He is a member of an ancient and noble Baltic family that settled in Estonia in the 12th century and general of the Russian white counter-revolutionary movement. Roman Nicolas Max von Ungern-Sternberg is a descendant of the Teutonic Knights. His stock served the kings of Denmark and Sweden first and then the Russian tsars. Born in 1885, he takes part to the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905 as common foot soldier. Officer of a regiment of Cossacks in Chita in 1909, he is hit on the head with a sabre during a fight and still bears the signs of it. After having left to explore the steppe on his horse in order to be forgotten, he fights in Mongolia, where he develops his interest in mysticism, shamanism and lamaist Buddhism. Reinstated in the tsarist army, during the First World War he is wounded and decorated several times for military valour. During the Russian revolution in 1917, his wife is killed by the Bolsheviks. He therefore starts fighting the Communists in Siberia together with Semenov who appoints him general. He later dissociates himself from Semenov as he aims at restoring a great empire in central Asia and Eastern Siberia. He wants to reunify the Mongols to fight against the Chinese rule, presenting himself, with red hair and moustaches, as the reincarnation of Gengis Khan. At first, his “Asian Cavalry Division” including white Russians, Cossacks, Mongols, Buriats, Tatars and Tibetans is defeated in Urga, the Mongol capital, which is also one the holy cities of lamaist Buddhism. However, in the end he manages to get the city under control and to set up a terror regime. His division is later driven out by the Red Army and the Mongolian revolutionaries. His own Mongolian followers and lieutenants soon get tired of the extravagance of the so-called “crazy Baron” or “bloody Baron” and hand him over to the Communist enemies on 25th August 1921. He is shooted shortly afterwards.