The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities (102 page)

12.
Li Po, "Nefarious War," in
The Works of Li Po the Chinese Poet Done into English Verse by Shigeyoshi Obata with an Introduction and Biographical and Critical Matter Translated from the Chinese (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1922), p. 141.

13.
Fitzgerald,
China, p. 350.

14.
Tu-Fu, "A Song of War-Chariots," trans. Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu,
The Bookman, vol. 54 (New York: George H. Doran, 1922), p. 568.

15.
Fitzgerald,
China, pp. 351–352.

16.
Po Chu-I, "The Never-ending Wrong," in L. Cranmer-Byng,
A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1913), pp. 79–88. This is how the specific translation labels it, but nowadays Po Chu-I is usually called Bai Juyi and his poem is called "The Song of Everlasting Sorrow."

17.
The census figures are referenced in the following places:

• Durand, "Population Statistics of China," pp. 209, 223 (expressing major doubt over accuracy).

• Fitzgerald,
China
, pp. 312–315 (major doubt).

• Richard Hooker,
World Civilizations
, Washington State University, 1996, http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/TEXT/chememp.rtf (apparent acceptance).

• Peter N. Stearns, ed.,
The Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern
, 6th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001),
http://www.bartleby.com/67/370.html
(slight doubt).

• Peter Turchin, "Dynamical Feedbacks between Population Growth and Sociopolitical Instability in Agrarian States,"
Structure and Dynamics
1, no. 1 (2005),
http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/0d17g8g9
(acceptance).

18.
Durand, "Population Statistics of China," p. 223.

Mayan Collapse

1.
Melanie Moran and Mimi Koumenalis, "Royal Massacre Site Discovered in Ruins on Ancient Maya City," November 18, 2005,
http://www.exploration.vanderbilt.edu/print/pdfs/news/news_maya_massacre.pdf
; Thomas H. Maugh II, "Maya War Crimes Scene Uncovered,"
Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2005.

2.
McKillop,
Ancient Maya, pp. 97–98.

3.
Diamond,
Collapse, p. 175.

4.
Turner and Adams cited in Richardson Benedict Gill,
The Great Maya Droughts: Water, Life, and Death (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), p. 351. Other estimates:
The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007), p. 495 (8 to 10 million people); John E. Kicza,
The Peoples and Civilizations of the Americas before Contact (Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1998), p. 12 (3 million to 5 million); Bodil Liljefors Persson,
The Legacy of the Jaguar Prophet (Lund, Sweden: Religionshistoriska Avd., Lunds University, 2000), p. 88 (2 million).

The Crusades

1.
Estimates of the number of people killed in the Crusades begin at 1 million (Fredric Wertham,
A Sign for Cain: An Exploration of Human Violence (New York: Macmillan, 1966)) and go as high as 9 million (John M. Robertson,
A Short History of Christianity (London: Watts, 1902), p. 278) passing through 3 million (Fielding Hudson Garrison,
Notes on the History of Military Medicine (Washington, DC: Association of Military Surgeons, 1922), p. 106) and 5 million (Henry William Elson,
Modern Times and the Living Past (New York: American Book Company, 1921), p. 261) along the way. I took the low middle (Garrison's estimate) as my estimate. The geometric mean of the extremes is 3 million.

2.
Wheatcroft,
Infidels, pp. 158–159.

3.
Riley-Smith,
Crusades, p. 9.

4.
Wheatcroft,
Infidels, p. 166; Maalouf,
Crusades through Arab Eyes, pp. 3–8.

5.
Maalouf,
Crusades through Arab Eyes, pp. 15–17.

6.
Ibid., pp. 31–32.

7.
Wheatcroft,
Infidels, pp. 170–171.

8.
Riley-Smith,
Crusades, pp. 32–33.

9.
Maalouf,
Crusades through Arab Eyes, pp. 39–40; Wheatcroft,
Infidels, p. 171.

10.
Tamim Ansary,
Destiny Disrupted (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), p. 145.

11.
Maalouf,
Crusades through Arab Eyes, pp. 93–94.

12.
Riley-Smith,
Crusades, pp. 121–130; Norwich,
Short History of Byzantium, pp. 299–306.

13.
Riley-Smith,
Crusades, p. 141; James Harpur,
The Crusades: The Two Hundred Years War (New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2008), pp. 82–83; Cecil Adams, "Is the Children's Crusade Fact or Fable?"
Straight Dope, April 9, 2004,
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2503/is-the-childrens-crusade-fact-or-fable
.

14.
Riley-Smith,
Crusades, p. 7.

Religious Killing

1.
Although likely exaggerated, the numbers in Exodus 32, Numbers 31, Joshua 10, Judges 1, Judges 3, Judges 20, 1 Samuel 4, 2 Samuel 8, 2 Samuel 10, 2 Samuel 18, and 2 Chronicles 25 are plausible. Those in Judges 8, 2 Chronicles 13, 1 Kings 20, and Esther 9, less so.

2.
"Japanese Martyrs," in
Catholic Encyclopedia,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09744a.htm
(accessed March 20, 2011).

3.
"Bosnia Marks War Anniversary," BBC, April 6, 2002.

4.
Sakuntala Narasimhan,
Sati: Widow Burning in India (New York: Doubleday, 1992), says that 7,941 widows were burned alive during the Bengal Presidency, 1815–28, and also cites Rammohun Roy that almost ten times more incidents occurred in Bengal than elsewhere. My estimate is that there were some 8.735 (= 1.1
3 7,941) satis in all of India in fourteen years, or around 62,400 in a century.

5.
Charles Carlton,
Going to the Wars: The Experience of the British Civil Wars, 1638–1651 (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 211.

6.
John Daniszewski, "On 25th Anniversary of Civil War, Lebanese Rally for Account of Missing,"
Los Angeles Times, April 14, 2000; "Casualty Toll of Lebanese Civil War Put at 144,000," Associated Press, March 9, 1992.

7.
"Ten Dead in Fighting in Algeria," Agence France Presse, June 23, 2003; Gilles Trequesser, "Bouteflika Aides Say Algerian Leader Ahead in Poll," Reuters News, April 8, 2004.

8.
Peter C. Phan,
Vietnamese-American Catholics (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2005), p. 88; Bernard B. Fall,
Last Reflections on a War: Bernard B. Fall's Last Comments on Vietnam (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000), p. 44.

9.
Lincoln,
Red Victory, p. 319.

10.
Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 5, ch. 54; "Paulicians," in
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 20, p. 960.

11.
John Lothrop Motley,
Rise of the Dutch Republic (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1855), p. 497; Philip Schaff,
History of the Christian Church (New York: Scribner, 1910), p. 180.

12.
Paul Johnson,
A History of the Jews (New York: Harper Perennial, 1988), pp. 259–260.

13.
Gibbon,
Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire, vol. 4, ch. 47.

14.
Gibbons, "Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt" (favoring estimates of 40,000 to 60,000).

Fang La Rebellion

1.
Lieu,
Manichaeism in Central Asia and China, p. 135, citing an old Chinese source (
Ch'ing-ch'i K'ou-kuei). This counts only the number of deaths in the rebellion, not those in the subsequent collapse of the frontier.

2.
William Hardy McNeill,
The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 311–313.

3.
Lieu,
Manichaeism in Central Asia and China; Lieu,
Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China; Youzhong Shi,
The Taiping Ideology: Its Sources, Interpretations, and Influences (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967).

Genghis Khan

1.
Loosely based on McEvedy,
Atlas of World Population History. McEvedy states that the population of China declined by 35 million during the thirteenth century. Also, the population decline in the western regions of Mongol conquests adds up to 2.75 million. All in all, it seems that Eurasia had 37,750,000 fewer people in the wake of the Mongols. I've rounded that off to avoid faking too much precision.

2.
Osborn, "Genghis Khan"; Pocha, "Once-Feared Invader's Reputation."

3.
Mayell, "Genghis Khan a Prolific Lover."

4.
Weatherford,
Genghis Khan, p. 115.

5.
Ibid., p. 117. Compare this to the certainty with which Weatherford reports European atrocities on the facing page. He describes Europeans playing soccer with severed heads, hanging prisoners from walls, pulling their limbs off, and worse ("The Germans then gathered captive children and strapped them into the catapults") without a "reportedly" or "supposedly" at all (p. 116). Also notice how the son-in-law's death in battle is described as "murder."

6.
Hildinger,
Warriors of the Steppe, p. 113.

7.
Ibid., p. 116.

8.
Keegan,
History of Warfare, pp. 160–162.

9.
Weatherford,
Genghis Khan, pp. 113–114.

10.
Hildinger,
Warriors of the Steppe, pp. 21–23; Keegan,
History of Warfare, pp. 162–163.

11.
Man,
Genghis Khan, p. 142.

12.
Grousset,
Conqueror of the World, p. 196.

13.
Man,
Genghis Khan, pp. 167–168.

14.
Ibid., p. 174.

15.
Grousset,
Conqueror of the World, pp. 208–211.

16.
Ibid., pp. 217–218.

17.
Ibid., p. 235.

18.
Ibid., p. 223.

19.
Ibid., pp. 227–229.

20.
Juvayni,
Genghis Khan, p. 197.

21.
Grousset,
Conqueror of the World, p. 237; Man,
Genghis Khan, pp. 174–177.