The events that led to the overland journeys sprang from the establishment of what was probably the most extensive military empire the world has ever known.[1238] Toward the end of the twelfth century, Temujin, chief of a small tribe dwelling near the headwaters of the Amur, consolidated his dominion over the neighboring Mongol peoples of the steppes north and northwest of China. Proclaimed “Chinkkis Khan” (Jenghiz Khan), or “Inflexible Emperor,” in 1206, he soon conquered northern China and turned his hordes to the west; Turkestan was subjugated, Persia was invaded, and in 1222–1224 a detachment overran southern Russia in the course of a great whirlwind raid that completely encircled the Caspian Sea. Jenghiz Khan died in 1227, but under his successors the wave of conquest swept still farther westward. Toward the close of the thirties the steppes of Russia were again overwhelmed, in 1240 Poland was devastated, and the Christian army of Henry of Silesia was defeated in 1241 at Liegnitz, near Breslau. Meanwhile another Mongol army was ravaging Hungary and had even driven the king of that country to seek refuge in an island off the Dalmatian coast. Relief to the stricken people of Central Europe came, however, in 1243 when news of the death of the Great Khan caused the invaders to withdraw to the plains of Russia, there to maintain their hold for many centuries to come. These visitations of the Tatars, as the Mongols were called, took Europe unaware. “Barely a rumour” of the invasion of Russia in 1222 had “reached western Europe,” writes Rockhill,[1239] “and contemporary writers have left us but few brief references to it.” The first full description of the Tatars is given in Matthew Paris’ _Chronica maiora_[1240] for the date 1240, the following extracts of which, as translated by Rockhill, are worth quoting: “That the joys of mortal men be not enduring, nor worldly happiness long lasting without lamentations, in this same year (i.e. 1240) a detestable nation of Satan, to wit, the countless army of the Tartars, broke loose from its mountain-environed home, and piercing the solid rocks (of the Caucasus), poured forth like devils from the Tartarus, so that they are rightly called Tartari or Tartarians. Swarming like locusts over the face of the earth, they have brought terrible devastation to the eastern parts (of Europe), laying it waste with fire and carnage.... They are inhuman and beastly, rather monsters than men, thirsting for and drinking blood, tearing and devouring the flesh of dogs and men, dressed in ox-hides, armed with plates of iron, short and stout, thickset, strong, invincible, indefatigable, their backs unprotected, their breasts covered with armour.... They are without human laws, know no comforts, are more ferocious than lions or bears, have boats made of ox-hides, which ten or twelve of them own in common: they are able to swim or to manage a boat, so that they can cross the largest and swiftest rivers