THE GREAT TARTAR INVASIONS.
From Jerusalem the reader must now transport himself beyond the
Caspian Sea eastward if he would visit the early home of the Turks or
Turcomans, or Turkmans, against which the first crusade was chiefly
directed. Their Scythian empire of the sixth century was long since
dissolved, the tribes of the nations, each a powerful and independent
kingdom, were scattered over the deserts of Central Asia from China
to the Oxus and the Danube. Hordes of these wandering shepherds were
about to overspread the kingdoms of Persia, shake the thrones of China
and India, and erect a solid and splendid empire from Samarcand to
the confines of Greece and Egypt. Their conquests were not to cease
till their victorious crescents had been planted on the walls of
Constantinople, and unfurled to the breeze from the dome of the most
magnificent Christian temple of the world--the dome of St. Sophia.
One of the greatest of Turkish princes was Mahmood, who reigned over
the eastern provinces of Persia one thousand years after the birth
of Christ, (A. D. 997-1028.) For him the title of Sultan was first
invented--a word that signifies Lord or Master. His kingdom stretched
from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the mouth of the river Indus.
In a series of twelve expeditions he waged a "Holy War" against the
Gentoos of Hindustan. Never was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the
inclemency of the seasons, the heights of the mountains, the breadths
of the rivers, the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the
enemy or the formidable array of their elephants of war. But we cannot
spare even a page to describe his swift and terrible campaigns that
brought the power and wealth of India to his feet. As in his old age
he surveyed the vast millions of gold and silver, the countless spoils
in pearls and diamonds and rubies that filled his treasure house, even
his boundless avarice might have been satiated for a moment. As he
reviewed the state of his regular military forces which comprised one
hundred thousand foot, fifty-five thousand horse and thirteen hundred
elephants of battle; he wept the instability of human greatness,
his grief embittered by the hostile progress of the Turcomans whom
as allies he had introduced into the heart of his Persian kingdom.
He was admonished of his folly by the reply of the chief of the race
of Seljuk of whom he had inquired what supply of men he could furnish
for military service. "If you send," replied Ishmael, "one of these
arrows into our camp, fifty thousand of your servants will mount
on horseback."
"And if that number should not be sufficient?" "Send this second arrow
to the horde of Balik and you will find fifty thousand more." "But,"
said Mahmood, dissembling his anxiety, "if I should stand in need of
the whole force of your kindred tribes?"
"Despatch my bow," was the last reply of Ishmael, "and as it is sent
around, the summons will be obeyed by two hundred thousand horse." Well
might he fear, for the multitude of shepherds were converted into
robbers; the bands of robbers only needed leaders to become an army
of conquerors, that would not be ashamed or afraid to measure courage
and power with the proudest sovereigns of Asia.
Too long did his son and successor neglect the advice of his wise
men. "Your enemies" they repeatedly urged "were in their origin a
swarm of ants; they are now little snakes; and unless they be instantly
crushed they will acquire the magnitude and venom of serpents."
When the day of battle came, the swarm of ants had grown into a horde
of fierce and mighty warriors: and although "Massoud exhibited such
acts of gigantic force and valor as never king had before displayed,"
in the very hour when victory was about to perch on his banners in
dismay, he beheld almost his whole army led by some generals of the
Turkish race, "devouring the paths of flight." This memorable day of
Zendecan founded in Persia the dynasty of the Shepherd Kings.
THE DYNASTY OF THE SELJUKIAN TURKS. (A. D. 1038-1152.)
The victorious Turcomans, determined by lot, it is said, the selection
of their King; and it fell to Togrul Beg, grandson of Seljuk, whose
surname was immortalized in the greatness of his posterity. At the
age of forty-five Togrul was invested with the title of Sultan in
the royal city of Nishabur, and the sceptre of Irak passed from the
Persian to the Turkish nation, that now and everywhere embraced with
fervor and sincerity the religion of Mohammed.
At the conquest of Mosul and Bagdad he received from the Caliph of
the East the title of the lieutenant of the vicar of the prophet,
his mystic veil was perfumed with musk, two crowns were placed on
his head; two scimitars were girded to his side as the symbol of a
double reign over the East and the West.
Soon myriads of Turkish horse went forth to conquest, overspreading
the frontier of six hundred miles from Tauris to Erzeroum: and the
blood of hundreds of thousands of Christians were a grateful sacrifice
to the Arabian prophet.
The first invasion of poor Armenia was with more than a hundred
thousand men and twenty-four provinces were laid waste. The second
was with two hundred thousand and they completed the utter ruin of
those provinces, carrying into captivity all the inhabitants. In the
year 1049 the armies of Togrul made a third invasion, besieging the
city of Ardzan, which had a population of three hundred thousand
souls, and contained eight hundred churches with schools and
hospitals. Notwithstanding their utmost resistance it was taken and
a hundred and forty thousand people were massacred, the remnant were
carried into captivity and the city was burned. Many other cities
were treated in the same way.
At the same time there were in Armenia sixty thousand Greek Christian
troops from Constantinople, ostensibly for the protection of Armenia,
yet they did not take a single step to repel the invaders, preferring
to see the Armenians slaughtered. Verily history repeated itself
as the great "Christian" powers of Europe stood by witnessing the
"reform of Armenia."
There is some small sense of satisfaction in the fact that before the
Turks left Armenia they utterly defeated and dispersed these miserable
"Defenders of the Faith."
Again in the year 1053 Togrul appeared in Armenia, destroying many
cities, among them the capital city of Kars and then marched to the
city of Manazguerd and laid siege to it.
Basilius, the Chief of the city, was a man of great bravery and
military skill. He was assisted in the defence of the city by a
skillful Armenian priest who, by his inventions rendered the machines
raised by the Persians against the walls entirely useless. Then they
planned to undermine the fortifications; but this new design was
revealed by a soldier who, smarting under some grievous and unjust
punishment, shot an arrow into the city to which was fastened a letter
making known their plans. A countermine was dug, and the Persian
miners being captured they were taken into the city and beheaded on
the battlements.
In his rage Togrul caused a huge wooden ballista to be erected,--so
large that it required four hundred men to drag it before the
walls. Basilius offered a great reward to the man who should succeed
in burning it. There was a very ingenious Gaul in the city who, having
composed an inflammable mixture, mounted a swift horse and proceeded
to the Persian camp holding a letter in his outstretched hand. He went
directly to the spot where the ballista stood and while the guards
fancied him a messenger sent to the King he hurled the bottles filled
with the combustible material into the machine and in the confusion
that attended the burning of the ballista escaped back to the city.
The siege was soon raised but other cities felt the fury of his baffled
rage as leaving a trail of fire and blood behind him, Togrul returned
to Persia. The native historian whom we are consulting, in simplest yet
most telling pathos, writes: "Armenia, after this, enjoyed no repose."
Upon the death of Togrul, (A. D. 1062) he was succeeded by
his nephew, Alp Arslan who, in the following year came to wreak
vengeance on unhappy Armenia. Everywhere he committed the most horrid
devastation. Marching to the province of Ararat he laid siege to Ani
the Magnificent, with its thousand and one churches.
The city was lost by the cowardice of the Governor. A breach had been
made in an unprotected part of the wall, but being narrow the citizens
so valiantly defended it that they compelled the Sultan to retire;
but the Governor, fancying that the Persians had succeeded in forcing
an entrance, retired into the citadel. Thinking themselves deserted,
a panic seized the Armenians and about fifty thousand of them fled
into the country from the gates on the opposite side of the city.
The retreat of the Persians was countermanded, the city was taken,
orders being given to put every man to the sword. Human blood flowed
in torrents. So great was the carnage that the streets were literally
choked up with dead bodies, and the waters of the river Akhurian
flowed in crimson tides. After his first fury was somewhat abated,
Alp Arslan gave orders to seize the most wealthy citizens still alive
and torture them to make them reveal places where their treasures were
hidden. Then he pillaged the thousand and one churches, murdered all
the priests found therein,--some were drowned, some he flayed alive,
others died under tortures as excruciating as most fiendish imagination
could conceive or invent. Finally, gathering his captives--men,
women and children and his plunder, Alp Arslan returned to Persia.
We must leave for awhile the bleeding Armenians whose kingdom had been
annihilated, to the tender mercies of the wicked, to follow the path of
rapine and horror as the torrents of unspeakable Turks flowed westward.
They captured cities, put the inhabitants of Asia Minor to the sword
and devastated the interior provinces to convert them into pasture
lands for their nomad followers.
Romanus, husband of the Greek Empress Eudocia took the field against
them, and driving them back to the Euphrates, laid siege to the
fortress of Manzikert or Malasgerd in Armenia midway between modern
Erzeroum and Van. It was on the plain of Manzikert in 1071 after the
capture of the fortress, that the East gained one of its greatest
triumphs over the West. The Seljuk Sultan and the Roman Emperor met
face to face. Romanus rejected in haughty pride the overtures of the
Sultan that might have secured his retreat, perhaps peace--and prepared
for battle. The Sultan with his own hands tied up the flowing tail
of his horse, exchanged his bow and arrows for a mace and scimitar,
clothed himself in a white garment, perfumed his body with musk, and
declared that if he were vanquished, that spot should be the place of
his burial. The Sultan himself had cast away his missile weapons, but
his hopes of victory were in the arrows of his cavalry whose squadrons
were loosely placed in the form of a crescent. Romanus led his army
in a single and solid phalanx and pressed with vigor the artful and
yielding resistance of the barbarians. Thus the greater part of a hot
summer's day was spent in fruitless combat until fatigue compelled
him to sound a return to camp. This was the fatal moment. The Turkish
squadrons poured a cloud of arrows on the retreating army throwing
them into confusion. The horns of the crescent closed in upon the
rear of the Greeks.
The destruction of the army was complete, the booty immense. Nobly
did the Emperor with desperate courage maintain the fight till the
close of the day. The imperial station was left naked on all sides to
the victorious Turks. His body guard fell about him--his horse was
slain and he himself was wounded, yet he stood as a lion at bay. He
was captured, despoiled of his jewelled robes, bound and guarded all
night on the field of the dead.
In the morning the successor of Constantine in plebian habit was led
into the presence of the Sultan and commanded to kiss the ground at
the feet of the Lord of Asia. Reluctantly he obeyed, and Alp Arslan,
starting from his throne, is said to have planted his foot on the
neck of the Roman Emperor. No captive was ever more nobly treated than
Romanus Diogenes; but no captivity ever wrought more lasting woe. Three
years later the Seljuk was the recognized Lord of Asia Minor, and as
such ventured to call himself the Lord of Rome. Following the defeat of
the Romans the Turks marched into Syria and reduced Damascus by famine
and the sword. Other cities in Palestine yielded until the victorious
army passing southward stood on the banks of the Nile. The city of
Cairo in desperate battle drove back the armies of the Sultan from
the confines of Egypt; but in their retreat Jerusalem was conquered
and the house of Seljuk held the city for some twenty years.
When Jerusalem fell before the arms of the Crusaders in 1099, the
event was applauded as a deliverance in Europe, and was deplored as
a calamity in Asia. The Syrian fugitives diffused everywhere their
sorrow and consternation: Bagdad mourned in the dust; the Cadi of
Damascus tore his beard in the Caliph's presence; the Commanders of
the faithful could only weep and vow vengeance on the head of the
infidels who had defiled the Holy City.
It is not our purpose to pursue the story of the crusades through all
the years that made Jerusalem the prize of battle equally to Christian
and Mohammedan. The life and exploits of Saladin and Richard, the
lion-hearted are more thrilling than any romance. In a fanatic age,
himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of Saladin commanded the esteem
of the Christians; the Emperor of Germany gloried in his friendship;
the Greek Emperor solicited his alliance. Egypt, Syria, and Arabia
were adorned by the royal foundations of hospitals, colleges and
mosques; Cairo was fortified with a wall and citadel; but his works
were consecrated to public use: nor did the Sultan indulge himself in
a garden or palace of private luxury. The son of Job, a simple Kurd,
Saladin was after the follies of a hot youth, a rigid Mussulman,
his garment of coarse woolen, and water his only drink.
But already had he won for himself the name of "The Scourge of God." He
had united all the forces and riches of Egypt and Asia under his
sword and now (1187 A. D.) hastened with eighty thousand horse to
the deliverance of Palestine.
Three months after the battle of Tiberias (July 4 and 5, 1187)
he appeared in arms before Jerusalem. When Saladin had partially
completed its investment, he invited its principal inhabitants to meet
him in council. When they were assembled he said: "I acknowledge that
Jerusalem is the House of God. I do not wish to profane its sanctity
by the shedding of blood. Abandon its walls and I will bestow on
you a part of my treasures, and I will bestow on you as much land
as you will be able to cultivate." To which the Christians replied:
"We cannot yield the city in which our God died: still less can we
give it up to you."
This refusal enraged Saladin, and he swore to destroy the towers
and ramparts of Jerusalem, and avenge the death of the Mussulmen
slaughtered by the soldiers of Godfrey of Bouillon.
The siege went on. Many and fierce the sorties from the gates of
the city: but fight as they would the operations of the infidels
could not be stayed. Despair set in, mingled with wailing, tears and
prayers. Jerusalem was filled with sobs and groans.
Deputies were sent out to propose a capitulation on the terms which he
had first proposed. He sent them back without one word of hope. But
one day as the deputies were pleading with unusual earnestness,
Saladin pointed to his standards just placed upon the walls saying:
"How can you ask me to grant conditions to a city which is already
taken?" But he spoke too confidently, for at that moment they were
stricken down again.
As they went down Baleau the leader of the Christian forces spoke up:
"You see Jerusalem is not without defenders. If we can obtain no
mercy from you we will form a terrible resolution which will fill you
with horror. These temples and palaces you are so anxious to conquer
shall be destroyed. The riches which excite your cupidity shall be
burned. We will destroy the mosque of Omar. We will pound into dust
the stone of Jacob which is an object of your worship. We will stay
our women and our children with our own hands that they shall never be
your slaves. When the Holy City shall become a ruin--a vast tomb--we
will march out of it armed with fire and sword and no one of us will
ascend to Paradise without first consigning ten Mussulmen to hell. We
shall thus obtain a glorious death and in dying shall call down on
your head the maledictions of the God of Jerusalem."
Saladin was awed by this terrible speech: told the deputies to return
the next day, when the terms of capitulation were signed in the tent
of the great sultan, and Jerusalem passed again into the hands of
the infidels, after having remained for eighty-eight years in the
possession of the Christians. The Saracens boast that they retook
the Holy City on Friday, the anniversary of the day on which Mohammed
ascended from it into heaven: but the complete conquest of the Holy
Land by the Turks was to be delayed yet an hundred years.
Finally, however, before Mamelukes of Egypt, Jerusalem, and all the
cities of the coast fell, and Acre became the last stronghold of the
crusaders. Against it marched the Sultan Khali at the head of sixty
thousand horse and one hundred and forty thousand foot.
After a siege of thirty-three days the double wall was forced, the
towers yielded to their engines, the Moslems stormed the city May 18,
(A. D., 1291) carried it by the sword; and death or slavery was the
lot of sixty thousand Christians. By the command of the Sultan the
churches and the fortifications of the Latin cities were demolished,
and a mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which had
so long resounded with the World's Debate; and hundreds of thousands of
warriors had found the "Paradise that lies under the shade of swords."
Again must we go to the "roof of the world" to behold the great
eruption of Moguls and Tartars whose fierce and rapid and cruel
conquests can only be compared with the destructive forces of nature in
her wildest moods when she lets loose upon the earth fire and flood,
earthquake, avalanche and volcano. From these spacious highlands
the tides of emigration and the floods of war have repeatedly been
poured. In the twelfth century the various tribes akin to Hun and
Turk were united and led to conquest by the formidable Jenghiz Khan,
i. e. the most great Khan or Emperor of the Moguls and Tartars.
The code of laws which Jenghiz Khan dictated to his subjects was
adapted to the preservation of domestic peace and the exercise of
foreign hostility. These fiercest of men were mild and just in their
intercourse with each other. Their primitive religion consisted in
belief in the existence of one God, the author of all good, who fills
by His presence the heavens and the earth which He has created by His
power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their
various tribes yet there were among them converts to the religions
of Moses, Mohammed and of Christ.
Soon all the kindred tribes from the great wall of China to the Volga
owned his sway. He was the Khan of many millions of shepherds and
warriors. The court of Pekin was astonished at receiving an embassy
from a former vassal demanding the same tribute and obedience which he
himself had but lately paid. On receiving a haughty answer innumerable
squadrons soon pierced on all sides the feeble rampart of the great
wall and ninety cities were laid low. On his second invasion he
laid siege to Pekin. The famine was terrible. Men were chosen by
lot to be slain for food. The Moguls mined under the capital and the
conflagration of the city lasted for thirty days. China was desolated
by Tartar war and domestic faction and the five northern provinces were
added to the empire of Jenghiz. On the west he touched the dominions
of Mohammed, sultan of Carizme, who reigned from the Persian gulf to
the borders of India and Turkestan.
A caravan of three ambassadors and one hundred and fifty merchants
having been put to death by the orders of Mohammed, after he had fasted
and prayed for three nights on a mountain, Jenghiz appealed to the
judgment of God and his own sword. Seven hundred thousand Moguls and
Tartars are said to have marched under the banners of Jenghiz and his
four sons. On the vast plains stretching north of the river Jaxartes
(now Jihon) they encountered four hundred thousand soldiers of the
Sultan. In the first battle it is said that one hundred and sixty
thousand Carizmians were slain. The whole country then lay open to
his fierce warriors and from the Caspian to the Indus, a tract of
many hundreds of miles, adorned with the habitations and labors of the
most highly civilized races of Asia, was desolated so completely that
five centuries have not repaired the ravages of four years. In all
this Jenghiz Khan indulged and encouraged the fury of his army. He
now yielded with reluctance to the murmurs of his weary but wealthy
troops who sighed for the rest of their native lands.
The return of Jenghiz was signalized by the overthrow of the few
remaining independent kingdoms in Tartary: and he died in the fulness
of years and glory, with his last breath exhorting his sons to achieve
the conquest of the Chinese Empire. In the sixty-eight years of his
first four successors the Mogul had subdued almost all Asia and a
large portion of Europe.
To the East China was subdued; to the South the conquest of
Hindustan was reserved for the house of Timour or Tamerlane. While
the hosts that went forth to conquer Russia, Poland, Hungary, etc.,
(1235-1245) inscribed on the military roll numbered fifteen hundred
thousand men. Holagon the grandson of Jenghiz Khan had but to thrust
at the phantom of power which the Caliphs of Bagdad enjoyed when it
vanished like the mist. Bagdad after a siege of two brief months,
was stormed and sacked and the savage Tartar pronounced the death of
the Caliph Mostasem the last of the temporal successors of Mohammed
whose noble kinsmen of the race of Abbas had reigned in Asia above
five hundred years.
Once more the torrents of woe flow in upon Armenia lying in the track
of the Tartar armies westward. Ani is again besieged and soon a famine
broke out within the walls and many of the citizens rushed out and
gave themselves up to the mercy of their enemies. They were kindly
received and a sufficient supply of food was given to them. Induced
by this kindness more than half of the inhabitants were soon found in
the camp of the Tartars. All at once the poor wretches were divided
into small parties under the pretext of receiving better protection
when the soldiers fell upon them and massacred every individual. Then
the city was easily taken, destroyed by fire and the entire population
put to the sword.
Many cities suffered the desolations and horrors of Ani till the Khan
ordered his chiefs on to other conquests. Then followed the infliction
of a heavy capitation tax on all the remaining provinces--sixty
pieces of money being demanded of every Armenian from the age of ten
upwards. Those who were unable to pay this sum suffered intolerable
tortures. Those who were possessed of lands lost them, their wives and
children being seized and sold into slavery. Nothing ever equalled
the horrors that now overspread this unhappy country, most of the
inhabitants having no money to pay the tax and having no place to
which to flee from their oppressors. Finally an embassy to Mangon Khan,
a grandson of Jenghiz secured some little alleviation of their misery.
Meantime there was growing up in Cilicia a subordinate kingdom of
Armenia with Tarsus for its capital--and receiving favor from the
Sultan of Egypt and the Khan of the Tartars. Leo III. resumed the
kingly reins of his kingdom comprising all of Modern Anatolia. He
repaired his cities; he erected public schools. He caused all the
literary productions of the Armenians from the earliest ages to be
recopied and distributed among the convents of the kingdom. He reigned
for twenty years ardently devoted to the service of God and died in
the year 1289.
His son, Hethum, was a prince who despised all worldly pomp and
grandeur, seldom arrayed himself in royal apparel. He was greatly
attached to the priests of his capital engaging daily with them in
prayers and other religious exercises. He was particularly fond of
the literary productions of the Fathers of the Church. His Bible was
his daily companion. He caused a copy of it to be prepared expressly
for himself, and at the end of it wrote some lines expressive of the
high satisfaction and comfort he had derived from its frequent perusal.
These paragraphs may show what has ever been the character of these
people who are still being harried to death in the same provinces
where they have lived and suffered for centuries.
The decline of the spirit of conquest in the Mogul princes of
Persia gave a free scope to the rise and progress of the Ottoman
Empire which was soon to strike fear into the heart of the Emperor
of Constantinople, and finally establish itself in Europe where it
remains to this day a blot on Western civilization and a curse to
all the people over which it rules.
In 1360 we find the throne of the Ottoman Turks established at
Adrianople almost within sight of Constantinople which after resisting
for a thousand years the assaults of barbarians of the East and the
West, now saw herself hemmed in, both in Europe and Asia, by the same
hostile power and her Emperor following at his summons the court and
camp of an Ottoman Prince.
Bajazet surnamed Ilderim, or "The Lightning" who came to the throne
in 1389, and reigned fourteen years, fills a brilliant page in Ottoman
history. He forced Constantinople to pay tribute and enjoyed the glory
of being the first to found a royal Mosque in the glorious metropolis
of the Eastern Church. He would speedily have forced its absolute
surrender but that he was doomed to meet and be overthrown by a savage
still more savage than himself--the name that caused all Europe and
Asia to tremble with fear--the great, the terrible, the blood-thirsty
Timour or Tamerlane. The family of Tamerlane was another branch of the
imperial stem of Jenghiz Khan. He was born 1335 A. D., in a village
that lies forty miles to the south of Samarcand, in a tribe of which
his fathers were the hereditary chiefs. His birth was cast in a time
of anarchy of bitter domestic feuds; when the Khans of Kashgar with
an army of Calmucks harassed the Trans-oxian Kingdom. At the age of
twenty-five he stood forth as the deliverer of his people: and in ten
years he was invested with imperial command of the Zagatai. The rule
over a fertile and populous land five hundred miles in extent either
way, might have satisfied an ordinary man: but Timour aspired to the
dominion of the world and before his death the crown of Zagatai was
but one of twenty-seven which he had placed upon his head. He first
swept Persia to the sea. The city of Ormuz bought its safety for an
annual tribute of six hundred thousand pieces of gold. Bagdad was
laid in ruins: and from the gulf to the mountains of Ararat the whole
course of the Tigris and Euphrates was reduced to his obedience.
The Khan of the Mogul Empire of the North swept down through the gates
of Derbend entering Persia at the head of ninety thousand horse,
burned the palaces of Timour and compelled him amidst the snows of
winter to contend for Samarcand and his life.
After a mild expostulation, and a glorious victory he resolved on
revenge. He invaded Tartary with armies so vast that thirteen miles
stretched between his left and right wing. In a march of five months
they rarely beheld the footsteps of man. At length the armies met
in most fearful conflict. In the heat of conflict the treachery of
the bearer of the imperial standard of Kipzak turned the tide of
victory to the Zagatai, and Timour gave up the mingled hosts to the
"wind of desolation." The pursuit of a flying enemy led him into the
provinces of Russia. Moscow trembled at the approach of the Tartar, but
he turned his armies southward, and on the banks of the Don received
a deputation of the merchants of Egypt, Venice, Genoa, and Spain, who
had built up the great commerce and the city of Azoph. They offered him
gifts, admired his magnificence, trusted his word. But the peaceful
visit of an Emir who explored the state of the magazines and harbors
was speedily followed by the destructive presence of the Tartars,
who reduced the city to ashes, pillaged the Moslems, and put every
Christian to the sword or sold them into slavery. Having laid waste all
the cities in Southern Russia, he returned to his capital at Samarcand.
Samarcand, the center of his magnificence, the depot of all riches,
arose and extended itself as by magic at each return of the world's
conqueror. It is said that Babylon, Bagdad, Persepolis, Palmyra,
Baalbec and Damascus, were all cast into the shade by the mosques,
palaces, gardens, and aqueducts which arose under the hands of most
skillful artisans brought from every captured city to decorate the
capital of a barbarian.
Here amid the delights of his gardens, the love of his women,
the conversation of his men of letters, the eulogies of poets,
did Tamerlane refresh himself after the exploits of a five years'
campaign. But his loves, and delights of ease, did not make him forget
that dream of all conquerors--India, and at this invasion he overran
it from the Indus to Delhi, and from the Ocean to Thibet.
As he proceeded on his march, his army became encumbered with the
captives, and he ordered one hundred thousand of them slain in a
single night. Remorse, pity, and indignation, seized even a Tartar
army, but Tamerlane answered it only by the conquest and massacre
of Delhi, that great and magnificent city which had flourished for
three hundred years, under Mohammedan kings; the ruins of which are
still seen for miles on every side of the modern city. The blood
of the slain, crimsoned the waters of the Sacred Ganges for many,
many miles on its course to the sea. The recital of his cruelties
could not be believed, were they not recorded in the history of all
the nations he conquered. The treasures were of incalculable value,
and every soldier received one hundred slaves for his share and every
Tartar camp follower, twenty.
It was while camping on the bank of the Ganges that Tamerlane received
from his couriers the tidings of the disturbances on the confines of
Anatolia and Georgia, of the revolt of the Christians and the ambitious
designs of Bajazet. He returned to Samarcand having accomplished in
a twelve month the ten years' campaign of Alexander the Great.
After enjoying a few months tranquillity he proclaimed a seven years'
campaign against the countries of Western Asia. To the soldiers who
had served in the Indian wars he granted their choice of home or
camp, but the troops of all the kingdoms and provinces of Persia were
commanded to assemble at Ispahan and await the imperial standard.
With an army of eight hundred thousand fighting men and a multitude
of slaves so vast that it is said that they dried up the earth as
they marched, he started westward. Words are lacking to describe
the desolation and cruelty that attended his march and the sacking
of cities.
Multitudes of Christians suffered untold horrors rather than deny
their faith. The cities that attempted to resist behind their walls
were effaced from the earth, and upon their sites towers were erected,
the walls of which were composed of living men cemented in the lime.
Pursuing the people of Georgia into the gorges of the Caucasus
Mountains he inflicted upon them great slaughter, and discovering
many caverns into which men, women and children had fled for safety
he walled up their entrances and left them to perish.
Ispahan in a moment of folly having rebelled and massacred three
thousand Tartars he sent back one hundred thousand soldiers with
orders that every man should bring him a head on penalty of losing
his own. Ispahan in consternation and horror paid this price for its
revolt, and on the site of a dismantled city, a mason-wrought pyramid
of a hundred thousand heads told the awful story of their doom.
Proceeding westward Tamerlane laid siege to Siwas, or Sebaste, modern
Siwas, a city having walls of prodigious thickness and a broad moat
filled with running water.
It contained one hundred and fifty thousand souls, was defended by
intrepid Armenians and seemed able to defy every assault of a Tartar
multitude without battering artillery to shake the walls.
But Tamerlane hesitated only a moment. Prodigal of men, he set
thousands at work to undermine the rocks that formed the foundation
of the walls. He emptied the moats by cutting deeper channels for the
river. He cut down adjacent forests to prop up the mines dug under the
towers of the walls; and then setting on fire this underground forest
he saw the rocks give way engulfing walls, houses and defenders in
the ruins. Twenty days and nights sufficed to open enormous breaches
for his soldiers. The city naked and trembling before him awaited its
fate. Timour promised to spare the lives of Mohammedans and Christians,
and to be content with servitude. But scarcely had he entered it before
he inundated it with the blood of its defenders. By his ferocity he
made all the East and the West to shudder, and the world to stand
aghast at its recital after more than four centuries have covered its
horrors. Four thousand Ottomans were buried alive up to the neck and
thus left to perish. Countless Christians were bound in couples and
cast into trenches which were then covered with boards and earth, and
over them the Tartars pitched their tents and took fiendish delight
in their moanings. Women were bound by the hair of their heads to
the tails of wild young horses and thus dragged to death. The young
children were bound hand and foot and laid together on an open plain
and trampled to death by his cavalry. With the exception of the male
children fit for slavery, and the young girls reserved for the harem
the entire population was destroyed.
Do you shudder at even this cool recital? Far worse horrors are
still being endured by the Christian people of Armenia this very
day on ground that is dyed with the blood of a thousand years of
martyrdom. And still Christian Europe is unmoved; and the Turk, drunk
with the blood of his victims still is propped up on his throne by
the arms that should drive him back to the deserts of Tartary: and
Christian America contents itself with trying by their relief funds
to keep alive the starving remnants of this harried race whose cry
to Christendom is "either kill us or in God's name redeem us."
As Timour took up again his march from desolated Siwas he dragged
with cords along the stones of the road at the heels of his horse the
head of the governor of Siwas, one of the sons of Bajazet who was then
besieging Constantinople. Aroused by the danger that threatened him yet
with a deep sadness caused by the death of his son which settled upon
him as if in presentiment of his own fate, Bajazet raised the siege,
called all his forces together to meet the bloody Conqueror of the
East. Aleppo and Damascus meanwhile fell with terrible slaughter,
and now on the plains not far from Siwas, Timour awaited the coming
of Bajazet.
Tamerlane hesitated to engage in this battle with a race of his own
blood, the champions of the faith of the Prophet, who were fighting
like himself for the triumph of Islam. His envoys were disgracefully
treated and his messages were answered with most haughty and insulting
letters. "Thy armies" said Bajazet "are innumerable; be they so:
but what are the arrows of the flying Tartars against the scimitars
and battle-axes of my firm and invincible Janizaries?"
Then this deadly insult: "If I fly from thy arms, may my wives be
thrice divorced from my bed; but, if thou hast not courage to meet
me in the field mayest thou again receive thy wives after they have
thrice endured the embraces of a stranger."
On receiving this letter Timour exclaimed: "Decidedly the son of
Mourad is mad."
All day long Timour reviewed his troops of horse as the squadrons
passed before him, then turning again to the envoy he made a last
offer of peace, "Say to your master that he can still, in accepting
my just and moderate conditions, spare the fatal dissension of two
servants of the one God, and torrents of human blood to Asia."
Bajazet was both deaf and blind to the advice of his viziers, his
generals and the last message of Tamerlane; and was determined to
meet with his army of four hundred thousand men which he had seen
gathering for two years, the well trained army of eight hundred
thousand men who were formed in nine divisions under the four sons
and five favored grandsons of the greatest warrior of the world.
Never had the sun of Asia shed its light upon so vast a multitude of
warriors gathered for so deadly a conflict on July 28, 1402. Timour
brought forward only five hundred thousand of his choicest troops,
horse and foot, yet they covered the amphitheater of the hills which
arose behind the river in the basin to the north of Angora. He had
most carefully chosen his field of battle and his position, and facing
him was the vast army of Bajazet. All historians, Arabian, Greek and
Ottoman agree that over one million men faced each other on this listed
field. The situation added to the tragic majesty of the spectacle. The
plain, the gradation of the hills and the rugged mountains of Angora
made a circus worthy of these imperial gladiators of the two Asias.
Timour was stationed on an elevated mound whence he could survey the
whole field, while behind him and out of sight from the enemy were
forty divisions of select cavalry ready at the critical moment to
strengthen any wavering squadrons, or to be hurled on the field to
consummate the victory.
The first dawn of day upon the mountains of Angora illuminated those
two armies in order of battle but motionless. But when the sun had
dispelled the shade from the foot of the hills, at the rolling of
drums of the Turks with the cry of Allah Achbar the army of Bajazet
was put in motion. Soon the battle was on. The first charge of one
wing of Tartar cavalry was broken by the immobility of the Servian
mountaineers.
Then in the rapid advance of his enemy's troops Timour discovered
that the Asiatic army of Bajazet had passed the level of the Ottoman
lines in order to turn the hills he was occupying, and down he rushed
with his reserve cavalry of forty divisions and cut in two the army
of Europe and the army of Asia, throwing one of them back upon the
hills and the other into the marshes on the left, slaughtering at the
center some thousands of Ottomans and forcing Bajazet himself to fly
with ten thousand of his Janizaries to a rising ground detached from
the mountains whose steep declivities checked the impetuosity of the
Tartar cavalry.
Timour watched with admiration the retreat of the Servian mountaineers,
as in dense columns clad in splendid mail, unshaken by repeated
charges of his cavalry they forced their way obliquely through that
multitude until they gained the foothills in safety. "These miserable
peasants are lions," he exclaimed in admiration of their discipline
and their courage.
Two sons of Bajazet were rescued by the bold daring of their devoted
followers, but in vain did they urge the Emperor himself to seek
refuge in flight. Satisfied that his sons were safe he continued to
fight for glory or for death behind the rampart of his Janizaries who
formed about him a circular wall with their dead bodies. Never was
fidelity more desperate, more unswerving. Stolen from Christian homes
at an early age and trained as warriors they knew no other home than
the camp. They knew that their birth among the Christians and their
name of renegades left them no other choice than that of death upon
the field of battle or the field of torture. The retreat of the ten
thousand after the death of Cyrus did not equal the glorious suicide
of these ten thousand Janizaries about the body of their Sultan.
As the shades of evening began to fall, Bajazet, his youngest son and
a few faithful generals and a group of horsemen sought to escape into
the woody recesses of the mountains. A troop of Tartar cavalry closely
pursued the trail of the retreating Sultan. The day was about to break
and they hoped to escape by swimming a swift stream, the horsemen
they heard galloping behind them when a loose shoe caused the horse
of the Sultan to stumble. None would save themselves and leave their
master, and as one of the Beys was presenting his own horse to him,
a Tartar emir with a body of horsemen surrounded the small group of
the Ottomans and they were prisoners.
Before night had fallen the vanquished Sultan in chains, covered with
dust and blood, was brought before Timour, who was seated in the shade
of his tent playing chess with the son whom he called the hope of his
race. The vanquisher showed neither pride nor insolence before the
vanquished. He remembered the maxims and respected the finger of God
even in the enemy overthrown at his feet. He remembered that he was of
the same race, that they were fighting for the same faith and he almost
begged his pardon for the victory. He ordered him to be released,
begged him to take a seat with him at the front of his tent on the same
rank with himself and promised him that his honor and his life would
suffer no risk during his brief captivity. Three imperial tents were
prepared for his use; and after the discovery of his attempt to escape,
Bajazet was chained at night in one of those iron-barred litters
wherein women in their journeys are carried between two mules. Hence
the popular, but erroneous, tradition throughout the East about the
iron cage wherein Timour had shut up the Sultan intending to exhibit
him in his palace at Samarcand. Timour permitted Bajazet to send for
his favorite wife, the Princess of Servia--exacting from her at a
banquet, but only for a single time, that she should hand him a cup
of Cyprus wine the sole vengeance he wished to take for the insulting
letter wherein Bajazet had threatened him with taking off his harem.
Bajazet died about nine months after his defeat at Antioch in
Pisidia--his empire, lost in a single battle--having fallen into
fragments before his eyes.
Turning away from the possible conquest of Europe Tamerlane soon
returned to Samarcand and in 1405 set out for the final and complete
conquest of China. Neither age nor the severity of the winter could
retard the impatience of Timour, he passed the Sihon on the ice,
marched hundreds of miles, then pitching his last camp, died of fever
and fatigue and the indiscreet use of iced water April 1, 1405. The
conqueror of Asia had reigned for thirty-five years and died at the
age of seventy-one, having shed more blood and caused more misery
than any other human being ever born on the earth.