THE DESCENT OF BOLSHEVISM
was the last of the Assassin rulers in Persia and the most ambitious if not the most original. He sought the recognition of Europe: he dreamt of rising to respectability among kings. But the envoy he sent to the court of Henry III of England was not received with all the honors due to his rank. One of the King's bishops said something, in his presence, about Mohammedan pigs and hell-fire, which the envoy had to swallow and digest on his way back to his Master. Had Ruknuddin looked eastward, however, instead of westward for a sign, he might have saved himself the mortification of such European recognition.
For out of the heart of Asia at that time came forth the fierce Hulago—the British bishop must have blessed his soul—to bring the hell-fire and the pigs together. The Tartar hordes under his command, issuing from the fertile plains south of the Baikal Lake early in the thirteenth century, swept like a cyclone over Bokhara and Samarkand and Khorasan up to the
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