And This You Will Perceive From
What You Have Heard And Shall Hear In This Book; And (As A Fact) There Can
Be No Manner Of Doubt That Now They Are The Masters Of The Biggest Half Of
The World.
Their troops are admirably ordered in the manner that I shall
now relate.
You see, when a Tartar prince goes forth to war, he takes with him, say,
100,000 horse. Well, he appoints an officer to every ten men, one to every
hundred, one to every thousand, and one to every ten thousand, so that his
own orders have to be given to ten persons only, and each of these ten
persons has to pass the orders only to other ten, and so on; no one having
to give orders to more than ten. And every one in turn is responsible only
to the officer immediately over him; and the discipline and order that
comes of this method is marvellous, for they are a people very obedient to
their chiefs. Further, they call the corps of 100,000 men a Tuc; that of
10,000 they call a Toman; the thousand they call...; the hundred Guz;
the ten....[NOTE 2] And when the army is on the march they have always 200
horsemen, very well mounted, who are sent a distance of two marches in
advance to reconnoitre, and these always keep ahead. They have a similar
party detached in the rear, and on either flank, so that there is a good
look-out kept on all sides against a surprise.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 881 of 1256
Words from 239455 to 239716
of 342071
