me so desperate in their hatred of their foes that they
would sometimes set the town on fire with their own hands, and throw
themselves and their wives and children into the flames, rather than
fall into the hands of their infuriated enemies.

The cruelties which the Monguls perpetrated upon their unhappy victims
when, after a long resistance, they finally gained possession of a
town, were indeed dreadful. They usually ordered all the people to
come out to an open space on the plain, and there, after taking out
all the young and able-bodied men, who could be made useful in
bringing stones and setting up engines, and other such labors, and
also all the young and beautiful women, to be divided among the army
or sold as slaves, they would put the rest together in a mass, and
kill them all by shooting at them with arrows, just as if they had
been beasts surrounded in a chase, excepting that the excitement and
pleasure of shooting into such a mass of human victims, and of hearing
the shrieks and cries of their terror, was probably infinitely
greater to their brutal murderers than if it had been a herd of lions,
tigers, and wolves that they were destroying.

It is said by the historians that in one case the number of people
ordered out upon the plain was so great that it took four days for
them to pass out and assemble at the appointed place, and that, after
those who were to be spared had been separated from the rest, the
number that were left to be slain was over one hundred thousand, as
recorded by the secretaries who made an enumeration of them.

In another case the slaughter was so great that it took twelve days to
count the number of the dead.

Some of the atrocities which were perpetrated upon the prisoners were
almost too horrible to be described. In one case a woman, quite
advanced in years, begged the Monguls to spare her life, and promised
that, if they would do so, she would give them a pearl of great value.

They asked her where the pearl was, and she said she had swallowed it.
The Monguls then immediately cut her down, and ripped her body open
with their swords to find the pearl. They found it, and then,
encouraged by this success, and thinking it probable that other women
might have attempted to hide their jewels in the same way, they
proceeded to kill and cut open a great number of women to search for
pearls in their bodies, but they found no more.

At the siege of a certain city, called Bamiyan, a young