China in World History

80 China in World History

regularly, and keep moving rapidly for days on end. Military command-

ers used fl ags, torches, and message carriers to maintain effective com-

munications between units. Soldiers wore light armor made of leather

with metal scales and helmets of leather or iron and carried leather-cov-

ered wicker shields. Each soldier carried two powerful compound bows

and a large quiver of at least sixty iron-tipped arrows. With the use

of iron stirrups, soldiers could shoot arrows accurately from a stand-

ing position while riding on horseback at full gallop. Light cavalrymen

carried a short sword and two or three light spears; heavy cavalrymen

carried a mace or spiked club, a curved long sword, and a twelve-foot

wooden spear with a metal blade. With the prospect of rich rewards

in war booty for loyal service or death for insubordination, Mongol

troops were fearless and disciplined in battle.

With a ferocity and military effectiveness seldom seen in world his-

tory, they proceeded over the next fi fty years to conquer not only the

northern rivals of the Song dynasty—the Jin and the Xi Xia—but also

Korea, all of Central Asia, the Russian cities of Moscow and Kiev in the

northwest, Hungary and Poland in the far west, and the Persian cities of

Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus, and Ormuz in the southwest.

To succeed in creating the world’s largest land empire, the Mongols,

with only 150,000 troops, were quick to incorporate other groups into

their armies and governmental structures. Given the enormous distances

The tenth-century Buddhist painter Juran used a graceful impressionistic style

to portray the idyllic and ever-changing scenery of hills, fi elds, trees. and clouds

along the Yangzi River. In this Song age of urbanization, Chinese scholar

offi cials found solace from the pressures of offi cial life by painting, viewing, and

contemplating landscape paintings that made use of empty spaces among towering

mountains, trees, stones, and water to depict the beauty, grandeur, and peaceful

harmony of nature. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington,

D.C.: Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1911.168