209.366 - 2016 project and the Mongols, the Tartars, and the Huns

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or  a poem that appreciates

the Mongols, the Tartars, and the Huns

once upon a time, maybe as long ago as when I started school - remember, I could already read well enough that I was fighting my way through the Book of Knowledge's article on government and asking my granddaddy (the only grown man I knew who gave thoughtful answers to a little boy's questions) what the tough words meant - I became an admirer of civilization.  I soon knew about the civilizations of the Middle East, of Greece (which should have been of Minoa, I think), and later, of Europe.  sigh.  by then, about the time I was twelve and unceremoniously yanked outa Brasil and dumped in this country, I was bored with civilizations.  for a while - a few months - European civilization appealed.  all those knights, riding around independently, fighting each other for no reason at all, or over a lady's kerchief, seemed wonderful, but my history books convinced me those were just romantic stories, that European civilization was just another way grownups had invented to be boring.  (I didn't yet understand that the alternative to boring was cannibalistic.)  so I was delighted when the Huns rode into my history books.  yes!  chaos and rage!  my kind of people!  what?  they were defeated?  by a girl?  what the hell kind of world was this?  oh well, before long, I read about the Tartars, and my hopes climbed again.  nope, the sheer inertia of all that civilization wore them down and swallowed them.  oh!  but maybe the Mongols would be different!  they swept out of some podunk little place north of China and east of Russia, took over huge chunks of both of those, swarmed down into India, across to Persia, and had both Romes trembling, and then slowly got bogged down in civilization again!  it was like a quicksand of the soul!  but oh, the glory of taking it on for a while!  and the inventiveness of each of those peoples!  particularly the Mongols.  the stirrup!  what a delightful idea!  soldiers had been falling out of saddles for centuries before the Mongols brought them the stirrup!  the recurved bow!  it was so complicated to make that no one else really picked it up, but it meant a Mongol never had to fight a knight.  a Mongol just rode around him and shot arrows through his armor.  oh man!  oh man!  I was so tickled by the Huns and the Tartars and the Mongols that even after they let me down, I basked in the threat of them.  damn!  go Huns!  go Tartars!  go Mongols!  and they had.  they went as far as they could.  but eventually the wall of marshmallows won.  damn!  damn!  damn!