Their latest military exploits were performed during the last years of the Napoleonic wars, and were not of a very serious kind; a troop of them accompanied the Russian army, and astonished Western Europe by their uncouth features, their strange costume, and their primitive accoutrements, among which their curious bows and arrows figured conspicuously.
The other pastoral tribes which I have mentioned--Bashkirs, Kirghiz, and Nogai Tartars--are the last remnants of the famous marauders who from time immemorial down to a comparatively recent period held the vast plains of Southern Russia.

The long struggle between them and the agricultural colonists from the northwest, closely resembling the long struggle between the Red-skins and the white settlers on the prairies of North America, forms an important page of Russian history.
For centuries the warlike nomads stoutly resisted all encroachments on their pasture-grounds, and considered cattle-lifting, kidnapping, and pillage as a legitimate and honorable occupation.

"Their raids," says an old Byzantine writer, "are as flashes of lightning, and their retreat is at once heavy and light--heavy from booty and light from the swiftness of their movements.

For them a peaceful life is a misfortune, and a convenient opportunity for war is the height of felicity.

Worst of all, they are more numerous than bees in spring, their numbers are uncountable." "Having no fixed place of abode," says another Byzantine authority, "they seek to conquer all lands and colonise none.