to the preservation of a domestic peace, and the exercise of foreign
hostility. The punishment of death was inflicted on the crimes of
adultery, murder, perjury, and the capital thefts of a horse or ox; and
the fiercest of men were mild and just in their intercourse with each
other. The future election of the great khan was vested in the princes
of his family and the heads of the tribes; and the regulations of the
chase were essential to the pleasures and plenty of a Tartar camp. The
victorious nation was held sacred from all servile labors, which were
abandoned to slaves and strangers; and every labor was servile except
the profession of arms. The service and discipline of the troops, who
were armed with bows, cimeters, and iron maces, and divided by hundreds,
thousands, and ten thousands, were the institutions of a veteran
commander. Each officer and soldier was made responsible, under pain
of death, for the safety and honor of his companions; and the spirit of
conquest breathed in the law, that peace should never be granted unless
to a vanquished and suppliant enemy. But it is the religion of Zingis
that best deserves our wonder and applause. [501] The Catholic inquisitors
of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded
by the example of a Barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of
philosophy, [6] and established by his laws a system of pure theism
and perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith was the
existence of one God, the Author of all good; who fills by his presence
the heavens and earth, which he has created by his power. The Tartars
and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and many
of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions
of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These various systems in freedom
and concord were taught and practised within the precincts of the same
camp; and the Bonze, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin
priest, enjoyed the same honorable exemption from service and tribute:
in the mosque of Bochara, the insolent victor might trample the Koran
under his horse's feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets
and pontiffs of the most hostile sects. The reason of Zingis was not
informed by books: the khan could neither read nor write; and, except
the tribe of the Igours, the greatest part of the Moguls and Tartars
were as illiterate as their sovereign. [601] The memory of their exploits
was preserved by tradition: sixty-eight years after the death of Zingis,
these traditions were collected and transcribed; [7] the brevity of
their domestic annals may be supplied by the Chinese, [8] Persians, [9]
Armenians, [10] Syrians, [11] Arabians, [12] Greeks, [13] Russians, [14]
Poles, [15] Hungarians, [16] and Latins; [17] and each nation will deserve
credit in the relation of their own disasters and defeats. [18]
[Footnote 501: Before his armies entered Thibet, he sent an embassy to
Bogdosottnam-Dsimmo, a Lama high priest, with a letter to this effect:
"I have chosen thee as high priest for myself and my empire. Repair then
to me, and promote the present and future happiness of man: I will be
thy supporter and protector: let us establish a system of religion,
and unite it with the monarchy," &c. The high priest accepted the
invitation; and the Mongol history literally terms this step the _period
of the first respect for religion_; because the monarch, by his public
profession, made it the religion of the state. Klaproth. "Travels in
Caucasus," ch. 7, Eng. Trans. p. 92. Neither Dshingis nor his son and
successor Oegodah had, on account of their continual wars, much leisure
for the propagation of the religion of the Lama. By religion they
understand a distinct, independent, sacred moral code, which has but
one origin, one source, and one object. This notion they universally
propagate, and even believe that the brutes, and all created beings,
have a religion adapted to their sphere of action. The different forms
of the various religions they ascribe to the difference of individuals,
nations, and legislators. Never do you hear of their inveighing against
any creed, even against the obviously absurd Schaman paganism, or of
their persecuting others on that account. They themselves, on the
other hand, endure every hardship, and even persecutions, with perfect
resignation, and indulgently excuse the follies of others, nay, consider
them as a motive for increased ardor in prayer, ch. ix. p. 109.--M.]
[Footnote 6: A singular conformity may be found between the religious
laws of Zingis Khan and of Mr. Locke, (Constitutions of Carolina, in his
works, vol. iv. p. 535, 4to. edition, 1777.)]
[Footnote 601: See the notice on Tha-tha-toung-o, the Ouogour minister of
Tchingis, in Abel Remusat's 2d series of Recherch. Asiat. vol. ii. p.
61. He taught the son of Tchingis to write: "He was the instructor of
the Moguls in writing, of which they were before ignorant;" and hence
the application of the Ouigour characters to the Mogul language cannot
be placed earlier than the year 1204 or 1205, nor so late as the time of
P‡-sse-pa, who lived under Khubilai. A new alphabet, approaching to that
of Thibet, was introduced under Khubilai.--M.]
[Footnote 7: 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 GÈnÈalogique des Tatars (‡ 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.]
[Footnote 8: Histoire de Gentchiscan, et de toute la Dinastie des
Mongous ses Successeurs, Conquerans de la Chine; tirÈe de l'Histoire
de la Chine par le R. P. Gaubil, de la SociÈtÈ de Jesus, Missionaire
‡ Peking; ‡ Paris, 1739, in 4to. This translation is stamped with the
Chinese character of domestic accuracy and foreign ignorance.]
[Footnote 9: See the Histoire du Grand Genghizcan, premier Empereur des
Moguls et Tartares, par M. Petit de la Croix, ‡ 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 BibliothËque
Orientale of D'Herbelot. * Note: The preface to the Hist. des Mongols,
(Paris, 1824) gives a catalogue of the Arabic and Persian authorities.--
M.]
[Footnote 10: Haithonus, or Aithonus, an Armenian prince, and afterwards
a monk of PremontrÈ, (Fabric, Bibliot. Lat. Medii ∆vi, 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 GrynÊus, (Basil, 1555, in folio.) *
Note: A prÈcis 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.]
[Footnote 11: 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.]
[Footnote 12: 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.]
[Footnote 13: 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.]
[Footnote 14: M. Levesque (Histoire de Russie, tom. ii.) has described
the conquest of Russia by the Tartars, from the patriarch Nicon, and the
old chronicles.]
[Footnote 15: For Poland, I am content with the Sarmatia Asiatica et
EuropÊa of Matthew ‡ Michou, or De Michovi‚, a canon and physician of
Cracow, (A.D. 1506,) inserted in the Novus Orbis of GrynÊus. Fabric
Bibliot. Latin. MediÊ et InfimÊ ∆tatis, tom. v. p. 56.]
[Footnote 16: 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 HungariÊ Temporibus BelÊ IV. Regis per Tartaros
facta, p. 292--321;) the best picture that I have ever seen of all the
circumstances of a Barbaric invasion.]
[Footnote 17: 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 ∆vi, tom. ii. p. 198, tom. v. p. 25) may
be found in the second tome of Ramusio.]
[Footnote 18: 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.
[Footnote 19: 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]
[Footnote 191: See the particular account of this transaction, from the
Kholauesut el Akbaur, in Price, vol. ii. p. 402.--M.]
[Footnote 20: M. de Voltaire, Essai sur l'Histoire GÈnÈrale, 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.]
[Footnote 204: Every where they massacred all classes, except the
artisans, whom they made slaves. Hist. des Mongols.--M.]
[Footnote 205: 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.
[Footnote 21: 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.
[Footnote 22: 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.]