his face homewards, and had advanced no farther than the Si-Kiang river in Kansuh when he was seized with an illness of which he died a short time afterwards (1227) at his travelling palace at Ha-lao-tu, on the banks of the river Sale in Mongolia. By the terms of his will Ogotai was appointed his successor, but so essential was it considered to be that his death should remain a secret until Ogotai was proclaimed that, as the funeral proces sion moved northwards to the great ordu on the banks of the Kerulen, the escort killed every one they met. The body of Jenghiz was then carried successively to the ordus of his several wives, and was finally laid to rest in the valley of Kilien.
Thus ended the career of one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen. Born and nurtured as the chief of a petty Mongolian tribe, he lived to see his armies victorious from the China sea to the banks of the Dnieper ; and, though the empire which he created ultimately dwindled away under the hands of his degenerate descendants, leaving not a wrack behind, we have in the presence of the Turks in Europe a consequence of his rule, since it was the advance of his armies which drove their Osmanli ancestors from their original home in northern Asia, and thus led to their invasion of Bithynia under Othman, and finally their advance into Europe under Amurath I.