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 CÊsars. 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 PalÊologus, [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 PalÊologus; 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]
[Footnote 34: 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.]
[Footnote 35: 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.]
[Footnote 36: G. Acropolita, p. 36, 37. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6, l. iv.
c. 5.]
[Footnote 37: 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.]
[Footnote 38: 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.]
[Footnote 39: 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, than 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 Curdistan. 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 PalÊologus, 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 Êra, 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]
[Footnote 40: 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.]
[Footnote 41: 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 Êra 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 MÊander 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.
[Footnote 411: Von Hammer, Osm. Geschichte, vol. i. p. 82.--M.]
[Footnote 412: Ibid. p. 91.--M.]
[Footnote 42: 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.]
[Footnote 421: 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.]
[Footnote 43: 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.]
[Footnote 44: Pachymer, l. xiii. c. 13.]
[Footnote 45: 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.]
[Footnote 46: Consult the ivth book of the Histoire de l'Ordre
de Malthe, par l'AbbÈ 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.
[Footnote 47: 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.)]
[Footnote 48: 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.)]
[Footnote 49: 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.]