Note 36 — Chapter IV · THE COMING OF THE MONGOLS

Howorth sees in the recurring devastations of such men as Jingis, Attila, Timur, Bonaparte, and their ilk, the hand of “Providence” operating to purge the world of “the diseased and the decaying, the weak and the false, the worn out and the biased, the fool and the knave.” The Mongol massacres were so thorough and indiscriminate that it is hard to say what classes of human beings came safest out of the ordeal, but in the wars of Napoleon it would certainly not be a survival of the fittest; the weak, the cowardly, the frivolous would be least likely to perish; the strong, the brave, the patriotic would be those who “foremost fighting fell.”