Jinghis Khan left the smoking ruins of Bokhara the Noble, to march on Samarkand, which was only five days distant. He passed along the pleasant valley of Sogd, covered at that time with beautiful fields, orchards and gardens and with houses here and there in good number. All inhabitants of Bokhara taken to toil in the coming siege were driven on behind the army. Whoso grew weak on the way or too weary for marching was cut down at once without pity. Samarkand was one of the great commercial cities of the world. It had a garrison which numbered forty thousand. Both the city and the citadel had been fortified with care, and all men considered that a siege of that place would continue for months, nay, for years perhaps. The three other army corps appeared now, for every place on the lower river had been taken, and Northern Transoxiana was subjected. These divisions brought with them all captives who were young, firm and stalwart, men who might be of service in siege work; there was an immense host of those people arranged in groups of ten, and each ten had a banner. Jinghis, to impose on the doomed city, paraded his legions before it; cavalry, infantry, and at last those unfortunate captives who had the seeming of regular warriors. Two days were spent in examining the city defenses and outworks; on the third morning early the Mongol conqueror sounded the onset. A host of brave citizens made a great sally, and at first swept all before them but not being sustained by their own troops, who feared the besiegers, they met a dreadful disaster. The Mongols retired before the onrushing people, who pressed forward with vigor till they fell into ambush; being on foot they were surrounded very quickly and slaughtered before the eyes of the many thousands looking from the walls, and the housetops. This great defeat crushed the hopes of the citizens. The Kankali troops being Turks believed that the Mongols would treat them most surely as kinsmen. In fact Jinghis had promised, as they thought, to take them to his service. Hence this great multitude, the real strength of the city, issued forth that same day with their leaders, their families, and their baggage, in one word, with all that belonged to them. On the fourth day, just as the storm was to be sounded, the chief men of the city went to the Mongol camp, where they received satisfactory answers concerning themselves with their families and dependents; hence they opened the gates of Samarkand to the conqueror; but they were driven from the city save fifty thousand who had put themselves under the protection of the cadi and the mufti. These fifty thousand were safe-guarded, the others were all slaughtered.