Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, was born about 424, in the village of Nanterre, near Paris, and took the veil in her fifteenth year. On the death of her parents she removed to Paris. She acquired an extraordinary reputation for sanctity, which was increased by her confident assurance that Attila and his Huns would not touch Paris, and by an expedition undertaken for the relief of the starving city during the Frankish invasion under Childeric, in which she journeyed from town to town, and returned with twelve ship-loads of provisions. In 460 she built a church over the tomb of St Denis (q.v.), where she was buried at her death in 512. See her Life by Saint-Yves (1845) and Lefeuve (new ed. 1861).
● Genghis Khan, originally called Temujin, a celebrated Mongol conqueror, was born in 1162 at Deligun Bulduk on the river Onon (SE. of Lake Baikal), the son of a Mongol chief whose sway extended over great part of the region between the Amur and the Great Wall of China. Being called upon to rule his father's people when only thirteen years of age, Temujin had to struggle hard for several years, first against a confederacy of revolted tribes, then against different confederacies of hostile tribes and neighbouring rivals, whom his uninterrupted successes and rapidly-growing power had made jealous. The most critical period of his career at this juncture occurred during a war with Wang Khan, the powerful chief of the Keraits. Temujin, at first worsted, was compelled to retire to a desert region with only a few warriors; but in the following year (1203) he collected another army, and with it inflicted upon his enemy a crushing and decisive defeat. The Keraits thereupon became subject to Temujin. His ambition awakening with his continued success, the Mongol prince spent the next six years in subjugating the Naimans, a powerful Turkish confederacy who occupied the region between Lake Balkhash and the river Irtish; in conquering Hia or Tangut, a Chinese empire lying between the Desert of Gobi and Chaidam; and in assimilating the results of the voluntary submission of the Turkish Uigurs, from whom the Mongols derived the beginnings of their civilisation, as their alphabet and laws. It was during this period—viz. in 1206, that he adopted the title of Jenghiz or Genghis Khan, equivalent to 'Very Mighty Ruler.'
Bent upon yet more ambitious schemes, he in 1211 refused tribute to the Kin emperor of North China, and invaded and overran his country in several campaigns. About this same time, too, his attention was directed to the west: with comparatively little trouble he defeated the ruler of the Kara-Chitai empire, and annexed (1217) his country, which extended from Lake Balkhash to Tibet. His next undertaking was the most formidable of all, an attack upon the powerful empire of Kharezm, whose confines ran conterminous with the Jaxartes (Sihün or Sir-Daria), Ferghana, the Indus, Persian Gulf, Kurdistan, Georgia, and the Caspian Sea. Entering this extensive country with three armies in 1218, the Mongol prince and his captains successively took, often by storm, the populous cities of Otrar, Sighnak, Aksu, Khojend, Bokhara, and Samarcand, hunted down from one end of his territories to the other Mohammed, the ruler of Kharezm, and the princes of his family, captured Urgenj or Kharezm (now Khiva), devastated with most horrible cruelties and barbarities the beautiful and prosperous province of Khorasan and its cities (Nessa, Merv, Nishapur, and Herat), chased Jelal-ud-Din, son and heir of Mohammed, across the Indus into India, and finally returned home in 1225 by the way they had come. Two of Genghis' lieutenants, Chépé and Subutai, who had so relentlessly and pertinaciously hunted down Mohammed, passed on from the southern shore of the Caspian northwards through Azerbaijan and Georgia, then, turning to the west, they traversed southern Russia and penetrated to the Crimea, everywhere routing and slaying, and finally returned by way of Great Bulgaria and the Volga, beyond the northern end of the Caspian—a marvellous military raid. Meanwhile in the far east Mukuli, one of the most capable amongst the group of the great conqueror's clever generals, had completed the conquest of all northern China (1217-23) except Honan.
Genghis did not long stay quietly at home. After but a few months' rest he again took to the saddle, to go and chastise the king of Hia or Tangut, who had refused him obedience. But this was his last expedition, for, after thoroughly subduing the country, Genghis died of sickness, on 18th August 1227, amongst the northern offshoots of the Kuen-Lun called the Mountains of Liupan. The rapidity and magnitude of his conquests seem to have been as much due to the admirable discipline and organisation of his armies as to the methods in which he conducted his campaigns. His troops were all horsemen, hardy, abstemious, inured to fatigue, indifferent to weather, accus- tomed to go days and nights in the saddle without resting. Thus the Mongol armies could move with extreme celerity, and needed little provisioning. They never left either enemy or strong town behind their backs to threaten their communications: all the former were ruthlessly slain or massacred, all the latter completely razed to the ground. The hard labour necessary in besieging the fortified cities was done by the peasantry of the country in which they were situated, and in the battles the same wretched people were frequently placed by the Mongols in the forefront of the fight to bear the brunt of their enemies' onset. Genghis was, however, something more than a warrior and conqueror; he was also a skilful administrator and ruler: he not only conquered empires stretching from the Black Sea to the Pacific, but he organised them into states which endured beyond the short span that usually measures the life of Asiatic sovereignties.
See Howorth, History of the Mongols, part 1 (1876); R. K. Douglas, Life of Jenghiz Khan (1877); and compare Erdmann, Temudschin, der Unerschütterliche (1862), and D'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongoles (1852).