Thursday, February 26, 2009

Book Review: Lords of The Bow


I have just finished reading the above-mentioned book about Genghis Khan, one of the most prominent leaders of Mongolia and how he managed to unite the barbaric and highly-diversified tribes of Mongolia into a massive army of fierce Mongolian horse bowmen and lancers.

He was quite a brutal leader to his enemies, slaughtering them by the tens of thousands as he razed and plundered many cities of the Xi Xia and Jin Dynasty. He was very disciplined when it comes to military matters and did not hesitate to punish any Mongolian who failed to deliver up to military expectations. The book offered a glimpse of Genghis Khan as a father and a husband who tried to keep his large family of wives and sons in order to find a proper heir amongst them.

My memories of the book were strongest at one of the key battles fought when he led his army of forty-thousand across the sweltering desert to avenge years of oppression by the Chinese empires. In the first battle, Genghis Khan took the advice of a bright-eyed youth who volunteered to lead a hundred men to attempt to knock down a mountain pass fort's gates with hammers and a flimsily-constructed wooden shelter against the Xi Xia's ballistas (huge crossbows). Although only two of the hundred men survived the inital attack, Genghis Khan was able to launch a lightning cavalry charge, storming the fort by surprise and thus opening the gateway to the rest of the Chinese empires.

The reason - of the hundred men who went in with hammers, Genghis Khan actually provided ten of them with the best armour he had in the army and gave all the hundred men beautiful weapons and chests of glittering treasures to lure the Xi Xia soldiers to open the gates to loot those who fell. The costly ruse worked and as one of the greedy Xi Xia officers examined the chests by opening one of them, a flight of white pigeons flew out of the chest, signalling the remaining one thousand horsemen hiding behind the valley to charge in. The pigeons were also a signal to six of the ten-man team who survived the arrow showers to suddenly leap up from the sand (they were feigning death all the while) and held the fort's gates open until the Mongolian cavalry arrived. And I thought the pigeon thing was really ingenious of Genghis Khan..haha.

Nothing much else is going on this week - work, gym, blog-hopping, getting my lost hours' of sleep and going on an chocolate-fondue spree with one of the singing enthusiasts during last Saturday. Oh, I am also trying to design some medieval castle game of my own to play whenever I am bored so I was twiddling with the programs for quite a few nights.

Hope my readers are doing well with their lives! Will update again when I have more blog-worthy news! ^__^

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