Lithuania, and Poland, might be reduced, in the age of Justinian, under
the two great families of the Bulgarians and the Sclavonians. According
to the Greek writers, the former, who touched the Euxine and the Lake
MÊotis, derived from the Huns their name or descent; and it is needless
to renew the simple and well-known picture of Tartar manners. They
were bold and dexterous archers, who drank the milk, and feasted on the
flesh, of their fleet and indefatigable horses; whose flocks and herds
followed, or rather guided, the motions of their roving camps; to whose
inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were practised
in flight, though incapable of fear. The nation was divided into two
powerful and hostile tribes, who pursued each other with fraternal
hatred. They eagerly disputed the friendship, or rather the gifts, of
the emperor; and the distinctions which nature had fixed between the
faithful dog and the rapacious wolf was applied by an ambassador who
received only verbal instructions from the mouth of his illiterate
prince. The Bulgarians, of whatsoever species, were equally attracted
by Roman wealth: they assumed a vague dominion over the Sclavonian name,
and their rapid marches could only be stopped by the Baltic Sea, or the
extreme cold and poverty of the north. But the same race of Sclavonians
appears to have maintained, in every age, the possession of the same
countries. Their numerous tribes, however distant or adverse, used one
common language, (it was harsh and irregular,) and where known by the
resemblance of their form, which deviated from the swarthy Tartar, and
approached without attaining the lofty stature and fair complexion of
the German. Four thousand six hundred villages were scattered over the
provinces of Russia and Poland, and their huts were hastily built of
rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron. Erected,
or rather concealed, in the depth of forests, on the banks of rivers,
or the edges of morasses, we may not perhaps, without flattery, compare
them to the architecture of the beaver; which they resembled in a double
issue, to the land and water, for the escape of the savage inhabitant,
an animal less cleanly, less diligent, and less social, than that
marvellous quadruped. The fertility of the soil, rather than the labor
of the natives, supplied the rustic plenty of the Sclavonians. Their
sheep and horned cattle were large and numerous, and the fields which
they sowed with millet or panic afforded, in place of bread, a coarse
and less nutritive food. The incessant rapine of their neighbors
compelled them to bury this treasure in the earth; but on the appearance
of a stranger, it was freely imparted by a people, whose unfavorable
character is qualified by the epithets of chaste, patient, and
hospitable. As their supreme god, they adored an invisible master of the
thunder. The rivers and the nymphs obtained their subordinate honors,
and the popular worship was expressed in vows and sacrifice. The
Sclavonians disdained to obey a despot, a prince, or even a magistrate;
but their experience was too narrow, their passions too headstrong, to
compose a system of equal law or general defence. Some voluntary respect
was yielded to age and valor; but each tribe or village existed as
a separate republic, and all must be persuaded where none could be
compelled. They fought on foot, almost naked, and except an unwieldy
shield, without any defensive armor; their weapons of offence were a
bow, a quiver of small poisoned arrows, and a long rope, which they
dexterously threw from a distance, and entangled their enemy in a
running noose. In the field, the Sclavonian infantry was dangerous
by their speed, agility, and hardiness: they swam, they dived, they
remained under water, drawing their breath through a hollow cane; and
a river or lake was often the scene of their unsuspected ambuscade. But
these were the achievements of spies or stragglers; the military art was
unknown to the Sclavonians; their name was obscure, and their conquests
were inglorious.
I have marked the faint and general outline of the Sclavonians and
Bulgarians, without attempting to define their intermediate boundaries,
which were not accurately known or respected by the Barbarians
themselves. Their importance was measured by their vicinity to the
empire; and the level country of Moldavia and Wallachia was occupied
by the Antes, a Sclavonian tribe, which swelled the titles of
Justinian with an epithet of conquest. Against the Antes he erected the
fortifications of the Lower Danube; and labored to secure the alliance
of a people seated in the direct channel of northern inundation, an
interval of two hundred miles between the mountains of Transylvania and
the Euxine Sea. But the Antes wanted power and inclination to stem the
fury of the torrent; and the light-armed Sclavonians, from a hundred
tribes, pursued with almost equal speed the footsteps of the Bulgarian
horse. The payment of one piece of gold for each soldier procured a safe
and easy retreat through the country of the GepidÊ, who commanded the
passage of the Upper Danube. The hopes or fears of the Barbarians; their
intense union or discord; the accident of a frozen or shallow stream;
the prospect of harvest or vintage; the prosperity or distress of the
Romans; were the causes which produced the uniform repetition of annual
visits, tedious in the narrative, and destructive in the event. The same
year, and possibly the same month, in which Ravenna surrendered, was
marked by an invasion of the Huns or Bulgarians, so dreadful, that it
almost effaced the memory of their past inroads. They spread from the
suburbs of Constantinople to the Ionian Gulf, destroyed thirty-two
cities or castles, erased PotidÊa, which Athens had built, and Philip
had besieged, and repassed the Danube, dragging at their horses' heels
one hundred and twenty thousand of the subjects of Justinian. In a
subsequent inroad they pierced the wall of the Thracian Chersonesus,
extirpated the habitations and the inhabitants, boldly traversed the
Hellespont, and returned to their companions, laden with the spoils of
Asia. Another party, which seemed a multitude in the eyes of the Romans,
penetrated, without opposition, from the Straits of ThermopylÊ to the
Isthmus of Corinth; and the last ruin of Greece has appeared an object
too minute for the attention of history. The works which the emperor
raised for the protection, but at the expense of his subjects, served
only to disclose the weakness of some neglected part; and the walls,
which by flattery had been deemed impregnable, were either deserted by
the garrison, or scaled by the Barbarians. Three thousand Sclavonians,
who insolently divided themselves into two bands, discovered the
weakness and misery of a triumphant reign. They passed the Danube and
the Hebrus, vanquished the Roman generals who dared to oppose their
progress, and plundered, with impunity, the cities of Illyricum
and Thrace, each of which had arms and numbers to overwhelm their
contemptible assailants. Whatever praise the boldness of the Sclavonians
may deserve, it is sullied by the wanton and deliberate cruelty which
they are accused of exercising on their prisoners. Without distinction
of rank, or age, or sex, the captives were impaled or flayed alive, or
suspended between four posts, and beaten with clubs till they expired,
or enclosed in some spacious building, and left to perish in the flames
with the spoil and cattle which might impede the march of these savage
victors. Perhaps a more impartial narrative would reduce the number, and
qualify the nature, of these horrid acts; and they might sometimes be
excused by the cruel laws of retaliation. In the siege of Topirus, whose
obstinate defence had enraged the Sclavonians, they massacred fifteen
thousand males; but they spared the women and children; the most
valuable captives were always reserved for labor or ransom; the
servitude was not rigorous, and the terms of their deliverance were
speedy and moderate. But the subject, or the historian of Justinian,
exhaled his just indignation in the language of complaint and reproach;
and Procopius has confidently affirmed, that in a reign of thirty-two
years, each annual inroad of the Barbarians consumed two hundred
thousand of the inhabitants of the Roman empire. The entire population
of Turkish Europe, which nearly corresponds with the provinces of
Justinian, would perhaps be incapable of supplying six millions of
persons, the result of this incredible estimate.
In the midst of these obscure calamities, Europe felt the shock of
revolution, which first revealed to the world the name and nation of the
Turks. Like Romulus, the founder of that martial people was suckled
by a she-wolf, who afterwards made him the father of a numerous progeny;
and the representation of that animal in the banners of the Turks
preserved the memory, or rather suggested the idea, of a fable, which
was invented, without any mutual intercourse, by the shepherds of Latium
and those of Scythia. At the equal distance of two thousand miles from
the Caspian, the Icy, the Chinese, and the Bengal Seas, a ridge of
mountains is conspicuous, the centre, and perhaps the summit, of Asia;
which, in the language of different nations, has been styled Imaus, and
Caf, and Altai, and the Golden Mountains, and the Girdle of the Earth.
The sides of the hills were productive of minerals; and the iron forges,
for the purpose of war, were exercised by the Turks, the most despised
portion of the slaves of the great khan of the Geougen. But their
servitude could only last till a leader, bold and eloquent, should arise
to persuade his countrymen that the same arms which they forged for
their masters, might become, in their own hands, the instruments of
freedom and victory. They sallied from the mountains; a sceptre was the
reward of his advice; and the annual ceremony, in which a piece of iron
was heated in the fire, and a smith's hammer was successively handled
by the prince and his nobles, recorded for ages the humble profession
and rational pride of the Turkish nation. Bertezena, their first leader,
signalized their valor and his own in successful combats against the
neighboring tribes; but when he presumed to ask in marriage the daughter
of the great khan, the insolent demand of a slave and a mechanic was
contemptuously rejected. The disgrace was expiated by a more noble
alliance with a princess of China; and the decisive battle which almost
extirpated the nation of the Geougen, established in Tartary the new and
more powerful empire of the Turks. They reigned over the north; but
they confessed the vanity of conquest, by their faithful attachment to
the mountain of their fathers. The royal encampment seldom lost sight
of Mount Altai, from whence the River Irtish descends to water the rich
pastures of the Calmucks, which nourish the largest sheep and oxen in
the world. The soil is fruitful, and the climate mild and temperate: the
happy region was ignorant of earthquake and pestilence; the emperor's
throne was turned towards the East, and a golden wolf on the top of a
spear seemed to guard the entrance of his tent. One of the successors of
Bertezena was tempted by the luxury and superstition of China; but his
design of building cities and temples was defeated by the simple wisdom
of a Barbarian counsellor. "The Turks," he said, "are not equal in
number to one hundredth part of the inhabitants of China. If we balance
their power, and elude their armies, it is because we wander without any
fixed habitations in the exercise of war and hunting. Are we strong? we
advance and conquer: are we feeble? we retire and are concealed. Should
the Turks confine themselves within the walls of cities, the loss of a
battle would be the destruction of their empire. The bonzes preach only
patience, humility, and the renunciation of the world. Such, O king! is
not the religion of heroes." They entertained, with less reluctance, the
doctrines of Zoroaster; but the greatest part of the nation acquiesced,
without inquiry, in the opinions, or rather in the practice, of their
ancestors. The honors of sacrifice were reserved for the supreme deity;
they acknowledged, in rude hymns, their obligations to the air, the
fire, the water, and the earth; and their priests derived some profit
from the art of divination. Their unwritten laws were rigorous and
impartial: theft was punished with a tenfold restitution; adultery,
treason, and murder, with death; and no chastisement could be inflicted
too severe for the rare and inexpiable guilt of cowardice. As the
subject nations marched under the standard of the Turks, their cavalry,
both men and horses, were proudly computed by millions; one of their
effective armies consisted of four hundred thousand soldiers, and in
less than fifty years they were connected in peace and war with the
Romans, the Persians, and the Chinese. In their northern limits, some
vestige may be discovered of the form and situation of Kamptchatka, of
a people of hunters and fishermen, whose sledges were drawn by dogs, and
whose habitations were buried in the earth. The Turks were ignorant of
astronomy; but the observation taken by some learned Chinese, with a
gnomon of eight feet, fixes the royal camp in the latitude of forty-nine
degrees, and marks their extreme progress within three, or at least ten
degrees, of the polar circle. Among their southern conquests the most
splendid was that of the Nephthalites, or white Huns, a polite and
warlike people, who possessed the commercial cities of Bochara and
Samarcand, who had vanquished the Persian monarch, and carried their
victorious arms along the banks, and perhaps to the mouth, of the
Indus. On the side of the West, the Turkish cavalry advanced to the Lake
MÊotis. They passed that lake on the ice. The khan who dwelt at the foot
of Mount Altai issued his commands for the siege of Bosphorus, a city
the voluntary subject of Rome, and whose princes had formerly been the
friends of Athens. To the east, the Turks invaded China, as often as
the vigor of the government was relaxed: and I am taught to read in the
history of the times, that they mowed down their patient enemies like
hemp or grass; and that the mandarins applauded the wisdom of an emperor
who repulsed these Barbarians with golden lances. This extent of savage
empire compelled the Turkish monarch to establish three subordinate
princes of his own blood, who soon forgot their gratitude and
allegiance. The conquerors were enervated by luxury, which is always
fatal except to an industrious people; the policy of China solicited
the vanquished nations to resume their independence and the power of the
Turks was limited to a period of two hundred years. The revival of their
name and dominion in the southern countries of Asia are the events of
a later age; and the dynasties, which succeeded to their native realms,
may sleep in oblivion; since _their_ history bears no relation to the
decline and fall of the Roman empire.
Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.--Part II.
In the rapid career of conquest, the Turks attacked and subdued the
nation of the Ogors or Varchonites on the banks of the River Til,
which derived the epithet of Black from its dark water or gloomy
forests. The khan of the Ogors was slain with three hundred thousand
of his subjects, and their bodies were scattered over the space of four
days' journey: their surviving countrymen acknowledged the strength and
mercy of the Turks; and a small portion, about twenty thousand warriors,
preferred exile to servitude. They followed the well-known road of the
Volga, cherished the error of the nations who confounded them with the
Avars, and spread the terror of that false though famous appellation,
which had not, however, saved its lawful proprietors from the yoke of
the Turks. After a long and victorious march, the new Avars arrived at
the foot of Mount Caucasus, in the country of the Alani and Circassians,
where they first heard of the splendor and weakness of the Roman empire.
They humbly requested their confederate, the prince of the Alani, to
lead them to this source of riches; and their ambassador, with the
permission of the governor of Lazica, was transported by the Euxine
Sea to Constantinople. The whole city was poured forth to behold with
curiosity and terror the aspect of a strange people: their long hair,
which hung in tresses down their backs, was gracefully bound with
ribbons, but the rest of their habit appeared to imitate the fashion of
the Huns. When they were admitted to the audience of Justinian, Candish,
the first of the ambassadors, addressed the Roman emperor in these
terms: "You see before you, O mighty prince, the representatives of the
strongest and most populous of nations, the invincible, the irresistible
Avars. We are willing to devote ourselves to your service: we are able
to vanquish and destroy all the enemies who now disturb your repose.
But we expect, as the price of our alliance, as the reward of our valor,
precious gifts, annual subsidies, and fruitful possessions." At the time
of this embassy, Justinian had reigned above thirty, he had lived
above seventy-five years: his mind, as well as his body, was feeble
and languid; and the conqueror of Africa and Italy, careless of the
permanent interest of his people, aspired only to end his days in the
bosom even of inglorious peace. In a studied oration, he imparted to
the senate his resolution to dissemble the insult, and to purchase the
friendship of the Avars; and the whole senate, like the mandarins
of China, applauded the incomparable wisdom and foresight of their
sovereign. The instruments of luxury were immediately prepared to
captivate the Barbarians; silken garments, soft and splendid beds, and
chains and collars incrusted with gold. The ambassadors, content with
such liberal reception, departed from Constantinople, and Valentin, one
of the emperor's guards, was sent with a similar character to their camp
at the foot of Mount Caucasus. As their destruction or their success
must be alike advantageous to the empire, he persuaded them to invade
the enemies of Rome; and they were easily tempted, by gifts and
promises, to gratify their ruling inclinations. These fugitives, who
fled before the Turkish arms, passed the Tanais and Borysthenes, and
boldly advanced into the heart of Poland and Germany, violating the
law of nations, and abusing the rights of victory. Before ten years
had elapsed, their camps were seated on the Danube and the Elbe, many
Bulgarian and Sclavonian names were obliterated from the earth, and the
remainder of their tribes are found, as tributaries and vassals, under
the standard of the Avars. The chagan, the peculiar title of their king,
still affected to cultivate the friendship of the emperor; and Justinian
entertained some thoughts of fixing them in Pannonia, to balance the
prevailing power of the Lombards. But the virtue or treachery of an Avar
betrayed the secret enmity and ambitious designs of their countrymen;
and they loudly complained of the timid, though jealous policy, of
detaining their ambassadors, and denying the arms which they had been
allowed to purchase in the capital of the empire.
Perhaps the apparent change in the dispositions of the emperors may be
ascribed to the embassy which was received from the conquerors of the
Avars. The immense distance which eluded their arms could not extinguish
their resentment: the Turkish ambassadors pursued the footsteps of
the vanquished to the Jaik, the Volga, Mount Caucasus, the Euxine
and Constantinople, and at length appeared before the successor of
Constantine, to request that he would not espouse the cause of
rebels and fugitives. Even commerce had some share in this remarkable
negotiation: and the Sogdoites, who were now the tributaries of the
Turks, embraced the fair occasion of opening, by the north of the
Caspian, a new road for the importation of Chinese silk into the Roman
empire. The Persian, who preferred the navigation of Ceylon, had stopped
the caravans of Bochara and Samarcand: their silk was contemptuously
burnt: some Turkish ambassadors died in Persia, with a suspicion of
poison; and the great khan permitted his faithful vassal Maniach, the
prince of the Sogdoites, to propose, at the Byzantine court, a treaty of
alliance against their common enemies. Their splendid apparel and rich
presents, the fruit of Oriental luxury, distinguished Maniach and his
colleagues from the rude savages of the North: their letters, in the
Scythian character and language, announced a people who had attained the
rudiments of science: they enumerated the conquests, they offered
the friendship and military aid of the Turks; and their sincerity was
attested by direful imprecations (if they were guilty of falsehood)
against their own head, and the head of Disabul their master. The Greek
prince entertained with hospitable regard the ambassadors of a remote
and powerful monarch: the sight of silk-worms and looms disappointed the
hopes of the Sogdoites; the emperor renounced, or seemed to renounce,
the fugitive Avars, but he accepted the alliance of the Turks; and the
ratification of the treaty was carried by a Roman minister to the foot
of Mount Altai. Under the successors of Justinian, the friendship of the
two nations was cultivated by frequent and cordial intercourse; the most
favored vassals were permitted to imitate the example of the great khan,
and one hundred and six Turks, who, on various occasions, had visited
Constantinople, departed at the same time for their native country. The
duration and length of the journey from the Byzantine court to Mount
Altai are not specified: it might have been difficult to mark a road
through the nameless deserts, the mountains, rivers, and morasses of
Tartary; but a curious account has been preserved of the reception of
the Roman ambassadors at the royal camp. After they had been purified
with fire and incense, according to a rite still practised under the
sons of Zingis, they were introduced to the presence of Disabul. In
a valley of the Golden Mountain, they found the great khan in his tent,
seated in a chair with wheels, to which a horse might be occasionally
harnessed. As soon as they had delivered their presents, which were
received by the proper officers, they exposed, in a florid oration, the
wishes of the Roman emperor, that victory might attend the arms of the
Turks, that their reign might be long and prosperous, and that a strict
alliance, without envy or deceit, might forever be maintained between
the two most powerful nations of the earth. The answer of Disabul
corresponded with these friendly professions, and the ambassadors were
seated by his side, at a banquet which lasted the greatest part of the
day: the tent was surrounded with silk hangings, and a Tartar liquor was
served on the table, which possessed at least the intoxicating qualities
of wine. The entertainment of the succeeding day was more sumptuous; the
silk hangings of the second tent were embroidered in various figures;
and the royal seat, the cups, and the vases, were of gold. A third
pavilion was supported by columns of gilt wood; a bed of pure and massy
gold was raised on four peacocks of the same metal: and before the
entrance of the tent, dishes, basins, and statues of solid silver, and
admirable art, were ostentatiously piled in wagons, the monuments of
valor rather than of industry. When Disabul led his armies against the
frontiers of Persia, his Roman allies followed many days the march of
the Turkish camp, nor were they dismissed till they had enjoyed their
precedency over the envoy of the great king, whose loud and intemperate
clamors interrupted the silence of the royal banquet. The power and
ambition of Chosroes cemented the union of the Turks and Romans,
who touched his dominions on either side: but those distant nations,
regardless of each other, consulted the dictates of interest, without
recollecting the obligations of oaths and treaties. While the successor
of Disabul celebrated his father's obsequies, he was saluted by the
ambassadors of the emperor Tiberius, who proposed an invasion of Persia,
and sustained, with firmness, the angry and perhaps the just reproaches
of that haughty Barbarian. "You see my ten fingers," said the great
khan, and he applied them to his mouth. "You Romans speak with as many
tongues, but they are tongues of deceit and perjury. To me you hold
one language, to my subjects another; and the nations are successively
deluded by your perfidious eloquence. You precipitate your allies
into war and danger, you enjoy their labors, and you neglect your
benefactors. Hasten your return, inform your master that a Turk is
incapable of uttering or forgiving falsehood, and that he shall speedily
meet the punishment which he deserves. While he solicits my friendship
with flattering and hollow words, he is sunk to a confederate of
my fugitive Varchonites. If I condescend to march against those
contemptible slaves, they will tremble at the sound of our whips; they
will be trampled, like a nest of ants, under the feet of my innumerable
cavalry. I am not ignorant of the road which they have followed to
invade your empire; nor can I be deceived by the vain pretence, that
Mount Caucasus is the impregnable barrier of the Romans. I know the
course of the Niester, the Danube, and the Hebrus; the most warlike
nations have yielded to the arms of the Turks; and from the rising to
the setting sun, the earth is my inheritance." Notwithstanding this
menace, a sense of mutual advantage soon renewed the alliance of
the Turks and Romans: but the pride of the great khan survived his
resentment; and when he announced an important conquest to his friend
the emperor Maurice, he styled himself the master of the seven races,
and the lord of the seven climates of the world.