Note 68 — Chapter V · WHO ARE THE TATARS?

Whenever the Russians say Tatars and Kalmucks, the ethnologists I have chiefly followed say Turks and Mongols.

“Ethnologically viewed, the ‘Tatars’ or ‘Tartars’ were a tribe nearly allied to the Mongols in race, who dwelt near the lake Bougir, to the eastward of Mongoliei. They were among the first of the Mongol conquests, and they took afterwards so conspicuous a place in the army of Zingis Khan that their name became synonymous with that of the Mongols. Their proper name was Tatars. It was said to have been changed into Tartars in consequence of an expression of St. Louis, who, when the devastations of Zingis Khan were heard of with horror in Western Europe, is reported to have exclaimed, ‘Let this heavenly consolation, O Virgin Mother, sustain us if they come, that either we will drive the Tartars, as we call them, back to their Tartarean (infernal) seats, whence they have sprung, or they shall raise us all to heaven.’”—Dr. Smith’s Note, Gibbon, vol. iii., p. 294.