jaku was encamped with the whole of his army in a very
strong position at the foot of a mountain, and he determined to
proceed thither and attack him. He did so; and the result of the
battle was that Hujaku was beaten and was forced to retreat. He
retired to a great fortified town, and Genghis Khan followed him and
laid siege to the town. Hujaku, finding himself in imminent danger,
fled; and Genghis Khan was on the point of taking the town, when he
was suddenly stopped in his career by being one day wounded severely
by an arrow which was shot at him from the wall.

The wound was so severe that, while suffering under it, Genghis Khan
found that he could not successfully direct the operations of his
army, and so he withdrew his troops and retired into his own country,
to wait there until his wound should be healed. In a few months he was
entirely recovered, and the next year he fitted out a new expedition,
and advanced again into China.

In the mean time, Hujaku, who had been repeatedly defeated and driven
back the year before by Genghis Khan, had fallen into disgrace. His
rivals and enemies among the other generals of the army, and among the
officers of the court, conspired against him, and represented to the
emperor that he was unfit to command, and that his having failed to
defend the towns and the country that had been committed to him was
owing to his cowardice and incapacity. In consequence of these
representations Hujaku was cashiered, that is, dismissed from his
command in disgrace.

This made him very angry, and he determined that he would have his
revenge. There was a large party in his favor at court, as well as a
party against him; and after a long and bitter contention, the former
once more prevailed, and induced the emperor to restore Hujaku to his
command again.

The quarrel, however, was not ended, and so, when Genghis Khan came
the next year to renew the invasion, the councils of the Chinese were
so distracted, and their operations so paralyzed by this feud, that he
gained very easy victories over them. The Chinese generals, instead of
acting together in a harmonious manner against the common enemy, were
intent only on the quarrel which they were waging against each other.

At length the animosity proceeded to such an extreme that Hujaku
resolved to depose the emperor, who seemed inclined rather to take
part against him, assassinate all the chiefs of the opposite party,
and then finally to put the e