tion as the stones, though, compared with a
modern bomb-shell--a monstrous ball of iron, which, after flying four
or five miles from the battery, leaving on its way a fiery train
through the air, descends into a town and bursts into a thousand
fragments, which fly like iron hail in every direction around--they
were very harmless missiles.

In sawing up the trunks of the trees into logs, and in bringing stones
for the engines, the Monguls employed the prisoners whom they had
taken in war and made slaves of. The amount of work of this kind which
was to be done at some of the sieges was very great. It is said that
at the siege of Nishabur--a town whose inhabitants greatly offended
Genghis Khan by secretly sending arms, provisions, and money to
Jalaloddin, after they had once surrendered to the Monguls and
pretended to be friendly to them--the army of the Monguls employed
twelve hundred of these engines, all of which were made at a town at
some distance from the place besieged, and were then transported, in
parts, by the slaves, and put together by them under the walls. While
the slaves were employed in works of this kind, they were sometimes
protected by wooden shields covered with raw hides, which were carried
before them by other slaves, to keep off and extinguish the fiery
darts and arrows which were shot at them from the wall.

Sometimes, too, the places where the engines were set up were
protected by wooden bulwarks, which, together with the frame-work
itself of the engines, were covered with raw hides, to prevent their
being set on fire by the enemy. The number of raw hides required for
this purpose was immense, and to obtain them the Monguls slaughtered
vast herds of horses and cattle which they plundered from the enemy.

In order to embarrass the enemy in respect to ammunition for their
engines, the people of a town, when they heard that the Monguls were
coming, used to turn out sometimes in mass, several days before, and
gather up all the stones they could find, and throw them into the
river, or otherwise put them out of the way.

In some cases, the towns that were threatened, as has already been
said, did not attempt to resist, but submitted at once, and cast
themselves on the mercy of the conqueror. In such cases the Mongul
generals usually spared the lives of the inhabitants, though they
plundered their property. It sometimes happened, too, that after
attempting to defend themselves for some time, the garri