7 (return) [ In the year 1294, by the command of Cazan, khan of

Persia, the fourth in descent from Zingis. From these traditions,

his vizier Fadlallah composed a Mogul history in the Persian

language, which has been used by Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de

Genghizcan, p. 537—539.) The Histoire Généalogique des Tatars (à

Leyde, 1726, in 12mo., 2 tomes) was translated by the Swedish

prisoners in Siberia from the Mogul MS. of Abulgasi Bahadur Khan,

a descendant of Zingis, who reigned over the Usbeks of Charasm,

or Carizme, (A.D. 1644—1663.) He is of most value and credit for

the names, pedigrees, and manners of his nation. Of his nine

parts, the ist descends from Adam to Mogul Khan; the iid, from

Mogul to Zingis; the iiid is the life of Zingis; the ivth, vth,

vith, and viith, the general history of his four sons and their

posterity; the viiith and ixth, the particular history of the

descendants of Sheibani Khan, who reigned in Maurenahar and

Charasm.]

8 (return) [ Histoire de Gentchiscan, et de toute la Dinastie des

Mongous ses Successeurs, Conquerans de la Chine; tirée de

l’Histoire de la Chine par le R. P. Gaubil, de la Société de

Jesus, Missionaire à Peking; à Paris, 1739, in 4to. This

translation is stamped with the Chinese character of domestic

accuracy and foreign ignorance.]

9 (return) [ See the Histoire du Grand Genghizcan, premier

Empereur des Moguls et Tartares, par M. Petit de la Croix, à

Paris, 1710, in 12mo.; a work of ten years’ labor, chiefly drawn

from the Persian writers, among whom Nisavi, the secretary of

Sultan Gelaleddin, has the merit and prejudices of a

contemporary. A slight air of romance is the fault of the

originals, or the compiler. See likewise the articles of

_Genghizcan_, _Mohammed_, _Gelaleddin_, &c., in the Bibliothèque

Orientale of D’Herbelot. * Note: The preface to the Hist. des

Mongols, (Paris, 1824) gives a catalogue of the Arabic and

Persian authorities.—M.]

10 (return) [ Haithonus, or Aithonus, an Armenian prince, and

afterwards a monk of Premontré, (Fabric, Bibliot. Lat. Medii Ævi,

tom. i. p. 34,) dictated in the French language, his book _de

Tartaris_, his old fellow-soldiers. It was immediately translated

into Latin, and is inserted in the Novus Orbis of Simon Grynæus,

(Basil, 1555, in folio.) * Note: A précis at the end of the new

edition of Le Beau, Hist. des Empereurs, vol. xvii., by M.

Brosset, gives large extracts from the accounts of the Armenian

historians relating to the Mogul conquests.—M.]

11 (return) [ Zingis Khan, and his first successors, occupy the

conclusion of the ixth Dynasty of Abulpharagius, (vers. Pocock,

Oxon. 1663, in 4to.;) and his xth Dynasty is that of the Moguls

of Persia. Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii.) has extracted

some facts from his Syriac writings, and the lives of the

Jacobite maphrians, or primates of the East.]

12 (return) [ Among the Arabians, in language and religion, we

may distinguish Abulfeda, sultan of Hamah in Syria, who fought in

person, under the Mamaluke standard, against the Moguls.]

13 (return) [ Nicephorus Gregoras (l. ii. c. 5, 6) has felt the

necessity of connecting the Scythian and Byzantine histories. He

describes with truth and elegance the settlement and manners of

the Moguls of Persia, but he is ignorant of their origin, and

corrupts the names of Zingis and his sons.]

14 (return) [ M. Levesque (Histoire de Russie, tom. ii.) has

described the conquest of Russia by the Tartars, from the

patriarch Nicon, and the old chronicles.]

15 (return) [ For Poland, I am content with the Sarmatia Asiatica

et Europæa of Matthew à Michou, or De Michoviâ, a canon and

physician of Cracow, (A.D. 1506,) inserted in the Novus Orbis of

Grynæus. Fabric Bibliot. Latin. Mediæ et Infimæ Ætatis, tom. v.

p. 56.]

16 (return) [ I should quote Thuroczius, the oldest general

historian (pars ii. c. 74, p. 150) in the 1st volume of the

Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum, did not the same volume contain

the original narrative of a contemporary, an eye-witness, and a

sufferer, (M. Rogerii, Hungari, Varadiensis Capituli Canonici,

Carmen miserabile, seu Historia super Destructione Regni Hungariæ

Temporibus Belæ IV. Regis per Tartaros facta, p. 292—321;) the

best picture that I have ever seen of all the circumstances of a

Barbaric invasion.]

17 (return) [ Matthew Paris has represented, from authentic

documents, the danger and distress of Europe, (consult the word

_Tartari_ in his copious Index.) From motives of zeal and

curiosity, the court of the great khan in the xiiith century was

visited by two friars, John de Plano Carpini, and William

Rubruquis, and by Marco Polo, a Venetian gentleman. The Latin

relations of the two former are inserted in the 1st volume of

Hackluyt; the Italian original or version of the third (Fabric.

Bibliot. Latin. Medii Ævi, tom. ii. p. 198, tom. v. p. 25) may be

found in the second tome of Ramusio.]

18 (return) [ In his great History of the Huns, M. de Guignes has

most amply treated of Zingis Khan and his successors. See tom.

iii. l. xv.—xix., and in the collateral articles of the

Seljukians of Roum, tom. ii. l. xi., the Carizmians, l. xiv., and

the Mamalukes, tom. iv. l. xxi.; consult likewise the tables of

the 1st volume. He is ever learned and accurate; yet I am only

indebted to him for a general view, and some passages of

Abulfeda, which are still latent in the Arabic text. * Note: To

this catalogue of the historians of the Moguls may be added

D’Ohson, Histoire des Mongols; Histoire des Mongols, (from Arabic

and Persian authorities,) Paris, 1824. Schmidt, Geschichte der

Ost Mongolen, St. Petersburgh, 1829. This curious work, by

Ssanang Ssetsen Chungtaidschi, published in the original Mongol,

was written after the conversion of the nation to Buddhism: it is

enriched with very valuable notes by the editor and translator;

but, unfortunately, is very barren of information about the

European and even the western Asiatic conquests of the

Mongols.—M.]

Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.—Part II.

The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced the

hordes of the desert, who pitched their tents between the wall of

China and the Volga; and the Mogul emperor became the monarch of

the pastoral world, the lord of many millions of shepherds and

soldiers, who felt their united strength, and were impatient to

rush on the mild and wealthy climates of the south. His ancestors

had been the tributaries of the Chinese emperors; and Temugin

himself had been disgraced by a title of honor and servitude. The

court of Pekin was astonished by an embassy from its former

vassal, who, in the tone of the king of nations, exacted the

tribute and obedience which he had paid, and who affected to

treat the _son of heaven_ as the most contemptible of mankind. A

haughty answer disguised their secret apprehensions; and their

fears were soon justified by the march of innumerable squadrons,

who pierced on all sides the feeble rampart of the great wall.

Ninety cities were stormed, or starved, by the Moguls; ten only

escaped; and Zingis, from a knowledge of the filial piety of the

Chinese, covered his vanguard with their captive parents; an

unworthy, and by degrees a fruitless, abuse of the virtue of his

enemies. His invasion was supported by the revolt of a hundred

thousand Khitans, who guarded the frontier: yet he listened to a

treaty; and a princess of China, three thousand horses, five

hundred youths, and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and

silk, were the price of his retreat. In his second expedition, he

compelled the Chinese emperor to retire beyond the yellow river

to a more southern residence. The siege of Pekin 19 was long and

laborious: the inhabitants were reduced by famine to decimate and

devour their fellow-citizens; when their ammunition was spent,

they discharged ingots of gold and silver from their engines; but

the Moguls introduced a mine to the centre of the capital; and

the conflagration of the palace burnt above thirty days. China

was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction; and the five

northern provinces were added to the empire of Zingis.

19 (return) [ More properly _Yen-king_, an ancient city, whose

ruins still appear some furlongs to the south-east of the modern

_Pekin_, which was built by Cublai Khan, (Gaubel, p. 146.)

Pe-king and Nan-king are vague titles, the courts of the north

and of the south. The identity and change of names perplex the

most skilful readers of the Chinese geography, (p. 177.) * Note:

And likewise in Chinese history—see Abel Remusat, Mel. Asiat. 2d

tom. ii. p. 5.—M.]

In the West, he touched the dominions of Mohammed, sultan of

Carizme, who reigned from the Persian Gulf to the borders of

India and Turkestan; and who, in the proud imitation of Alexander

the Great, forgot the servitude and ingratitude of his fathers to

the house of Seljuk. It was the wish of Zingis to establish a

friendly and commercial intercourse with the most powerful of the

Moslem princes: nor could he be tempted by the secret

solicitations of the caliph of Bagdad, who sacrificed to his

personal wrongs the safety of the church and state. A rash and

inhuman deed provoked and justified the Tartar arms in the

invasion of the southern Asia. 191 A caravan of three ambassadors

and one hundred and fifty merchants were arrested and murdered at

Otrar, by the command of Mohammed; nor was it till after a demand

and denial of justice, till he had prayed and fasted three nights

on a mountain, that the Mogul emperor appealed to the judgment of

God and his sword. Our European battles, says a philosophic

writer, 20 are petty skirmishes, if compared to the numbers that

have fought and fallen in the fields of Asia. Seven hundred

thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched under the

standard of Zingis and his four sons. In the vast plains that

extend to the north of the Sihon or Jaxartes, they were

encountered by four hundred thousand soldiers of the sultan; and

in the first battle, which was suspended by the night, one

hundred and sixty thousand Carizmians were slain. Mohammed was

astonished by the multitude and valor of his enemies: he withdrew

from the scene of danger, and distributed his troops in the

frontier towns; trusting that the Barbarians, invincible in the

field, would be repulsed by the length and difficulty of so many

regular sieges. But the prudence of Zingis had formed a body of

Chinese engineers, skilled in the mechanic arts; informed perhaps

of the secret of gunpowder, and capable, under his discipline, of

attacking a foreign country with more vigor and success than they

had defended their own. The Persian historians will relate the

sieges and reduction of Otrar, Cogende, Bochara, Samarcand,

Carizme, Herat, Merou, Nisabour, Balch, and Candahar; and the

conquest of the rich and populous countries of Transoxiana,

Carizme, and Chorazan. 204 The destructive hostilities of Attila

and the Huns have long since been elucidated by the example of

Zingis and the Moguls; and in this more proper place I shall be

content to observe, that, from the Caspian to the Indus, they

ruined a tract of many hundred miles, which was adorned with the

habitations and labors of mankind, and that five centuries have

not been sufficient to repair the ravages of four years. The

Mogul emperor encouraged or indulged the fury of his troops: the

hope of future possession was lost in the ardor of rapine and

slaughter; and the cause of the war exasperated their native

fierceness by the pretence of justice and revenge. The downfall

and death of the sultan Mohammed, who expired, unpitied and

alone, in a desert island of the Caspian Sea, is a poor atonement

for the calamities of which he was the author. Could the

Carizmian empire have been saved by a single hero, it would have

been saved by his son Gelaleddin, whose active valor repeatedly

checked the Moguls in the career of victory. Retreating, as he

fought, to the banks of the Indus, he was oppressed by their

innumerable host, till, in the last moment of despair, Gelaleddin

spurred his horse into the waves, swam one of the broadest and

most rapid rivers of Asia, and extorted the admiration and

applause of Zingis himself. It was in this camp that the Mogul

conqueror yielded with reluctance to the murmurs of his weary and

wealthy troops, who sighed for the enjoyment of their native

land. Eucumbered with the spoils of Asia, he slowly measured back

his footsteps, betrayed some pity for the misery of the

vanquished, and declared his intention of rebuilding the cities

which had been swept away by the tempest of his arms. After he

had repassed the Oxus and Jaxartes, he was joined by two

generals, whom he had detached with thirty thousand horse, to

subdue the western provinces of Persia. They had trampled on the

nations which opposed their passage, penetrated through the gates

of Derbent, traversed the Volga and the desert, and accomplished

the circuit of the Caspian Sea, by an expedition which had never

been attempted, and has never been repeated. The return of Zingis

was signalized by the overthrow of the rebellious or independent

kingdoms of Tartary; and he died in the fulness of years and

glory, with his last breath exhorting and instructing his sons to

achieve the conquest of the Chinese empire. 205

191 (return) [ See the particular account of this transaction,

from the Kholauesut el Akbaur, in Price, vol. ii. p. 402.—M.]

20 (return) [ M. de Voltaire, Essai sur l’Histoire Générale, tom.

iii. c. 60, p. 8. His account of Zingis and the Moguls contains,

as usual, much general sense and truth, with some particular

errors.]

204 (return) [ Every where they massacred all classes, except the

artisans, whom they made slaves. Hist. des Mongols.—M.]

205 (return) [ Their first duty, which he bequeathed to them, was

to massacre the king of Tangcoute and all the inhabitants of

Ninhia, the surrender of the city being already agreed upon,

Hist. des Mongols. vol. i. p. 286.—M.]

The harem of Zingis was composed of five hundred wives and

concubines; and of his numerous progeny, four sons, illustrious

by their birth and merit, exercised under their father the

principal offices of peace and war. Toushi was his great

huntsman, Zagatai 21 his judge, Octai his minister, and Tuli his

general; and their names and actions are often conspicuous in the

history of his conquests. Firmly united for their own and the

public interest, the three brothers and their families were

content with dependent sceptres; and Octai, by general consent,

was proclaimed great khan, or emperor of the Moguls and Tartars.

He was succeeded by his son Gayuk, after whose death the empire

devolved to his cousins Mangou and Cublai, the sons of Tuli, and

the grandsons of Zingis. In the sixty-eight years of his four

first successors, the Mogul subdued almost all Asia, and a large

portion of Europe. Without confining myself to the order of time,

without expatiating on the detail of events, I shall present a

general picture of the progress of their arms; I. In the East;

II. In the South; III. In the West; and IV. In the North.

21 (return) [ Zagatai gave his name to his dominions of

Maurenahar, or Transoxiana; and the Moguls of Hindostan, who

emigrated from that country, are styled Zagatais by the Persians.

This certain etymology, and the similar example of Uzbek, Nogai,

&c., may warn us not absolutely to reject the derivations of a

national, from a personal, name. * Note: See a curious anecdote

of Tschagatai. Hist. des Mongols, p. 370.—M.]

I. Before the invasion of Zingis, China was divided into two

empires or dynasties of the North and South; 22 and the

difference of origin and interest was smoothed by a general

conformity of laws, language, and national manners. The Northern

empire, which had been dismembered by Zingis, was finally subdued

seven years after his death. After the loss of Pekin, the emperor

had fixed his residence at Kaifong, a city many leagues in

circumference, and which contained, according to the Chinese

annals, fourteen hundred thousand families of inhabitants and

fugitives. He escaped from thence with only seven horsemen, and

made his last stand in a third capital, till at length the

hopeless monarch, protesting his innocence and accusing his

fortune, ascended a funeral pile, and gave orders, that, as soon

as he had stabbed himself, the fire should be kindled by his

attendants. The dynasty of the _Song_, the native and ancient

sovereigns of the whole empire, survived about forty-five years

the fall of the Northern usurpers; and the perfect conquest was

reserved for the arms of Cublai. During this interval, the Moguls

were often diverted by foreign wars; and, if the Chinese seldom

dared to meet their victors in the field, their passive courage

presented and endless succession of cities to storm and of

millions to slaughter. In the attack and defence of places, the

engines of antiquity and the Greek fire were alternately

employed: the use of gunpowder in cannon and bombs appears as a

familiar practice; 23 and the sieges were conducted by the

Mahometans and Franks, who had been liberally invited into the

service of Cublai. After passing the great river, the troops and

artillery were conveyed along a series of canals, till they

invested the royal residence of Hamcheu, or Quinsay, in the

country of silk, the most delicious climate of China. The

emperor, a defenceless youth, surrendered his person and sceptre;

and before he was sent in exile into Tartary, he struck nine

times the ground with his forehead, to adore in prayer or

thanksgiving the mercy of the great khan. Yet the war (it was now

styled a rebellion) was still maintained in the southern

provinces from Hamcheu to Canton; and the obstinate remnant of

independence and hostility was transported from the land to the

sea. But when the fleet of the _Song_ was surrounded and

oppressed by a superior armament, their last champion leaped into

the waves with his infant emperor in his arms. “It is more

glorious,” he cried, “to die a prince, than to live a slave.” A

hundred thousand Chinese imitated his example; and the whole

empire, from Tonkin to the great wall, submitted to the dominion

of Cublai. His boundless ambition aspired to the conquest of

Japan: his fleet was twice shipwrecked; and the lives of a

hundred thousand Moguls and Chinese were sacrificed in the

fruitless expedition. But the circumjacent kingdoms, Corea,

Tonkin, Cochinchina, Pegu, Bengal, and Thibet, were reduced in

different degrees of tribute and obedience by the effort or

terror of his arms. He explored the Indian Ocean with a fleet of

a thousand ships: they sailed in sixty-eight days, most probably

to the Isle of Borneo, under the equinoctial line; and though

they returned not without spoil or glory, the emperor was

dissatisfied that the savage king had escaped from their hands.

22 (return) [ In Marco Polo, and the Oriental geographers, the

names of Cathay and Mangi distinguish the northern and southern

empires, which, from A.D. 1234 to 1279, were those of the great

khan, and of the Chinese. The search of Cathay, after China had

been found, excited and misled our navigators of the sixteenth

century, in their attempts to discover the north-east passage.]

23 (return) [ I depend on the knowledge and fidelity of the Père

Gaubil, who translates the Chinese text of the annals of the

Moguls or Yuen, (p. 71, 93, 153;) but I am ignorant at what time

these annals were composed and published. The two uncles of Marco

Polo, who served as engineers at the siege of Siengyangfou, * (l.

ii. 61, in Ramusio, tom. ii. See Gaubil, p. 155, 157) must have

felt and related the effects of this destructive powder, and

their silence is a weighty, and almost decisive objection. I

entertain a suspicion, that their recent discovery was carried

from Europe to China by the caravans of the xvth century and

falsely adopted as an old national discovery before the arrival

of the Portuguese and Jesuits in the xvith. Yet the Père Gaubil

affirms, that the use of gunpowder has been known to the Chinese

above 1600 years. ** Note: * Sou-houng-kian-lou. Abel Remusat.—M.

Note: ** La poudre à canon et d’autres compositions inflammantes,

dont ils se servent pour construire des pièces d’artifice d’un

effet suprenant, leur étaient connues depuis très long-temps, et

l’on croit que des bombardes et des pierriers, dont ils avaient

enseigné l’usage aux Tartares, ont pu donner en Europe l’idée

d’artillerie, quoique la forme des fusils et des canons dont ils

se servent actuellement, leur ait été apportée par les Francs,

ainsi que l’attestent les noms mêmes qu’ils donnent à ces sortes

d’armes. Abel Remusat, Mélanges Asiat. 2d ser. tom. i. p. 23.—M.]

II. The conquest of Hindostan by the Moguls was reserved in a

later period for the house of Timour; but that of Iran, or

Persia, was achieved by Holagou Khan, 231 the grandson of Zingis,

the brother and lieutenant of the two successive emperors, Mangou

and Cublai. I shall not enumerate the crowd of sultans, emirs,

and atabeks, whom he trampled into dust; but the extirpation of

the _Assassins_, or Ismaelians 24 of Persia, may be considered as

a service to mankind. Among the hills to the south of the

Caspian, these odious sectaries had reigned with impunity above a

hundred and sixty years; and their prince, or Imam, established

his lieutenant to lead and govern the colony of Mount Libanus, so

famous and formidable in the history of the crusades. 25 With the

fanaticism of the Koran the Ismaelians had blended the Indian

transmigration, and the visions of their own prophets; and it was

their first duty to devote their souls and bodies in blind

obedience to the vicar of God. The daggers of his missionaries

were felt both in the East and West: the Christians and the

Moslems enumerate, and persons multiply, the illustrious victims

that were sacrificed to the zeal, avarice, or resentment of _the

old man_ (as he was corruptly styled) _of the mountain_. But

these daggers, his only arms, were broken by the sword of

Holagou, and not a vestige is left of the enemies of mankind,

except the word _assassin_, which, in the most odious sense, has

been adopted in the languages of Europe. The extinction of the

Abbassides cannot be indifferent to the spectators of their

greatness and decline. Since the fall of their Seljukian tyrants

the caliphs had recovered their lawful dominion of Bagdad and the

Arabian Irak; but the city was distracted by theological

factions, and the commander of the faithful was lost in a harem

of seven hundred concubines. The invasion of the Moguls he

encountered with feeble arms and haughty embassies. “On the

divine decree,” said the caliph Mostasem, “is founded the throne

of the sons of Abbas: and their foes shall surely be destroyed in

this world and in the next. Who is this Holagou that dares to

rise against them? If he be desirous of peace, let him instantly

depart from the sacred territory; and perhaps he may obtain from

our clemency the pardon of his fault.” This presumption was

cherished by a perfidious vizier, who assured his master, that,

even if the Barbarians had entered the city, the women and

children, from the terraces, would be sufficient to overwhelm

them with stones. But when Holagou touched the phantom, it

instantly vanished into smoke. After a siege of two months,

Bagdad was stormed and sacked by the Moguls; 251 and their savage

commander pronounced the death of the caliph Mostasem, the last

of the temporal successors of Mahomet; whose noble kinsmen, of

the race of Abbas, had reigned in Asia above five hundred years.

Whatever might be the designs of the conqueror, the holy cities

of Mecca and Medina 26 were protected by the Arabian desert; but

the Moguls spread beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, pillaged

Aleppo and Damascus, and threatened to join the Franks in the

deliverance of Jerusalem. Egypt was lost, had she been defended

only by her feeble offspring; but the Mamalukes had breathed in

their infancy the keenness of a Scythian air: equal in valor,

superior in discipline, they met the Moguls in many a well-fought

field; and drove back the stream of hostility to the eastward of

the Euphrates. 261 But it overflowed with resistless violence the

kingdoms of Armenia 262 and Anatolia, of which the former was

possessed by the Christians, and the latter by the Turks. The

sultans of Iconium opposed some resistance to the Mogul arms,

till Azzadin sought a refuge among the Greeks of Constantinople,

and his feeble successors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty,

were finally extirpated by the khans of Persia. 263

231 (return) [ See the curious account of the expedition of

Holagou, translated from the Chinese, by M. Abel Remusat,

Mélanges Asiat. 2d ser. tom. i. p. 171.—M.]

24 (return) [ All that can be known of the Assassins of Persia

and Syria is poured from the copious, and even profuse, erudition

of M. Falconet, in two _Mémoires_ read before the Academy of

Inscriptions, (tom. xvii. p. 127—170.) * Note: Von Hammer’s

History of the Assassins has now thrown Falconet’s Dissertation

into the shade.—M.]

25 (return) [ The Ismaelians of Syria, 40,000 Assassins, had

acquired or founded ten castles in the hills above Tortosa. About

the year 1280, they were extirpated by the Mamalukes.]

251 (return) [ Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, p.

283, 307. Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, vol. vii. p. 406.

Price, Chronological Retrospect, vol. ii. p. 217—223.—M.]

26 (return) [ As a proof of the ignorance of the Chinese in

foreign transactions, I must observe, that some of their

historians extend the conquest of Zingis himself to Medina, the

country of Mahomet, (Gaubil p. 42.)]

261 (return) [ Compare Wilken, vol. vii. p. 410.—M.]

262 (return) [ On the friendly relations of the Armenians with

the Mongols see Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, vol. vii. p.

402. They eagerly desired an alliance against the Mahometan

powers.—M.]

263 (return) [ Trebizond escaped, apparently by the dexterous

politics of the sovereign, but it acknowledged the Mogul

supremacy. Falmerayer, p. 172.—M.]

III. No sooner had Octai subverted the northern empire of China,

than he resolved to visit with his arms the most remote countries

of the West. Fifteen hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars were

inscribed on the military roll: of these the great khan selected

a third, which he intrusted to the command of his nephew Batou,

the son of Tuli; who reigned over his father’s conquests to the

north of the Caspian Sea. 264 After a festival of forty days,

Batou set forwards on this great expedition; and such was the

speed and ardor of his innumerable squadrons, than in less than

six years they had measured a line of ninety degrees of

longitude, a fourth part of the circumference of the globe. The

great rivers of Asia and Europe, the Volga and Kama, the Don and

Borysthenes, the Vistula and Danube, they either swam with their

horses or passed on the ice, or traversed in leathern boats,

which followed the camp, and transported their wagons and

artillery. By the first victories of Batou, the remains of

national freedom were eradicated in the immense plains of

Turkestan and Kipzak. 27 In his rapid progress, he overran the

kingdoms, as they are now styled, of Astracan and Cazan; and the

troops which he detached towards Mount Caucasus explored the most

secret recesses of Georgia and Circassia. The civil discord of

the great dukes, or princes, of Russia, betrayed their country to

the Tartars. They spread from Livonia to the Black Sea, and both

Moscow and Kiow, the modern and the ancient capitals, were

reduced to ashes; a temporary ruin, less fatal than the deep, and

perhaps indelible, mark, which a servitude of two hundred years

has imprinted on the character of the Russians. The Tartars

ravaged with equal fury the countries which they hoped to

possess, and those which they were hastening to leave. From the

permanent conquest of Russia they made a deadly, though

transient, inroad into the heart of Poland, and as far as the

borders of Germany. The cities of Lublin and Cracow were

obliterated: 271 they approached the shores of the Baltic; and in

the battle of Lignitz they defeated the dukes of Silesia, the

Polish palatines, and the great master of the Teutonic order, and

filled nine sacks with the right ears of the slain. From Lignitz,

the extreme point of their western march, they turned aside to

the invasion of Hungary; and the presence or spirit of Batou

inspired the host of five hundred thousand men: the Carpathian

hills could not be long impervious to their divided columns; and

their approach had been fondly disbelieved till it was

irresistibly felt. The king, Bela the Fourth, assembled the

military force of his counts and bishops; but he had alienated

the nation by adopting a vagrant horde of forty thousand families

of Comans, and these savage guests were provoked to revolt by the

suspicion of treachery and the murder of their prince. The whole

country north of the Danube was lost in a day, and depopulated in

a summer; and the ruins of cities and churches were overspread

with the bones of the natives, who expiated the sins of their

Turkish ancestors. An ecclesiastic, who fled from the sack of

Waradin, describes the calamities which he had seen, or suffered;

and the sanguinary rage of sieges and battles is far less

atrocious than the treatment of the fugitives, who had been

allured from the woods under a promise of peace and pardon and

who were coolly slaughtered as soon as they had performed the

labors of the harvest and vintage. In the winter the Tartars

passed the Danube on the ice, and advanced to Gran or Strigonium,

a German colony, and the metropolis of the kingdom. Thirty

engines were planted against the walls; the ditches were filled

with sacks of earth and dead bodies; and after a promiscuous

massacre, three hundred noble matrons were slain in the presence

of the khan. Of all the cities and fortresses of Hungary, three

alone survived the Tartar invasion, and the unfortunate Bata hid

his head among the islands of the Adriatic.

264 (return) [ See the curious extracts from the Mahometan

writers, Hist. des Mongols, p. 707.—M.]

27 (return) [ The _Dashté Kipzak_, or plain of Kipzak, extends on

either side of the Volga, in a boundless space towards the Jaik

and Borysthenes, and is supposed to contain the primitive name

and nation of the Cossacks.]

271 (return) [ Olmutz was gallantly and successfully defended by

Stenberg, Hist. des Mongols, p. 396.—M.]

The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of savage hostility: a

Russian fugitive carried the alarm to Sweden; and the remote

nations of the Baltic and the ocean trembled at the approach of

the Tartars, 28 whom their fear and ignorance were inclined to

separate from the human species. Since the invasion of the Arabs

in the eighth century, Europe had never been exposed to a similar

calamity: and if the disciples of Mahomet would have oppressed

her religion and liberty, it might be apprehended that the

shepherds of Scythia would extinguish her cities, her arts, and

all the institutions of civil society. The Roman pontiff

attempted to appease and convert these invincible Pagans by a

mission of Franciscan and Dominican friars; but he was astonished

by the reply of the khan, that the sons of God and of Zingis were

invested with a divine power to subdue or extirpate the nations;

and that the pope would be involved in the universal destruction,

unless he visited in person, and as a suppliant, the royal horde.

The emperor Frederic the Second embraced a more generous mode of

defence; and his letters to the kings of France and England, and

the princes of Germany, represented the common danger, and urged

them to arm their vassals in this just and rational crusade. 29

The Tartars themselves were awed by the fame and valor of the

Franks; the town of Newstadt in Austria was bravely defended

against them by fifty knights and twenty crossbows; and they

raised the siege on the appearance of a German army. After

wasting the adjacent kingdoms of Servia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria,

Batou slowly retreated from the Danube to the Volga to enjoyed

the rewards of victory in the city and palace of Serai, which

started at his command from the midst of the desert. 291

28 (return) [ In the year 1238, the inhabitants of Gothia

(_Sweden_) and Frise were prevented, by their fear of the

Tartars, from sending, as usual, their ships to the herring

fishery on the coast of England; and as there was no exportation,

forty or fifty of these fish were sold for a shilling, (Matthew

Paris, p. 396.) It is whimsical enough, that the orders of a

Mogul khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should have

lowered the price of herrings in the English market.]

29 (return) [ I shall copy his characteristic or flattering

epithets of the different countries of Europe: Furens ac fervens

ad arma Germania, strenuæ militiæ genitrix et alumna Francia,

bellicosa et audax Hispania, virtuosa viris et classe munita

fertilis Anglia, impetuosis bellatoribus referta Alemannia,

navalis Dacia, indomita Italia, pacis ignara Burgundia, inquieta

Apulia, cum maris Græci, Adriatici et Tyrrheni insulis pyraticis

et invictis, Cretâ, Cypro, Siciliâ, cum Oceano conterterminis

insulis, et regionibus, cruenta Hybernia, cum agili Wallia

palustris Scotia, glacialis Norwegia, suam electam militiam sub

vexillo Crucis destinabunt, &c. (Matthew Paris, p. 498.)]

291 (return) [ He was recalled by the death of Octai.—M.]

IV. Even the poor and frozen regions of the north attracted the

arms of the Moguls: Sheibani khan, the brother of the great

Batou, led a horde of fifteen thousand families into the wilds of

Siberia; and his descendants reigned at Tobolskoi above three

centuries, till the Russian conquest. The spirit of enterprise

which pursued the course of the Oby and Yenisei must have led to

the discovery of the icy sea. After brushing away the monstrous

fables, of men with dogs’ heads and cloven feet, we shall find,

that, fifteen years after the death of Zingis, the Moguls were

informed of the name and manners of the Samoyedes in the

neighborhood of the polar circle, who dwelt in subterraneous

huts, and derived their furs and their food from the sole

occupation of hunting. 30

30 (return) [ See Carpin’s relation in Hackluyt, vol. i. p. 30.

The pedigree of the khans of Siberia is given by Abulghazi, (part

viii. p. 485—495.) Have the Russians found no Tartar chronicles

at Tobolskoi? * Note: * See the account of the Mongol library in

Bergman, Nomadische Streifereyen, vol. iii. p. 185, 205, and

Remusat, Hist. des Langues Tartares, p. 327, and preface to

Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen.—M.]

While China, Syria, and Poland, were invaded at the same time by

the Moguls and Tartars, the authors of the mighty mischief were

content with the knowledge and declaration, that their word was

the sword of death. Like the first caliphs, the first successors

of Zingis seldom appeared in person at the head of their

victorious armies. On the banks of the Onon and Selinga, the

royal or _golden horde_ exhibited the contrast of simplicity and

greatness; of the roasted sheep and mare’s milk which composed

their banquets; and of a distribution in one day of five hundred

wagons of gold and silver. The ambassadors and princes of Europe

and Asia were compelled to undertake this distant and laborious

pilgrimage; and the life and reign of the great dukes of Russia,

the kings of Georgia and Armenia, the sultans of Iconium, and the

emirs of Persia, were decided by the frown or smile of the great

khan. The sons and grandsons of Zingis had been accustomed to the

pastoral life; but the village of Caracorum 31 was gradually

ennobled by their election and residence. A change of manners is

implied in the removal of Octai and Mangou from a tent to a

house; and their example was imitated by the princes of their

family and the great officers of the empire. Instead of the

boundless forest, the enclosure of a park afforded the more

indolent pleasures of the chase; their new habitations were

decorated with painting and sculpture; their superfluous

treasures were cast in fountains, and basins, and statues of

massy silver; and the artists of China and Paris vied with each

other in the service of the great khan. 32 Caracorum contained

two streets, the one of Chinese mechanics, the other of Mahometan

traders; and the places of religious worship, one Nestorian

church, two mosques, and twelve temples of various idols, may

represent in some degree the number and division of inhabitants.

Yet a French missionary declares, that the town of St. Denys,

near Paris, was more considerable than the Tartar capital; and

that the whole palace of Mangou was scarcely equal to a tenth

part of that Benedictine abbey. The conquests of Russia and Syria

might amuse the vanity of the great khans; but they were seated

on the borders of China; the acquisition of that empire was the

nearest and most interesting object; and they might learn from

their pastoral economy, that it is for the advantage of the

shepherd to protect and propagate his flock. I have already

celebrated the wisdom and virtue of a Mandarin who prevented the

desolation of five populous and cultivated provinces. In a

spotless administration of thirty years, this friend of his

country and of mankind continually labored to mitigate, or

suspend, the havoc of war; to save the monuments, and to rekindle

the flame, of science; to restrain the military commander by the

restoration of civil magistrates; and to instil the love of peace

and justice into the minds of the Moguls. He struggled with the

barbarism of the first conquerors; but his salutary lessons

produced a rich harvest in the second generation. 321 The

northern, and by degrees the southern, empire acquiesced in the

government of Cublai, the lieutenant, and afterwards the

successor, of Mangou; and the nation was loyal to a prince who

had been educated in the manners of China. He restored the forms

of her venerable constitution; and the victors submitted to the

laws, the fashions, and even the prejudices, of the vanquished

people. This peaceful triumph, which has been more than once

repeated, may be ascribed, in a great measure, to the numbers and

servitude of the Chinese. The Mogul army was dissolved in a vast

and populous country; and their emperors adopted with pleasure a

political system, which gives to the prince the solid substance

of despotism, and leaves to the subject the empty names of

philosophy, freedom, and filial obedience. 322 Under the reign of

Cublai, letters and commerce, peace and justice, were restored;

the great canal, of five hundred miles, was opened from Nankin to

the capital: he fixed his residence at Pekin; and displayed in

his court the magnificence of the greatest monarch of Asia. Yet

this learned prince declined from the pure and simple religion of

his great ancestor: he sacrificed to the idol Fo; and his blind

attachment to the lamas of Thibet and the bonzes of China 33

provoked the censure of the disciples of Confucius. His

successors polluted the palace with a crowd of eunuchs,

physicians, and astrologers, while thirteen millions of their

subjects were consumed in the provinces by famine. One hundred

and forty years after the death of Zingis, his degenerate race,

the dynasty of the Yuen, was expelled by a revolt of the native

Chinese; and the Mogul emperors were lost in the oblivion of the

desert. Before this revolution, they had forfeited their

supremacy over the dependent branches of their house, the khans

of Kipzak and Russia, the khans of Zagatai, or Transoxiana, and

the khans of Iran or Persia. By their distance and power, these

royal lieutenants had soon been released from the duties of

obedience; and after the death of Cublai, they scorned to accept

a sceptre or a title from his unworthy successors. According to

their respective situations, they maintained the simplicity of

the pastoral life, or assumed the luxury of the cities of Asia;

but the princes and their hordes were alike disposed for the

reception of a foreign worship. After some hesitation between the

Gospel and the Koran, they conformed to the religion of Mahomet;

and while they adopted for their brethren the Arabs and Persians,

they renounced all intercourse with the ancient Moguls, the

idolaters of China.

31 (return) [ The Map of D’Anville and the Chinese Itineraries

(De Guignes, tom. i. part ii. p. 57) seem to mark the position of

Holin, or Caracorum, about six hundred miles to the north-west of

Pekin. The distance between Selinginsky and Pekin is near 2000

Russian versts, between 1300 and 1400 English miles, (Bell’s

Travels, vol. ii. p. 67.)]

32 (return) [ Rubruquis found at Caracorum his _countryman

Guillaume Boucher, orfevre de Paris_, who had executed for the

khan a silver tree supported by four lions, and ejecting four

different liquors. Abulghazi (part iv. p. 366) mentions the

painters of Kitay or China.]

321 (return) [ See the interesting sketch of the life of this

minister (Yelin-Thsouthsai) in the second volume of the second

series of Recherches Asiatiques, par A Remusat, p. 64.—M.]

322 (return) [ Compare Hist. des Mongols, p. 616.—M.]

33 (return) [ The attachment of the khans, and the hatred of the

mandarins, to the bonzes and lamas (Duhalde, Hist. de la Chine,

tom. i. p. 502, 503) seems to represent them as the priests of

the same god, of the Indian _Fo_, whose worship prevails among

the sects of Hindostan Siam, Thibet, China, and Japan. But this

mysterious subject is still lost in a cloud, which the

researchers of our Asiatic Society may gradually dispel.]

Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.—Part III.

In this shipwreck of nations, some surprise may be excited by the

escape of the Roman empire, whose relics, at the time of the

Mogul invasion, were dismembered by the Greeks and Latins. Less

potent than Alexander, they were pressed, like the Macedonian,

both in Europe and Asia, by the shepherds of Scythia; and had the

Tartars undertaken the siege, Constantinople must have yielded to

the fate of Pekin, Samarcand, and Bagdad. The glorious and

voluntary retreat of Batou from the Danube was insulted by the

vain triumph of the Franks and Greeks; 34 and in a second

expedition death surprised him in full march to attack the

capital of the Cæsars. His brother Borga carried the Tartar arms

into Bulgaria and Thrace; but he was diverted from the Byzantine

war by a visit to Novogorod, in the fifty-seventh degree of

latitude, where he numbered the inhabitants and regulated the

tributes of Russia. The Mogul khan formed an alliance with the

Mamalukes against his brethren of Persia: three hundred thousand

horse penetrated through the gates of Derbend; and the Greeks

might rejoice in the first example of domestic war. After the

recovery of Constantinople, Michael Palæologus, 35 at a distance

from his court and army, was surprised and surrounded in a

Thracian castle, by twenty thousand Tartars. But the object of

their march was a private interest: they came to the deliverance

of Azzadin, the Turkish sultan; and were content with his person

and the treasure of the emperor. Their general Noga, whose name

is perpetuated in the hordes of Astracan, raised a formidable

rebellion against Mengo Timour, the third of the khans of Kipzak;

obtained in marriage Maria, the natural daughter of Palæologus;

and guarded the dominions of his friend and father. The

subsequent invasions of a Scythian cast were those of outlaws and

fugitives: and some thousands of Alani and Comans, who had been

driven from their native seats, were reclaimed from a vagrant

life, and enlisted in the service of the empire. Such was the

influence in Europe of the invasion of the Moguls. The first

terror of their arms secured, rather than disturbed, the peace of

the Roman Asia. The sultan of Iconium solicited a personal

interview with John Vataces; and his artful policy encouraged the

Turks to defend their barrier against the common enemy. 36 That

barrier indeed was soon overthrown; and the servitude and ruin of

the Seljukians exposed the nakedness of the Greeks. The

formidable Holagou threatened to march to Constantinople at the

head of four hundred thousand men; and the groundless panic of

the citizens of Nice will present an image of the terror which he

had inspired. The accident of a procession, and the sound of a

doleful litany, “From the fury of the Tartars, good Lord, deliver

us,” had scattered the hasty report of an assault and massacre.

In the blind credulity of fear, the streets of Nice were crowded

with thousands of both sexes, who knew not from what or to whom

they fled; and some hours elapsed before the firmness of the

military officers could relieve the city from this imaginary foe.

But the ambition of Holagou and his successors was fortunately

diverted by the conquest of Bagdad, and a long vicissitude of

Syrian wars; their hostility to the Moslems inclined them to

unite with the Greeks and Franks; 37 and their generosity or

contempt had offered the kingdom of Anatolia as the reward of an

Armenian vassal. The fragments of the Seljukian monarchy were

disputed by the emirs who had occupied the cities or the

mountains; but they all confessed the supremacy of the khans of

Persia; and he often interposed his authority, and sometimes his

arms, to check their depredations, and to preserve the peace and

balance of his Turkish frontier. The death of Cazan, 38 one of

the greatest and most accomplished princes of the house of

Zingis, removed this salutary control; and the decline of the

Moguls gave a free scope to the rise and progress of the Ottoman

Empire. 39

34 (return) [ Some repulse of the Moguls in Hungary (Matthew

Paris, p. 545, 546) might propagate and color the report of the

union and victory of the kings of the Franks on the confines of

Bulgaria. Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 310) after forty years,

beyond the Tigris, might be easily deceived.]

35 (return) [ See Pachymer, l. iii. c. 25, and l. ix. c. 26, 27;

and the false alarm at Nice, l. iii. c. 27. Nicephorus Gregoras,

l. iv. c. 6.]

36 (return) [ G. Acropolita, p. 36, 37. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6,

l. iv. c. 5.]

37 (return) [ Abulpharagius, who wrote in the year 1284, declares

that the Moguls, since the fabulous defeat of Batou, had not

attacked either the Franks or Greeks; and of this he is a

competent witness. Hayton likewise, the Armenian prince,

celebrates their friendship for himself and his nation.]

38 (return) [ Pachymer gives a splendid character of Cazan Khan,

the rival of Cyrus and Alexander, (l. xii. c. 1.) In the

conclusion of his history (l. xiii. c. 36) he _hopes_ much from

the arrival of 30,000 Tochars, or Tartars, who were ordered by

the successor of Cazan to restrain the Turks of Bithynia, A.D.

1308.]

39 (return) [ The origin of the Ottoman dynasty is illustrated by

the critical learning of Mm. De Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iv.

p. 329—337) and D’Anville, (Empire Turc, p. 14—22,) two

inhabitants of Paris, from whom the Orientals may learn the

history and geography of their own country. * Note: They may be

still more enlightened by the Geschichte des Osman Reiches, by M.

von Hammer Purgstall of Vienna.—M.]

After the retreat of Zingis, the sultan Gelaleddin of Carizme had

returned from India to the possession and defence of his Persian

kingdoms. In the space of eleven years, that hero fought in

person fourteen battles; and such was his activity, that he led

his cavalry in seventeen days from Teflis to Kerman, a march of a

thousand miles. Yet he was oppressed by the jealousy of the

Moslem princes, and the innumerable armies of the Moguls; and

after his last defeat, Gelaleddin perished ignobly in the

mountains of Cœurdistan. His death dissolved a veteran and

adventurous army, which included under the name of Carizmians or

Corasmins many Turkman hordes, that had attached themselves to

the sultan’s fortune. The bolder and more powerful chiefs invaded

Syria, and violated the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem: the more

humble engaged in the service of Aladin, sultan of Iconium; and

among these were the obscure fathers of the Ottoman line. They

had formerly pitched their tents near the southern banks of the

Oxus, in the plains of Mahan and Nesa; and it is somewhat

remarkable, that the same spot should have produced the first

authors of the Parthian and Turkish empires. At the head, or in

the rear, of a Carizmian army, Soliman Shah was drowned in the

passage of the Euphrates: his son Orthogrul became the soldier

and subject of Aladin, and established at Surgut, on the banks of

the Sangar, a camp of four hundred families or tents, whom he

governed fifty-two years both in peace and war. He was the father

of Thaman, or Athman, whose Turkish name has been melted into the

appellation of the caliph Othman; and if we describe that

pastoral chief as a shepherd and a robber, we must separate from

those characters all idea of ignominy and baseness. Othman

possessed, and perhaps surpassed, the ordinary virtues of a

soldier; and the circumstances of time and place were propitious

to his independence and success. The Seljukian dynasty was no

more; and the distance and decline of the Mogul khans soon

enfranchised him from the control of a superior. He was situate

on the verge of the Greek empire: the Koran sanctified his

_gazi_, or holy war, against the infidels; and their political

errors unlocked the passes of Mount Olympus, and invited him to

descend into the plains of Bithynia. Till the reign of

Palæologus, these passes had been vigilantly guarded by the

militia of the country, who were repaid by their own safety and

an exemption from taxes. The emperor abolished their privilege

and assumed their office; but the tribute was rigorously

collected, the custody of the passes was neglected, and the hardy

mountaineers degenerated into a trembling crowd of peasants

without spirit or discipline. It was on the twenty-seventh of

July, in the year twelve hundred and ninety-nine of the Christian

æra, that Othman first invaded the territory of Nicomedia; 40 and

the singular accuracy of the date seems to disclose some

foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster. The

annals of the twenty-seven years of his reign would exhibit a

repetition of the same inroads; and his hereditary troops were

multiplied in each campaign by the accession of captives and

volunteers. Instead of retreating to the hills, he maintained the

most useful and defensive posts; fortified the towns and castles

which he had first pillaged; and renounced the pastoral life for

the baths and palaces of his infant capitals. But it was not till

Othman was oppressed by age and infirmities, that he received the

welcome news of the conquest of Prusa, which had been surrendered

by famine or treachery to the arms of his son Orchan. The glory

of Othman is chiefly founded on that of his descendants; but the

Turks have transcribed or composed a royal testament of his last

counsels of justice and moderation. 41

40 (return) [ See Pachymer, l. x. c. 25, 26, l. xiii. c. 33, 34,

36; and concerning the guard of the mountains, l. i. c. 3—6:

Nicephorus Gregoras, l. vii. c. l., and the first book of

Laonicus Chalcondyles, the Athenian.]

41 (return) [ I am ignorant whether the Turks have any writers

older than Mahomet II., * nor can I reach beyond a meagre

chronicle (Annales Turcici ad Annum 1550) translated by John

Gaudier, and published by Leunclavius, (ad calcem Laonic.

Chalcond. p. 311—350,) with copious pandects, or commentaries.

The history of the Growth and Decay (A.D. 1300—1683) of the

Othman empire was translated into English from the Latin MS. of

Demetrius Cantemir, prince of Moldavia, (London, 1734, in folio.)

The author is guilty of strange blunders in Oriental history; but

he was conversant with the language, the annals, and institutions

of the Turks. Cantemir partly draws his materials from the

Synopsis of Saadi Effendi of Larissa, dedicated in the year 1696

to Sultan Mustapha, and a valuable abridgment of the original

historians. In one of the Ramblers, Dr. Johnson praises Knolles

(a General History of the Turks to the present Year. London,

1603) as the first of historians, unhappy only in the choice of

his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial and verbose

compilation from Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of

speeches and battles, can either instruct or amuse an enlightened

age, which requires from the historian some tincture of

philosophy and criticism. Note: * We could have wished that M.

von Hammer had given a more clear and distinct reply to this

question of Gibbon. In a note, vol. i. p. 630. M. von Hammer

shows that they had not only sheiks (religious writers) and

learned lawyers, but poets and authors on medicine. But the

inquiry of Gibbon obviously refers to historians. The oldest of

their historical works, of which V. Hammer makes use, is the

“Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade,” i. e. the History of the Great

Grandson of Aaschik Pasha, who was a dervis and celebrated

ascetic poet in the reign of Murad (Amurath) I. Ahmed, the author

of the work, lived during the reign of Bajazet II., but, he says,

derived much information from the book of Scheik Jachshi, the son

of Elias, who was Imaum to Sultan Orchan, (the second Ottoman

king) and who related, from the lips of his father, the

circumstances of the earliest Ottoman history. This book (having

searched for it in vain for five-and-twenty years) our author

found at length in the Vatican. All the other Turkish histories

on his list, as indeed this, were _written_ during the reign of

Mahomet II. It does not appear whether any of the rest cite

earlier authorities of equal value with that claimed by the

“Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade.”—M. (in Quarterly Review, vol. xlix.

p. 292.)]

From the conquest of Prusa, we may date the true æra of the

Ottoman empire. The lives and possessions of the Christian

subjects were redeemed by a tribute or ransom of thirty thousand

crowns of gold; and the city, by the labors of Orchan, assumed

the aspect of a Mahometan capital; Prusa was decorated with a

mosque, a college, and a hospital, of royal foundation; the

Seljukian coin was changed for the name and impression of the new

dynasty: and the most skilful professors, of human and divine

knowledge, attracted the Persian and Arabian students from the

ancient schools of Oriental learning. The office of vizier was

instituted for Aladin, the brother of Orchan; 411 and a different

habit distinguished the citizens from the peasants, the Moslems

from the infidels. All the troops of Othman had consisted of

loose squadrons of Turkman cavalry; who served without pay and

fought without discipline: but a regular body of infantry was

first established and trained by the prudence of his son. A great

number of volunteers was enrolled with a small stipend, but with

the permission of living at home, unless they were summoned to

the field: their rude manners, and seditious temper, disposed

Orchan to educate his young captives as his soldiers and those of

the prophet; but the Turkish peasants were still allowed to mount

on horseback, and follow his standard, with the appellation and

the hopes of _freebooters_. 412 By these arts he formed an army

of twenty-five thousand Moslems: a train of battering engines was

framed for the use of sieges; and the first successful experiment

was made on the cities of Nice and Nicomedia. Orchan granted a

safe-conduct to all who were desirous of departing with their

families and effects; but the widows of the slain were given in

marriage to the conquerors; and the sacrilegious plunder, the

books, the vases, and the images, were sold or ransomed at

Constantinople. The emperor Andronicus the Younger was vanquished

and wounded by the son of Othman: 42 421 he subdued the whole

province or kingdom of Bithynia, as far as the shores of the

Bosphorus and Hellespont; and the Christians confessed the

justice and clemency of a reign which claimed the voluntary

attachment of the Turks of Asia. Yet Orchan was content with the

modest title of emir; and in the list of his compeers, the

princes of Roum or Anatolia, 43 his military forces were

surpassed by the emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, each of whom

could bring into the field an army of forty thousand men. Their

domains were situate in the heart of the Seljukian kingdom; but

the holy warriors, though of inferior note, who formed new

principalities on the Greek empire, are more conspicuous in the

light of history. The maritime country from the Propontis to the

Mæander and the Isle of Rhodes, so long threatened and so often

pillaged, was finally lost about the thirteenth year of

Andronicus the Elder. 44 Two Turkish chieftains, Sarukhan and

Aidin, left their names to their conquests, and their conquests

to their posterity. The captivity or ruin of the _seven_ churches

of Asia was consummated; and the barbarous lords of Ionia and

Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian

antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored the

fall of the first angel, the extinction of the first candlestick,

of the Revelations; 45 the desolation is complete; and the temple

of Diana, or the church of Mary, will equally elude the search of

the curious traveller. The circus and three stately theatres of

Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes; Sardes is reduced

to a miserable village; the God of Mahomet, without a rival or a

son, is invoked in the mosques of Thyatira and Pergamus; and the

populousness of Smyrna is supported by the foreign trade of the

Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved by

prophecy, or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by

the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant

citizens defended their religion and freedom above fourscore

years; and at length capitulated with the proudest of the

Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia,

Philadelphia is still erect; a column in a scene of ruins; a

pleasing example, that the paths of honor and safety may

sometimes be the same. The servitude of Rhodes was delayed about

two centuries by the establishment of the knights of St. John of

Jerusalem: 46 under the discipline of the order, that island

emerged into fame and opulence; the noble and warlike monks were

renowned by land and sea: and the bulwark of Christendom

provoked, and repelled, the arms of the Turks and Saracens.

411 (return) [ Von Hammer, Osm. Geschichte, vol. i. p. 82.—M.]

412 (return) [ Ibid. p. 91.—M.]

42 (return) [ Cantacuzene, though he relates the battle and

heroic flight of the younger Andronicus, (l. ii. c. 6, 7, 8,)

dissembles by his silence the loss of Prusa, Nice, and Nicomedia,

which are fairly confessed by Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. viii. 15,

ix. 9, 13, xi. 6.) It appears that Nice was taken by Orchan in

1330, and Nicomedia in 1339, which are somewhat different from

the Turkish dates.]

421 (return) [ For the conquests of Orchan over the ten

pachaliks, or kingdoms of the Seljukians, in Asia Minor. see V.

Hammer, vol. i. p. 112.—M.]

43 (return) [ The partition of the Turkish emirs is extracted

from two contemporaries, the Greek Nicephorus Gregoras (l. vii.

1) and the Arabian Marakeschi, (De Guignes, tom. ii. P. ii. p.

76, 77.) See likewise the first book of Laonicus Chalcondyles.]

44 (return) [ Pachymer, l. xiii. c. 13.]

45 (return) [ See the Travels of Wheeler and Spon, of Pocock and

Chandler, and more particularly Smith’s Survey of the Seven

Churches of Asia, p. 205—276. The more pious antiquaries labor to

reconcile the promises and threats of the author of the

Revelations with the _present_ state of the seven cities. Perhaps

it would be more prudent to confine his predictions to the

characters and events of his own times.]

46 (return) [ Consult the ivth book of the Histoire de l’Ordre de

Malthe, par l’Abbé de Vertot. That pleasing writer betrays his

ignorance, in supposing that Othman, a freebooter of the

Bithynian hills, could besiege Rhodes by sea and land.]

The Greeks, by their intestine divisions, were the authors of

their final ruin. During the civil wars of the elder and younger

Andronicus, the son of Othman achieved, almost without

resistance, the conquest of Bithynia; and the same disorders

encouraged the Turkish emirs of Lydia and Ionia to build a fleet,

and to pillage the adjacent islands and the sea-coast of Europe.

In the defence of his life and honor, Cantacuzene was tempted to

prevent, or imitate, his adversaries, by calling to his aid the

public enemies of his religion and country. Amir, the son of

Aidin, concealed under a Turkish garb the humanity and politeness

of a Greek; he was united with the great domestic by mutual

esteem and reciprocal services; and their friendship is compared,

in the vain rhetoric of the times, to the perfect union of

Orestes and Pylades. 47 On the report of the danger of his

friend, who was persecuted by an ungrateful court, the prince of

Ionia assembled at Smyrna a fleet of three hundred vessels, with

an army of twenty-nine thousand men; sailed in the depth of

winter, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Hebrus. From thence,

with a chosen band of two thousand Turks, he marched along the

banks of the river, and rescued the empress, who was besieged in

Demotica by the wild Bulgarians. At that disastrous moment, the

life or death of his beloved Cantacuzene was concealed by his

flight into Servia: but the grateful Irene, impatient to behold

her deliverer, invited him to enter the city, and accompanied her

message with a present of rich apparel and a hundred horses. By a

peculiar strain of delicacy, the Gentle Barbarian refused, in the

absence of an unfortunate friend, to visit his wife, or to taste

the luxuries of the palace; sustained in his tent the rigor of

the winter; and rejected the hospitable gift, that he might share

the hardships of two thousand companions, all as deserving as

himself of that honor and distinction. Necessity and revenge

might justify his predatory excursions by sea and land: he left

nine thousand five hundred men for the guard of his fleet; and

persevered in the fruitless search of Cantacuzene, till his

embarkation was hastened by a fictitious letter, the severity of

the season, the clamors of his independent troops, and the weight

of his spoil and captives. In the prosecution of the civil war,

the prince of Ionia twice returned to Europe; joined his arms

with those of the emperor; besieged Thessalonica, and threatened

Constantinople. Calumny might affix some reproach on his

imperfect aid, his hasty departure, and a bribe of ten thousand

crowns, which he accepted from the Byzantine court; but his

friend was satisfied; and the conduct of Amir is excused by the

more sacred duty of defending against the Latins his hereditary

dominions. The maritime power of the Turks had united the pope,

the king of Cyprus, the republic of Venice, and the order of St.

John, in a laudable crusade; their galleys invaded the coast of

Ionia; and Amir was slain with an arrow, in the attempt to wrest

from the Rhodian knights the citadel of Smyrna. 48 Before his

death, he generously recommended another ally of his own nation;

not more sincere or zealous than himself, but more able to afford

a prompt and powerful succor, by his situation along the

Propontis and in the front of Constantinople. By the prospect of

a more advantageous treaty, the Turkish prince of Bithynia was

detached from his engagements with Anne of Savoy; and the pride

of Orchan dictated the most solemn protestations, that if he

could obtain the daughter of Cantacuzene, he would invariably

fulfil the duties of a subject and a son. Parental tenderness was

silenced by the voice of ambition: the Greek clergy connived at

the marriage of a Christian princess with a sectary of Mahomet;

and the father of Theodora describes, with shameful satisfaction,

the dishonor of the purple. 49 A body of Turkish cavalry attended

the ambassadors, who disembarked from thirty vessels, before his

camp of Selybria. A stately pavilion was erected, in which the

empress Irene passed the night with her daughters. In the

morning, Theodora ascended a throne, which was surrounded with

curtains of silk and gold: the troops were under arms; but the

emperor alone was on horseback. At a signal the curtains were

suddenly withdrawn to disclose the bride, or the victim,

encircled by kneeling eunuchs and hymeneal torches: the sound of

flutes and trumpets proclaimed the joyful event; and her

pretended happiness was the theme of the nuptial song, which was

chanted by such poets as the age could produce. Without the rites

of the church, Theodora was delivered to her barbarous lord: but

it had been stipulated, that she should preserve her religion in

the harem of Bursa; and her father celebrates her charity and

devotion in this ambiguous situation. After his peaceful

establishment on the throne of Constantinople, the Greek emperor

visited his Turkish ally, who with four sons, by various wives,

expected him at Scutari, on the Asiatic shore. The two princes

partook, with seeming cordiality, of the pleasures of the banquet

and the chase; and Theodora was permitted to repass the

Bosphorus, and to enjoy some days in the society of her mother.

But the friendship of Orchan was subservient to his religion and

interest; and in the Genoese war he joined without a blush the

enemies of Cantacuzene.

47 (return) [ Nicephorus Gregoras has expatiated with pleasure on

this amiable character, (l. xii. 7, xiii. 4, 10, xiv. 1, 9, xvi.

6.) Cantacuzene speaks with honor and esteem of his ally, (l.

iii. c. 56, 57, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 86, 89, 95, 96;) but he seems

ignorant of his own sentimental passion for the Turks, and

indirectly denies the possibility of such unnatural friendship,

(l. iv. c. 40.)]

48 (return) [ After the conquest of Smyrna by the Latins, the

defence of this fortress was imposed by Pope Gregory XI. on the

knights of Rhodes, (see Vertot, l. v.)]

49 (return) [ See Cantacuzenus, l. iii. c. 95. Nicephorus

Gregoras, who, for the light of Mount Thabor, brands the emperor

with the names of tyrant and Herod, excuses, rather than blames,

this Turkish marriage, and alleges the passion and power of

Orchan, eggutatoV, kai th dunamo? touV kat’ auton hdh PersikouV

(Turkish) uperairwn SatrapaV, (l. xv. 5.) He afterwards

celebrates his kingdom and armies. See his reign in Cantemir, p.

24—30.]

In the treaty with the empress Anne, the Ottoman prince had

inserted a singular condition, that it should be lawful for him

to sell his prisoners at Constantinople, or transport them into

Asia. A naked crowd of Christians of both sexes and every age, of

priests and monks, of matrons and virgins, was exposed in the

public market; the whip was frequently used to quicken the

charity of redemption; and the indigent Greeks deplored the fate

of their brethren, who were led away to the worst evils of

temporal and spiritual bondage 50 Cantacuzene was reduced to

subscribe the same terms; and their execution must have been

still more pernicious to the empire: a body of ten thousand Turks

had been detached to the assistance of the empress Anne; but the

entire forces of Orchan were exerted in the service of his

father. Yet these calamities were of a transient nature; as soon

as the storm had passed away, the fugitives might return to their

habitations; and at the conclusion of the civil and foreign wars,

Europe was completely evacuated by the Moslems of Asia. It was in

his last quarrel with his pupil that Cantacuzene inflicted the

deep and deadly wound, which could never be healed by his

successors, and which is poorly expiated by his theological

dialogues against the prophet Mahomet. Ignorant of their own

history, the modern Turks confound their first and their final

passage of the Hellespont, 51 and describe the son of Orchan as a

nocturnal robber, who, with eighty companions, explores by

stratagem a hostile and unknown shore. Soliman, at the head of

ten thousand horse, was transported in the vessels, and

entertained as the friend, of the Greek emperor. In the civil

wars of Romania, he performed some service and perpetrated more

mischief; but the Chersonesus was insensibly filled with a

Turkish colony; and the Byzantine court solicited in vain the

restitution of the fortresses of Thrace. After some artful delays

between the Ottoman prince and his son, their ransom was valued

at sixty thousand crowns, and the first payment had been made

when an earthquake shook the walls and cities of the provinces;

the dismantled places were occupied by the Turks; and Gallipoli,

the key of the Hellespont, was rebuilt and repeopled by the

policy of Soliman. The abdication of Cantacuzene dissolved the

feeble bands of domestic alliance; and his last advice admonished

his countrymen to decline a rash contest, and to compare their

own weakness with the numbers and valor, the discipline and

enthusiasm, of the Moslems. His prudent counsels were despised by

the headstrong vanity of youth, and soon justified by the

victories of the Ottomans. But as he practised in the field the

exercise of the _jerid_, Soliman was killed by a fall from his

horse; and the aged Orchan wept and expired on the tomb of his

valiant son. 511

50 (return) [ The most lively and concise picture of this

captivity may be found in the history of Ducas, (c. 8,) who

fairly describes what Cantacuzene confesses with a guilty blush!]

51 (return) [ In this passage, and the first conquests in Europe,

Cantemir (p. 27, &c.) gives a miserable idea of his Turkish

guides; nor am I much better satisfied with Chalcondyles, (l. i.

p. 12, &c.) They forget to consult the most authentic record, the

ivth book of Cantacuzene. I likewise regret the last books, which

are still manuscript, of Nicephorus Gregoras. * Note: Von Hammer

excuses the silence with which the Turkish historians pass over

the earlier intercourse of the Ottomans with the European

continent, of which he enumerates sixteen different occasions, as

if they disdained those peaceful incursions by which they gained

no conquest, and established no permanent footing on the

Byzantine territory. Of the romantic account of Soliman’s first

expedition, he says, “As yet the prose of history had not

asserted its right over the poetry of tradition.” This defence

would scarcely be accepted as satisfactory by the historian of

the Decline and Fall.—M. (in Quarterly Review, vol. xlix. p.

293.)]

511 (return) [ In the 75th year of his age, the 35th of his

reign. V. Hammer. M.]

Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.—Part IV.

But the Greeks had not time to rejoice in the death of their

enemies; and the Turkish cimeter was wielded with the same spirit

by Amurath the First, the son of Orchan, and the brother of

Soliman. By the pale and fainting light of the Byzantine annals,

52 we can discern, that he subdued without resistance the whole

province of Romania or Thrace, from the Hellespont to Mount

Hæmus, and the verge of the capital; and that Adrianople was

chosen for the royal seat of his government and religion in

Europe. Constantinople, whose decline is almost coeval with her

foundation, had often, in the lapse of a thousand years, been

assaulted by the Barbarians of the East and West; but never till

this fatal hour had the Greeks been surrounded, both in Asia and

Europe, by the arms of the same hostile monarchy. Yet the

prudence or generosity of Amurath postponed for a while this easy

conquest; and his pride was satisfied with the frequent and

humble attendance of the emperor John Palæologus and his four

sons, who followed at his summons the court and camp of the

Ottoman prince. He marched against the Sclavonian nations between

the Danube and the Adriatic, the Bulgarians, Servians, Bosnians,

and Albanians; and these warlike tribes, who had so often

insulted the majesty of the empire, were repeatedly broken by his

destructive inroads. Their countries did not abound either in

gold or silver; nor were their rustic hamlets and townships

enriched by commerce or decorated by the arts of luxury. But the

natives of the soil have been distinguished in every age by their

hardiness of mind and body; and they were converted by a prudent

institution into the firmest and most faithful supporters of the

Ottoman greatness. 53 The vizier of Amurath reminded his

sovereign that, according to the Mahometan law, he was entitled

to a fifth part of the spoil and captives; and that the duty

might easily be levied, if vigilant officers were stationed in

Gallipoli, to watch the passage, and to select for his use the

stoutest and most beautiful of the Christian youth. The advice

was followed: the edict was proclaimed; many thousands of the

European captives were educated in religion and arms; and the new

militia was consecrated and named by a celebrated dervis.

Standing in the front of their ranks, he stretched the sleeve of

his gown over the head of the foremost soldier, and his blessing

was delivered in these words: “Let them be called Janizaries,

(_Yengi cheri_, or new soldiers;) may their countenance be ever

bright! their hand victorious! their sword keen! may their spear

always hang over the heads of their enemies! and wheresoever they

go, may they return with a _white face!_” 54 541 Such was the

origin of these haughty troops, the terror of the nations, and

sometimes of the sultans themselves. Their valor has declined,

their discipline is relaxed, and their tumultuary array is

incapable of contending with the order and weapons of modern

tactics; but at the time of their institution, they possessed a

decisive superiority in war; since a regular body of infantry, in

constant exercise and pay, was not maintained by any of the

princes of Christendom. The Janizaries fought with the zeal of

proselytes against their _idolatrous_ countrymen; and in the

battle of Cossova, the league and independence of the Sclavonian

tribes was finally crushed. As the conqueror walked over the

field, he observed that the greatest part of the slain consisted

of beardless youths; and listened to the flattering reply of his

vizier, that age and wisdom would have taught them not to oppose

his irresistible arms. But the sword of his Janizaries could not

defend him from the dagger of despair; a Servian soldier started

from the crowd of dead bodies, and Amurath was pierced in the

belly with a mortal wound. 542 The grandson of Othman was mild in

his temper, modest in his apparel, and a lover of learning and

virtue; but the Moslems were scandalized at his absence from

public worship; and he was corrected by the firmness of the

mufti, who dared to reject his testimony in a civil cause: a

mixture of servitude and freedom not unfrequent in Oriental

history. 55

52 (return) [ After the conclusion of Cantacuzene and Gregoras,

there follows a dark interval of a hundred years. George Phranza,

Michael Ducas, and Laonicus Chalcondyles, all three wrote after

the taking of Constantinople.]

53 (return) [ See Cantemir, p. 37—41, with his own large and

curious annotations.]

54 (return) [ _White_ and _black_ face are common and proverbial

expressions of praise and reproach in the Turkish language. Hic

_niger_ est, hunc tu Romane caveto, was likewise a Latin

sentence.]

541 (return) [ According to Von Hammer. vol. i. p. 90, Gibbon and

the European writers assign too late a date to this enrolment of

the Janizaries. It took place not in the reign of Amurath, but in

that of his predecessor Orchan.—M.]

542 (return) [ Ducas has related this as a deliberate act of

self-devotion on the part of a Servian noble who pretended to

desert, and stabbed Amurath during a conference which he had

requested. The Italian translator of Ducas, published by Bekker

in the new edition of the Byzantines, has still further

heightened the romance. See likewise in Von Hammer (Osmanische

Geschichte, vol. i. p. 138) the popular Servian account, which

resembles that of Ducas, and may have been the source of that of

his Italian translator. The Turkish account agrees more nearly

with Gibbon; but the Servian, (Milosch Kohilovisch) while he lay

among the heap of the dead, pretended to have some secret to

impart to Amurath, and stabbed him while he leaned over to

listen.—M.]

55 (return) [ See the life and death of Morad, or Amurath I., in

Cantemir, (p 33—45,) the first book of Chalcondyles, and the

Annales Turcici of Leunclavius. According to another story, the

sultan was stabbed by a Croat in his tent; and this accident was

alleged to Busbequius (Epist i. p. 98) as an excuse for the

unworthy precaution of pinioning, as if were, between two

attendants, an ambassador’s arms, when he is introduced to the

royal presence.]

The character of Bajazet, the son and successor of Amurath, is

strongly expressed in his surname of _Ilderim_, or the lightning;

and he might glory in an epithet, which was drawn from the fiery

energy of his soul and the rapidity of his destructive march. In

the fourteen years of his reign, 56 he incessantly moved at the

head of his armies, from Boursa to Adrianople, from the Danube to

the Euphrates; and, though he strenuously labored for the

propagation of the law, he invaded, with impartial ambition, the

Christian and Mahometan princes of Europe and Asia. From Angora

to Amasia and Erzeroum, the northern regions of Anatolia were

reduced to his obedience: he stripped of their hereditary

possessions his brother emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, of Aidin

and Sarukhan; and after the conquest of Iconium the ancient

kingdom of the Seljukians again revived in the Ottoman dynasty.

Nor were the conquests of Bajazet less rapid or important in

Europe. No sooner had he imposed a regular form of servitude on

the Servians and Bulgarians, than he passed the Danube to seek

new enemies and new subjects in the heart of Moldavia. 57

Whatever yet adhered to the Greek empire in Thrace, Macedonia,

and Thessaly, acknowledged a Turkish master: an obsequious bishop

led him through the gates of Thermopylæ into Greece; and we may

observe, as a singular fact, that the widow of a Spanish chief,

who possessed the ancient seat of the oracle of Delphi, deserved

his favor by the sacrifice of a beauteous daughter. The Turkish

communication between Europe and Asia had been dangerous and

doubtful, till he stationed at Gallipoli a fleet of galleys, to

command the Hellespont and intercept the Latin succors of

Constantinople. While the monarch indulged his passions in a

boundless range of injustice and cruelty, he imposed on his

soldiers the most rigid laws of modesty and abstinence; and the

harvest was peaceably reaped and sold within the precincts of his

camp. Provoked by the loose and corrupt administration of

justice, he collected in a house the judges and lawyers of his

dominions, who expected that in a few moments the fire would be

kindled to reduce them to ashes. His ministers trembled in

silence: but an Æthiopian buffoon presumed to insinuate the true

cause of the evil; and future venality was left without excuse,

by annexing an adequate salary to the office of cadhi. 58 The

humble title of emir was no longer suitable to the Ottoman

greatness; and Bajazet condescended to accept a patent of sultan

from the caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the

Mamalukes: 59 a last and frivolous homage that was yielded by

force to opinion; by the Turkish conquerors to the house of Abbas

and the successors of the Arabian prophet. The ambition of the

sultan was inflamed by the obligation of deserving this august

title; and he turned his arms against the kingdom of Hungary, the

perpetual theatre of the Turkish victories and defeats.

Sigismond, the Hungarian king, was the son and brother of the

emperors of the West: his cause was that of Europe and the

church; and, on the report of his danger, the bravest knights of

France and Germany were eager to march under his standard and

that of the cross. In the battle of Nicopolis, Bajazet defeated a

confederate army of a hundred thousand Christians, who had

proudly boasted, that if the sky should fall, they could uphold

it on their lances. The far greater part were slain or driven

into the Danube; and Sigismond, escaping to Constantinople by the

river and the Black Sea, returned after a long circuit to his

exhausted kingdom. 60 In the pride of victory, Bajazet threatened

that he would besiege Buda; that he would subdue the adjacent

countries of Germany and Italy, and that he would feed his horse

with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter at Rome. His

progress was checked, not by the miraculous interposition of the

apostle, not by a crusade of the Christian powers, but by a long

and painful fit of the gout. The disorders of the moral, are

sometimes corrected by those of the physical, world; and an

acrimonious humor falling on a single fibre of one man, may

prevent or suspend the misery of nations.

56 (return) [ The reign of Bajazet I., or Ilderim Bayazid, is

contained in Cantemir, (p. 46,) the iid book of Chalcondyles, and

the Annales Turcici. The surname of Ilderim, or lightning, is an

example, that the conquerors and poets of every age have _felt_

the truth of a system which derives the sublime from the

principle of terror.]

57 (return) [ Cantemir, who celebrates the victories of the great

Stephen over the Turks, (p. 47,) had composed the ancient and

modern state of his principality of Moldavia, which has been long

promised, and is still unpublished.]

58 (return) [ Leunclav. Annal. Turcici, p. 318, 319. The venality

of the cadhis has long been an object of scandal and satire; and

if we distrust the observations of our travellers, we may consult

the feeling of the Turks themselves, (D’Herbelot, Bibliot.

Orientale, p. 216, 217, 229, 230.)]

59 (return) [ The fact, which is attested by the Arabic history

of Ben Schounah, a contemporary Syrian, (De Guignes Hist. des

Huns. tom. iv. p. 336.) destroys the testimony of Saad Effendi

and Cantemir, (p. 14, 15,) of the election of Othman to the

dignity of sultan.]

60 (return) [ See the Decades Rerum Hungaricarum (Dec. iii. l.

ii. p. 379) of Bonfinius, an Italian, who, in the xvth century,

was invited into Hungary to compose an eloquent history of that

kingdom. Yet, if it be extant and accessible, I should give the

preference to some homely chronicle of the time and country.]

Such is the general idea of the Hungarian war; but the disastrous

adventure of the French has procured us some memorials which

illustrate the victory and character of Bajazet. 61 The duke of

Burgundy, sovereign of Flanders, and uncle of Charles the Sixth,

yielded to the ardor of his son, John count of Nevers; and the

fearless youth was accompanied by four princes, his _cousins_,

and those of the French monarch. Their inexperience was guided by

the Sire de Coucy, one of the best and oldest captain of

Christendom; 62 but the constable, admiral, and marshal of France

63 commanded an army which did not exceed the number of a

thousand knights and squires. 631 These splendid names were the

source of presumption and the bane of discipline. So many might

aspire to command, that none were willing to obey; their national

spirit despised both their enemies and their allies; and in the

persuasion that Bajazet _would_ fly, or _must_ fall, they began

to compute how soon they should visit Constantinople and deliver

the holy sepulchre. When their scouts announced the approach of

the Turks, the gay and thoughtless youths were at table, already

heated with wine; they instantly clasped their armor, mounted

their horses, rode full speed to the vanguard, and resented as an

affront the advice of Sigismond, which would have deprived them

of the right and honor of the foremost attack. The battle of

Nicopolis would not have been lost, if the French would have

obeyed the prudence of the Hungarians; but it might have been

gloriously won, had the Hungarians imitated the valor of the

French. They dispersed the first line, consisting of the troops

of Asia; forced a rampart of stakes, which had been planted

against the cavalry; broke, after a bloody conflict, the

Janizaries themselves; and were at length overwhelmed by the

numerous squadrons that issued from the woods, and charged on all

sides this handful of intrepid warriors. In the speed and secrecy

of his march, in the order and evolutions of the battle, his

enemies felt and admired the military talents of Bajazet. They

accuse his cruelty in the use of victory. After reserving the

count of Nevers, and four-and-twenty lords, 632 whose birth and

riches were attested by his Latin interpreters, the remainder of

the French captives, who had survived the slaughter of the day,

were led before his throne; and, as they refused to abjure their

faith, were successively beheaded in his presence. The sultan was

exasperated by the loss of his bravest Janizaries; and if it be

true, that, on the eve of the engagement, the French had

massacred their Turkish prisoners, 64 they might impute to

themselves the consequences of a just retaliation. 641 A knight,

whose life had been spared, was permitted to return to Paris,

that he might relate the deplorable tale, and solicit the ransom

of the noble captives. In the mean while, the count of Nevers,

with the princes and barons of France, were dragged along in the

marches of the Turkish camp, exposed as a grateful trophy to the

Moslems of Europe and Asia, and strictly confined at Boursa, as

often as Bajazet resided in his capital. The sultan was pressed

each day to expiate with their blood the blood of his martyrs;

but he had pronounced that they should live, and either for mercy

or destruction his word was irrevocable. He was assured of their

value and importance by the return of the messenger, and the

gifts and intercessions of the kings of France and of Cyprus.

Lusignan presented him with a gold saltcellar of curious

workmanship, and of the price of ten thousand ducats; and Charles

the Sixth despatched by the way of Hungary a cast of Norwegian

hawks, and six horse-loads of scarlet cloth, of fine linen of

Rheims, and of Arras tapestry, representing the battles of the

great Alexander. After much delay, the effect of distance rather

than of art, Bajazet agreed to accept a ransom of two hundred

thousand ducats for the count of Nevers and the surviving princes

and barons: the marshal Boucicault, a famous warrior, was of the

number of the fortunate; but the admiral of France had been slain

in battle; and the constable, with the Sire de Coucy, died in the

prison of Boursa. This heavy demand, which was doubled by

incidental costs, fell chiefly on the duke of Burgundy, or rather

on his Flemish subjects, who were bound by the feudal laws to

contribute for the knighthood and captivity of the eldest son of

their lord. For the faithful discharge of the debt, some

merchants of Genoa gave security to the amount of five times the

sum; a lesson to those warlike times, that commerce and credit

are the links of the society of nations. It had been stipulated

in the treaty, that the French captives should swear never to

bear arms against the person of their conqueror; but the

ungenerous restraint was abolished by Bajazet himself. “I

despise,” said he to the heir of Burgundy, “thy oaths and thy

arms. Thou art young, and mayest be ambitious of effacing the

disgrace or misfortune of thy first chivalry. Assemble thy

powers, proclaim thy design, and be assured that Bajazet will

rejoice to meet thee a second time in a field of battle.” Before

their departure, they were indulged in the freedom and

hospitality of the court of Boursa. The French princes admired

the magnificence of the Ottoman, whose hunting and hawking

equipage was composed of seven thousand huntsmen and seven

thousand falconers. 65 In their presence, and at his command, the

belly of one of his chamberlains was cut open, on a complaint

against him for drinking the goat’s milk of a poor woman. The

strangers were astonished by this act of justice; but it was the

justice of a sultan who disdains to balance the weight of

evidence, or to measure the degrees of guilt.

61 (return) [ I should not complain of the labor of this work, if

my materials were always derived from such books as the chronicle

of honest Froissard, (vol. iv. c. 67, 72, 74, 79—83, 85, 87, 89,)

who read little, inquired much, and believed all. The original

Mémoires of the Maréchal de Boucicault (Partie i. c. 22—28) add

some facts, but they are dry and deficient, if compared with the

pleasant garrulity of Froissard.]

62 (return) [ An accurate Memoir on the Life of Enguerrand VII.,

Sire de Coucy, has been given by the Baron de Zurlauben, (Hist.

de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxv.) His rank and

possessions were equally considerable in France and England; and,

in 1375, he led an army of adventurers into Switzerland, to

recover a large patrimony which he claimed in right of his

grandmother, the daughter of the emperor Albert I. of Austria,

(Sinner, Voyage dans la Suisse Occidentale, tom. i. p. 118—124.)]

63 (return) [ That military office, so respectable at present,

was still more conspicuous when it was divided between two

persons, (Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Françoise, tom. ii. p. 5.)

One of these, the marshal of the crusade, was the famous

Boucicault, who afterwards defended Constantinople, governed

Genoa, invaded the coast of Asia, and died in the field of

Azincour.]

631 (return) [ Daru, Hist. de Venice, vol. ii. p. 104, makes the

whole French army amount to 10,000 men, of whom 1000 were

knights. The curious volume of Schiltberger, a German of Munich,

who was taken prisoner in the battle, (edit. Munich, 1813,) and

which V. Hammer receives as authentic, gives the whole number at

6000. See Schiltberger. Reise in dem Orient. and V. Hammer, note,

p. 610.—M.]

632 (return) [ According to Schiltberger there were only twelve

French lords granted to the prayer of the “duke of Burgundy,” and

“Herr Stephan Synther, and Johann von Bodem.” Schiltberger, p.

13.—M.]

64 (return) [ For this odious fact, the Abbé de Vertot quotes the

Hist. Anonyme de St. Denys, l. xvi. c. 10, 11. (Ordre de Malthe,

tom. ii. p. 310.)]

641 (return) [ See Schiltberger’s very graphic account of the

massacre. He was led out to be slaughtered in cold blood with the

rest f the Christian prisoners, amounting to 10,000. He was

spared at the intercession of the son of Bajazet, with a few

others, on account of their extreme youth. No one under 20 years

of age was put to death. The “duke of Burgundy” was obliged to be

a spectator of this butchery which lasted from early in the

morning till four o’clock, P. M. It ceased only at the

supplication of the leaders of Bajazet’s army. Schiltberger, p.

14.—M.]

65 (return) [ Sherefeddin Ali (Hist. de Timour Bec, l. v. c. 13)

allows Bajazet a round number of 12,000 officers and servants of

the chase. A part of his spoils was afterwards displayed in a

hunting-match of Timour, l. hounds with satin housings; 2.

leopards with collars set with jewels; 3. Grecian greyhounds; and

4, dogs from Europe, as strong as African lions, (idem, l. vi. c.

15.) Bajazet was particularly fond of flying his hawks at cranes,

(Chalcondyles, l. ii. p. 85.)]

After his enfranchisement from an oppressive guardian, John

Palæologus remained thirty-six years, the helpless, and, as it

should seem, the careless spectator of the public ruin. 66 Love,

or rather lust, was his only vigorous passion; and in the

embraces of the wives and virgins of the city, the Turkish slave

forgot the dishonor of the emperor of the _Romans_ Andronicus,

his eldest son, had formed, at Adrianople, an intimate and guilty

friendship with Sauzes, the son of Amurath; and the two youths

conspired against the authority and lives of their parents. The

presence of Amurath in Europe soon discovered and dissipated

their rash counsels; and, after depriving Sauzes of his sight,

the Ottoman threatened his vassal with the treatment of an

accomplice and an enemy, unless he inflicted a similar punishment

on his own son. Palæologus trembled and obeyed; and a cruel

precaution involved in the same sentence the childhood and

innocence of John, the son of the criminal. But the operation was

so mildly, or so unskilfully, performed, that the one retained

the sight of an eye, and the other was afflicted only with the

infirmity of squinting. Thus excluded from the succession, the

two princes were confined in the tower of Anema; and the piety of

Manuel, the second son of the reigning monarch, was rewarded with

the gift of the Imperial crown. But at the end of two years, the

turbulence of the Latins and the levity of the Greeks, produced a

revolution; 661 and the two emperors were buried in the tower

from whence the two prisoners were exalted to the throne. Another

period of two years afforded Palæologus and Manuel the means of

escape: it was contrived by the magic or subtlety of a monk, who

was alternately named the angel or the devil: they fled to

Scutari; their adherents armed in their cause; and the two

Byzantine factions displayed the ambition and animosity with

which Cæsar and Pompey had disputed the empire of the world. The

Roman world was now contracted to a corner of Thrace, between the

Propontis and the Black Sea, about fifty miles in length and

thirty in breadth; a space of ground not more extensive than the

lesser principalities of Germany or Italy, if the remains of

Constantinople had not still represented the wealth and

populousness of a kingdom. To restore the public peace, it was

found necessary to divide this fragment of the empire; and while

Palæologus and Manuel were left in possession of the capital,

almost all that lay without the walls was ceded to the blind

princes, who fixed their residence at Rhodosto and Selybria. In

the tranquil slumber of royalty, the passions of John Palæologus

survived his reason and his strength: he deprived his favorite

and heir of a blooming princess of Trebizond; and while the

feeble emperor labored to consummate his nuptials, Manuel, with a

hundred of the noblest Greeks, was sent on a peremptory summons

to the Ottoman _porte_. They served with honor in the wars of

Bajazet; but a plan of fortifying Constantinople excited his

jealousy: he threatened their lives; the new works were instantly

demolished; and we shall bestow a praise, perhaps above the merit

of Palæologus, if we impute this last humiliation as the cause of

his death.

66 (return) [ For the reigns of John Palæologus and his son

Manuel, from 1354 to 1402, see Ducas, c. 9—15, Phranza, l. i. c.

16—21, and the ist and iid books of Chalcondyles, whose proper

subject is drowned in a sea of episode.]

661 (return) [ According to Von Hammer it was the power of

Bajazet, vol. i. p. 218.]

The earliest intelligence of that event was communicated to

Manuel, who escaped with speed and secrecy from the palace of

Boursa to the Byzantine throne. Bajazet affected a proud

indifference at the loss of this valuable pledge; and while he

pursued his conquests in Europe and Asia, he left the emperor to

struggle with his blind cousin John of Selybria, who, in eight

years of civil war, asserted his right of primogeniture. At

length, the ambition of the victorious sultan pointed to the

conquest of Constantinople; but he listened to the advice of his

vizier, who represented that such an enterprise might unite the

powers of Christendom in a second and more formidable crusade.

His epistle to the emperor was conceived in these words: “By the

divine clemency, our invincible cimeter has reduced to our

obedience almost all Asia, with many and large countries in

Europe, excepting only the city of Constantinople; for beyond the

walls thou hast nothing left. Resign that city; stipulate thy

reward; or tremble, for thyself and thy unhappy people, at the

consequences of a rash refusal.” But his ambassadors were

instructed to soften their tone, and to propose a treaty, which

was subscribed with submission and gratitude. A truce of ten

years was purchased by an annual tribute of thirty thousand

crowns of gold; the Greeks deplored the public toleration of the

law of Mahomet, and Bajazet enjoyed the glory of establishing a

Turkish cadhi, and founding a royal mosque in the metropolis of

the Eastern church. 67 Yet this truce was soon violated by the

restless sultan: in the cause of the prince of Selybria, the

lawful emperor, an army of Ottomans again threatened

Constantinople; and the distress of Manuel implored the

protection of the king of France. His plaintive embassy obtained

much pity and some relief; and the conduct of the succor was

intrusted to the marshal Boucicault, 68 whose religious chivalry

was inflamed by the desire of revenging his captivity on the

infidels. He sailed with four ships of war, from Aiguesmortes to

the Hellespont; forced the passage, which was guarded by

seventeen Turkish galleys; landed at Constantinople a supply of

six hundred men-at-arms and sixteen hundred archers; and reviewed

them in the adjacent plain, without condescending to number or

array the multitude of Greeks. By his presence, the blockade was

raised both by sea and land; the flying squadrons of Bajazet were

driven to a more respectful distance; and several castles in

Europe and Asia were stormed by the emperor and the marshal, who

fought with equal valor by each other’s side. But the Ottomans

soon returned with an increase of numbers; and the intrepid

Boucicault, after a year’s struggle, resolved to evacuate a

country which could no longer afford either pay or provisions for

his soldiers. The marshal offered to conduct Manuel to the French

court, where he might solicit in person a supply of men and

money; and advised, in the mean while, that, to extinguish all

domestic discord, he should leave his blind competitor on the

throne. The proposal was embraced: the prince of Selybria was

introduced to the capital; and such was the public misery, that

the lot of the exile seemed more fortunate than that of the

sovereign. Instead of applauding the success of his vassal, the

Turkish sultan claimed the city as his own; and on the refusal of

the emperor John, Constantinople was more closely pressed by the

calamities of war and famine. Against such an enemy prayers and

resistance were alike unavailing; and the savage would have

devoured his prey, if, in the fatal moment, he had not been

overthrown by another savage stronger than himself. By the

victory of Timour or Tamerlane, the fall of Constantinople was

delayed about fifty years; and this important, though accidental,

service may justly introduce the life and character of the Mogul

conqueror.

67 (return) [ Cantemir, p. 50—53. Of the Greeks, Ducas alone (c.

13, 15) acknowledges the Turkish cadhi at Constantinople. Yet

even Ducas dissembles the mosque.]

68 (return) [ Mémoires du bon Messire Jean le Maingre, dit

_Boucicault_, Maréchal de France, partie ire c. 30, 35.]