On 29 December 1885 in Graz, Austria, he was born the oldest son
        of Freiherr Theodor von Ungern-Sternberg and Freiin Sophie von
        Wimpffen. His parents were divorced by the time he was six.
              After the Russian Revolution, Siberia was in chaos with large
        scale executions. Semenov wielded undisputed power in the Transregion
        where he instituted a reign of terror and coercion that enabled him to
        confiscate the wealth of men and women who lived under his authority.
        His robberies included a half-million dollars' worth of furs that
        belonged to a company in New York.
              Semenov owed a portion of his success to the wit, wisdom, and
        tactical genius of Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, perhaps the most
        bizarre of his lieutenants and certainly one of the most cruel. Once
        described by General Wrangel as "the type that is invaluable in
        wartime and impossible in times of peace." Ungern-Sternberg, like
        Semenov, had been a squadron commander in the Nerchinsk Cossacks under 
        Wrangel's command, and also like Semenov, he wore the St.George's
        Cross.
              Physically, mentally, and morally, he was a tangle of
        contradictions. Wrangel thought him "fair and puny-looking" but
        quickly discovered that he had "an iron constitution and ruthless
        energy." Although appalled by the baron's personal unclealiness and
        lack of military bearing, Wrangel also remembered him as a man having
        the "shyness of a savage." Not a professional soldier, "Roman
        Fedorovich" Ungern-Sternberg was a hunter and a killer of men. "War
        was his natural element" Wrangel concluded. "He was not an officer,
        but a hero out of one of Mayne Reid's novels."
              In the Carpathians he had fought together with Grigory Semenov,
        and were posted to Siberia at the same time. One of Ungern-Sternberg's
        favourite hobbies after he was promoted to the rank of Major-General
        was to enter taverns, consume enough vodka to achieve double-vision
        and then fire at the other patrons, logging how many he could hit. To
        his astonishment, it remained a constant fifty percent of those he
        aimed at. Despite his tiny head, it took enormous quantities of
        alcohol to make him drunk. After a few years of developing his hooby,
        drinkers across Siberia learned to flee when he kicked open cafe doors
        with a boot.
               Ungern-Sternberg felt the pull of the east: the mountains,
        rolling steppes and the icy wastes of Genghis Khan's stamping grounds.
        He studied the tactics used by Mongol warlords and was fascinated by
        their courage and stamina. When his total of dead customers became too
        high for his addled brain to recall, he was struck with a revelation.
        He later compared this blast of insight with satori, the enlightenment
        experienced by Buddha. This noble divulgence was as follows: by
        slaying people he was doing them a favour. If they were unable to
        protect themselves, it meant they were feeble and living under poor
        Karma. By dying in a state of innocence, they improved their position
        on the rungs of the cosmos.
               The accounts of those who knew Ungern-Sternberg during the
        Civil War paint a terrifying picture of a man grown used to killing
        and, perhaps, unhinged by having held too long the power of life and
        death over others. Baron Budberg once called him a "specialist in
        floggings and shootings," and by his orders, men and women suffered
        death by beating, hanging, beheading, disembowling, and countless
        other tortures transformed them from living human beings into what one
        witness called a "formless bloody mass." Ungern-Sternberg's physician
        described one of his written orders as "the product of the diseased
        brain of a pervert and megalomaniac affected with "thirst for human
        blood."
              To take on the Red Army, however, was above even Roman von
        Ungern-Sternberg's delusions. Nor could he stay longer in Russian
        territory. The answer was simple---he would ride into Mongolia,
        destroy the Chinese administration and set up a personal kingdom. Then
        he would forge a Pan-Asiatic empire, including Manchuria and Tibet.
        He managed to enlist over three hundred devotees, he baptised them in
        vodka and hashish and gave them a name : the Order of Military
        Buddhists. The Order of Military Buddhists dazedly entered Mongolia in
        1920, partly chased out of Russia by the Bolsheviks.
              In February 1921, they reached Urga. Mongolian winters are
        incredibly severe: temperatures of minus 40 are not uncommon. Unable
        to launch his attack without astrological guidance, Ungern-Sternberg
        set up camp outside the gates, awaiting a benificial alignment of the
        stars. Eager to taste the heated delights of the city, his soldiers
        whiled away the hours by debating the virtues of necrophilia. Finally,
        at a divinely ordained moment, the Baron released his frostbitten crew
        of savages upon the capital. They encountered scant resistance as they
        stampeded through the narrow alleyways and courtyards. The carnage was
        atrocious: an orgy of rape and looting lasted three days. Whether
        every tale which surrounds the Baron's excesses is entirely factual is
        open to debate. Bolsheviks surely played up his monstrousness after
        his death.
              Ungern-Sternberg managed to last eight months merely because of
        financial assistance from Japan. The details of this assistance are
        unknown; undoubtedly Tokyo saw an independent Mongolia as a useful
        bulwark against the Russian bear and Chinese dragon. The end came
        through a Red Army division which, for Mongolia, was the start of
        seventy years of different intolerance and anguish as a Soviet
        satellite.
             Ungern-Sternberg did not wait to welcome defeat in the ruins of
        Urga. He decided to take the fight to the Bolsheviks. He rounded up
        his followers and charged north. To prepare for the impending
        conflict, double rations of vodka and hashish were issued. His drugged
        army was quickly decimated by a communist patrol. The survivors
        mutinied and attempted to shoot the Baron. He fled, without hat or
        clothing, into the night. One description endures from this period:
        "On his naked chest numerous talismans, charms and medals were hanging
        on a yellow cord. He looked like a reincarnation of a prehistoric
        ape-man. People were afraid even to look at him." One by one his
        remaining men were caught, he was the last.
             He was taken to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk by train. At
        every station he was exhibited on the platform as a freak in a cage.
        His trial was swift and callous, yet for the first time in his life,
        he spoke eloquently. He was the last 'White' general to trouble Lenin;
        the revolution was settled.
             In September 1921 he was sent before a firing squad, still
        weighted down with talismans. His head was much too small to make a
        suitable target, so the marksmen aimed for his chest. Shrapnel from a
        charm seriously injured at least one of them. His brain was removed
        for study by doctors and it was disclosed that his left lobe, now
        considered the hemisphere of identity, existed only as a shrivelled
        root.

        From "The Brutal Buddha: Baron von Ungern-Sternberg", by Rhys Hughes.