The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced the hordes of the desert, who pitched their tents between the wall of China and the Volga; and the Mogul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world, the lord of many millions of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their united strength, and were impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy climates of the south. His ancestors had been the tributaries of the Chinese emperors, and Temugin himself had been disgraced by a title of honor and servitude. The court of Pekin was astonished by an embassy from its former vassal, who, in the tone of the king of nations, exacted the tribute and obedience which he had paid, and who affected to treat the _son of heaven_ as the most contemptible of mankind. A haughty answer disguised their secret apprehensions, and their fears were soon justified by the march of innumerable squadrons, who pierced on all sides the feeble rampart of the great wall. Ninety cities were stormed, or starved, by the Moguls; ten only escaped; and Zingis, from a knowledge of the filial piety of the Chinese, covered his vanguard with their captive parents--an unworthy, and by degrees a fruitless, abuse of the virtue of his enemies. His invasion was supported by the revolt of one hundred thousand Khitans who guarded the frontier, yet he listened to a treaty, and a princess of China, three thousand horses, five hundred youths and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and silk were the price of his retreat. In his second expedition, he compelled the Chinese emperor to retire beyond the Yellow River to a more southern residence. The siege of Pekin was long and laborious; the inhabitants were reduced by famine to decimate and devour their fellow-citizens; when their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of gold and silver from their engines; but the Moguls introduced a mine to the center of the capital, and the conflagration of the palace burned above thirty days. China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction, and the five northern provinces were added to the empire of Zingis.