and Empress feasted, in the presence of the dauphin (Charles V) and the
legate of Pope Innocent VI, with all the pageantry and ceremonies
prescribed by the new ordinances. The imperial tables were spread in the
grand square of the city; Rudolph, Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, attended
with a silver measure of oats, and marshalled the order of the company;
Louis II, Margrave of Brandenburg, presented to the Emperor the golden
basin, with water and fair napkins; Rupert, Count Palatine, placed the
first dish upon the table; and the Emperor's brother, Wenceslaus,
representing the King of Bohemia, officiated as cup-bearer. Lastly, the
princes of Schwarzburg and the deputy huntsman came with three hounds
amid the loud din of horns, and carried up a stag and a boar to the
table of the Emperor.
INSURRECTION OF THE JACQUERIE IN FRANCE
A.D. 1358
SIR JOHN FROISSART
The defeat of the French under King John II, at Poitiers, by
the British forces of Edward, the Black Prince, September
19, 1356, aroused great indignation among the common people
of France, with scorn of the nobility; for these leaders,
with an army of sixty thousand, had fled before an enemy
whom they outnumbered seven to one. In the next assembly of
the states-general the bourgeois obtained a preponderance so
intolerable to the nobles that they withdrew to their homes.
A little later the deputies of the clergy also retired,
leaving only the representatives of the cities--among whom
the supremacy of the members from Paris was generally
accepted--to deal with the affairs of the kingdom.
At this point appeared a man who in an age "so uncivilized
and sombre," says Pierre Robiquet, "by wonderful instinct
laid down and nearly succeeded in obtaining the adoption of
the essential principles on which modern society is
founded--the government of the country by elected
representatives, taxes voted by representatives of the
taxpayers, abolition of privileges founded upon right of
birth, extension of political rights to all citizens, and
subordination of traditional sovereignty to that of the
nation." This man was Étienne Marcel, provost of the
merchants of Paris--that is to say, mayor of the
municipality, whom eminent historians have called the
greatest personage of the fourteenth century. During a
career of three years his name dominates French history--a
brief ascendency, but of potent influence. His endeavor, in
Thierry's view, "was, as it were, a premature attempt at the
grand designs of Providence, and the mirror of the bloody
changes of fortune through which those designs were destined
to advance to their accomplishment under the impulse of
human passions."
After the disaster of Poitiers, Marcel finished the
fortifications of Paris and barricaded the streets, and in
the assembly there he presided over the bourgeois--the Third
Estate. In the growing conflict between the two other
estates--nobles and clergy--and the third, Marcel armed the
bourgeois and began an open revolution, thus organizing the
commune for carrying out his designs. The nobles were
meanwhile laying heavier miseries upon the peasantry, and in
the spring of 1358 occurred the rising of the Jacquerie,
here described by Froissart, whose brilliant narrative is to
be read in the light of modern critical judgment, which
regards it as an exaggeration both of the numbers of the
insurgents and their atrocities, while Froissart had no
capacity for understanding the conditions which explain, if
they do not also justify, the present revolt.
This outbreak, to which Marcel gave his support, was enough
to ruin his cause, and he died in a massacre, July 31, 1358,
having failed "because the time was not yet ripe," and
because the violence to which he lent his sanction was
overcome by stronger violence.
A marvellous and great tribulation befell the kingdom of France, in
Beauvoisis, Brie, upon the river Marne, in the Laonnois, and in the
neighborhood of Soissons. Some of the inhabitants of the country towns
assembled together in Beauvoisis, without any leader; they were not at
first more than one hundred men. They said that the nobles of the
kingdom of France, knights and squires, were a disgrace to it, and that
it would be a very meritorious act to destroy them all; to which
proposition everyone assented, and added, shame befall him that should
be the means of preventing the gentlemen from being wholly destroyed.
They then, without further counsel, collected themselves in a body, and
with no other arms than the staves shod with iron which some had, and
others with knives, marched to the house of a knight who lived near,
and, breaking it open, murdered the knight, his lady, and all the
children, both great and small; they then burned the house.
After this, their second expedition was to the strong castle of another
knight, which they took, and, having tied him to a stake, many of them
violated his wife and daughter before his eyes; they then murdered the
lady, her daughter, and the other children, and last of all the knight
himself, with much cruelty. They destroyed and burned his castle. They
did the like to many castles and handsome houses; and their numbers
increased so much that they were in a short time upward of six thousand.
Wherever they went they received additions, for all of their rank in
life followed them, while everyone else fled, carrying off with them
their ladies, damsels, and children ten or twenty leagues distant, where
they thought they could place them in security, leaving their houses,
with all their riches in them.
These wicked people, without leader and without arms, plundered and
burned all the houses they came to, murdered every gentleman, and
violated every lady and damsel they could find. He who committed the
most atrocious actions, and such as no human creature would have
imagined, was the most applauded and considered as the greatest man
among them. I dare not write the horrible and inconceivable atrocities
they committed on the persons of the ladies.
Among other infamous acts they murdered a knight, and, having fastened
him to a spit, roasted him before the eyes of his wife and his children,
and forced her to eat some of her husband's flesh, and then knocked her
brains out. They had chosen a king among them, who came from Clermont in
Beauvoisis. He was elected as the worst of the bad, and they denominated
him "Jacques Bonhomme."[57]
These wretches burned and destroyed in the county of Beauvoisis, and at
Corbie, Amiens, and Montdidier, upward of sixty good houses and strong
castles. By the acts of such traitors in the country of Brie and
thereabout, it behooved every lady, knight, and squire, having the means
of escape, to fly to Meaux, if they wished to preserve themselves from
being insulted and afterward murdered. The Duchess of Normandy, the
Duchess of Orleans, and many other ladies had adopted this course. These
cursed people thus supported themselves in the countries between Paris,
Noyon, and Soissons, and in all the territory of Coucy, in the County of
Valois. In the bishoprics of Noyon, Laon, and Soissons there were upward
of one hundred castles and good houses of knights and squires destroyed.
When the gentlemen of Beauvoisis, Corbie, Vermandois, and of the lands
where these wretches were associated, saw to what lengths their madness
had extended, they sent for succor to their friends in Flanders,
Hainault, and Bohemia; from which places numbers soon came and united
themselves with the gentlemen of the country. They began therefore to
kill and destroy these wretches wherever they met them, and hung them up
by troops on the nearest trees. The King of Navarre even destroyed in
one day, near Clermont in Beauvoisis, upward of three thousand; but
they were by this time so much increased in numbers that, had they been
all together, they would have amounted to more than one hundred
thousand. When they were asked for what reason they acted so wickedly,
they replied, they knew not, but they did so because they saw others do
it, and they thought that by this means they should destroy all the
nobles and gentlemen in the world.
At this period the Duke of Normandy, suspecting the King of Navarre, the
provost of merchants and those of his faction--for they were always
unanimous in their sentiments--set out from Paris, and went to the
bridge at Charenton-upon-Marne, where he issued a special summons for
the attendance of the crown vassals, and sent a defiance to the provost
of merchants and to all those who should support him. The provost, being
fearful he would return in the night-time to Paris--which was then
unenclosed--collected as many workmen as possible from all parts, and
employed them to make ditches all around Paris. He also surrounded it by
a wall with strong gates. For the space of one year there were three
hundred workmen daily employed; the expense of which was equal to
maintaining an army. I must say that to surround with a sufficient
defence such a city as Paris was an act of greater utility than any
provost of merchants had ever done before; for otherwise it would have
been plundered and destroyed several times by the different factions.
At the time these wicked men were overrunning the country, the Earl of
Foix, and his cousin the Captal of Buch were returning from a crusade in
Prussia. They were informed, on their entering France, of the distress
the nobles were in; and they learned at the city of Chalons that the
Duchess of Orleans and three hundred other ladies, under the protection
of the Duke of Orleans, were fled to Meaux on account of these
disturbances. The two knights resolved to go to the assistance of these
ladies, and to reënforce them with all their might, notwithstanding the
Captal was attached to the English; but at that time there was a truce
between the two kings. They might have in their company about sixty
lances.
They were most cheerfully received, on their arrival at Meaux, by the
ladies and damsels; for these Jacks and peasants of Brie had heard what
number of ladies, married and unmarried, and young children of quality
were in Meaux; they had united themselves with those of Valois and were
on their road thither. On the other hand, those of Paris had also been
informed of the treasures Meaux contained, and had set out from that
place in crowds. Having met the others, they amounted together to nine
thousand men. Their forces were augmenting every step they advanced.
They came to the gates of the town, which the inhabitants opened to them
and allowed them to enter; they did so in such numbers that all the
streets were quite filled, as far as the market-place, which is
tolerably strong, but it required to be guarded, though the river Marne
nearly surrounds it. The noble dames who were lodged there, seeing such
multitudes rushing toward them, were exceedingly frightened. On this,
the two lords and their company advanced to the gate of the
market-place, which they had opened, and, marching under the banners of
the Earl of Foix and Duke of Orleans, and the pennon of the Captal of
Buch, posted themselves in front of this peasantry, who were badly
armed.
When these banditti perceived such a troop of gentlemen, so well
equipped, sally forth to guard the market-place, the foremost of them
began to fall back. The gentlemen then followed them, using their lances
and swords. When they felt the weight of their blows, they, through
fear, turned about so fast they fell one over the other. All manner of
armed persons then rushed out of the barriers, drove them before them,
striking them down like beasts, and clearing the town of them; for they
kept neither regularity nor order, slaying so many that they were tired.
They flung them in great heaps into the river. In short, they killed
upward of seven thousand. Not one would have escaped if they had chosen
to pursue them farther.
On the return of the men-at-arms, they set fire to the town of Meaux,
burned it; and all the peasants they could find were shut up in it,
because they had been of the party of the Jacks. Since this discomfiture
which happened to them at Meaux, they never collected again in any great
bodies; for the young Enguerrand de Coucy had plenty of gentlemen under
his orders, who destroyed them, wherever they could be met with, without
mercy.
CONQUESTS OF TIMUR THE TARTAR
A.D. 1370-1405
EDWARD GIBBON
Timur, better known as Tamerlane ("Timur the Lame"), was
born in Central Asia--probably in the village of Sebzar,
near Samarkand, in Transoxiana (Turkestan). He is supposed
to have been descended from a follower of Genghis Khan,
founder of the Mongol empire; or, as some say, directly, by
the mother's side, from Genghis himself. He is the
Tamerlaine or Tamburlaine of Marlowe and other dramatists.
Gibbon introduces him in the _Decline and Fall_, apparently
because fascinated with the subject, although he gives as a
historical reason the fact that Timur's triumph in Asia
delayed the final fall of Constantinople--taken by the Turks
in 1453.
In early youth the future ruler of so vast an empire was
engaged in struggles for ascendency with the petty chiefs of
rival tribes. His boundless ambition early conceived the
conquest and monarchy of the world; his wish was "to live in
the memory and esteem of future ages." He was born in a
period of anarchy, when the crumbling kingdoms of the
Asiatic dynasties were no longer able to resist the
adventurous spirit determined to occupy the new field of
military triumph which opened before him. At the age of
twenty-five Timur was hailed as the deliverer of his
country. When he chose Samarkand as the capital of his
dominion, he declared his purpose to make that dominion
embrace the whole habitable earth; and at the height of his
power he ruled from the Great Wall of China to the centre of
Russia on the north, while his sovereignty extended to the
Mediterranean and the Nile on the west, and on the east to
the sources of the Ganges. In his own person he united
twenty-seven different sovereignties, and nine several
dynasties of kings gave place to the unparalleled conqueror,
who won by the sword a larger portion of the globe than
Cyrus or Alexander, Cæsar or Attila, Genghis Khan,
Charlemagne, or Napoleon.
It was believed in the family and empire of Timur that he
himself composed the _Commentaries_ of his life and the
_Institutions_ of his government, which, however, were
probably the work of his secretaries. These manuscripts have
been of great service to historians in their study of
Timur's career.
At the age of thirty-four, and in a general diet, Timur was invested
with imperial command, but he affected to revere the house of Genghis;
and while the emir Timur reigned over Zagatai and the East, a nominal
khan served as a private officer in the armies of his servant. Without
expatiating on the victories of thirty-five campaigns, without
describing the lines of march which he repeatedly traced over the
continent of Asia, I shall briefly represent Timur's conquests in
Persia, Tartary, and India, and from thence proceed to the more
interesting narrative of his Ottoman war.
No sooner had Timur reunited to the patrimony of Zagatai the dependent
countries of Karizme and Kandahar than he turned his eyes toward the
kingdoms of Iran or Persia. From the Oxus to the Tigris that extensive
country was without a lawful sovereign. Peace and justice had been
banished from the land above forty years; and the Mongol invader might
seem to listen to the cries of an oppressed people. Their petty tyrants
might have opposed him with confederate arms: they separately stood and
successively fell; and the difference of their fate was only marked by
the promptitude of submission or the obstinacy of resistance. Ibrahim,
Prince of Shirwan or Albania, kissed the footstool of the imperial
throne. His peace offerings of silks, horses, and jewels were composed,
according to the Tartar fashion, each article of nine pieces; but a
critical spectator observed that there were only eight slaves. "I myself
am the ninth," replied Ibraham, who was prepared for the remark: and his
flattery was rewarded by the smile of Timur.
Shah Mansur, Prince of Fars, or the proper Persia, was one of the least
powerful, but most dangerous, of his enemies. In a battle under the
walls of Shiraz, he broke, with three or four thousand soldiers, the
_coul_, or main body, of thirty thousand horse, where the Emperor fought
in person. No more than fourteen or fifteen guards remained near the
standard of Timur; he stood firm as a rock, and received on his helmet
two weighty strokes of a cimeter; the Mongols rallied; the head of
Mansur was thrown at his feet; and he declared his esteem of the valor
of a foe by extirpating all the males of so intrepid a race. From Shiraz
his troops advanced to the Persian Gulf; and the richness and weakness
of Ormus were displayed in an annual tribute of six hundred thousand
dinars of gold.
Bagdad was no longer the city of peace, the seat of the caliphs; but the
noblest conquest of Khulagu could not be overlooked by his ambitious
successor. The whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates, from the mouth
to the sources of those rivers, was reduced to his obedience; he entered
Edessa; and the Turcomans of the black sheep were chastised for the
sacrilegious pillage of a caravan of Mecca. In the mountains of Georgia
the native Christians still braved the law and the sword of Mahomet; by
three expeditions he obtained the merit of the _gazie_, or holy war; and
the Prince of Tiflis became his proselyte and friend.
A just retaliation might be urged for the invasion of Turkestan, or the
Eastern Tartary. The dignity of Timur could not endure the impunity of
the Getes: he passed the Sihun, subdued the kingdom of Kashgar, and
marched seven times into the heart of their country. His most distant
camp was two months' journey to the northeast of Samarkand; and his
emirs, who traversed the river Irtysh, engraved in the forests of
Siberia a rude memorial of their exploits. The conquest of Kiptchak, or
the Western Tartary, was founded on the double motive of aiding the
distressed and chastising the ungrateful. Toctamish, a fugitive prince,
was entertained and protected in his court; the ambassadors of Auruss
Khan were dismissed with a haughty denial, and followed on the same day
by the armies of Zagatai; and their success established Toctamish in the
Mongol empire of the North.
But, after a reign of ten years, the new Khan forgot the merits and the
strength of his benefactor--the base usurper, as he deemed him, of the
sacred rights of the house of Genghis. Through the gates of Derbent he
entered Persia at the head of ninety thousand horse: with the
innumerable forces of Kiptchak, Bulgaria, Circassia, and Russia, he
passed the Sihun, burned the palaces of Timur, and compelled him, amid
the winter snows, to contend for Samarkand and his life. After a mild
expostulation and a glorious victory the Emperor resolved on revenge;
and by the east and the west of the Caspian and the Volga he twice
invaded Kiptchak with such mighty powers that thirteen miles were
measured from his right to his left wing. In a march of five months they
rarely beheld the footsteps of man; and their daily subsistence was
often trusted to the fortune of the chase. At length the armies
encountered each other; but the treachery of the standard-bearer, who,
in the heat of action, reversed the imperial standard of Kiptchak,
determined the victory of the Zagatais and Toctamish--I speak the
language of the _Institutions_--gave the tribe of Toushi to the wind of
desolation. He fled to the Christian Duke of Lithuania, again returned
to the banks of the Volga, and, after fifteen battles with a domestic
rival, at last perished in the wilds of Siberia.
The pursuit of a flying enemy carried Timur into the tributary provinces
of Russia; a duke of the reigning family was made prisoner amid the
ruins of his capital; and Yelets, by the pride and ignorance of the
orientals, might easily be confounded with the genuine metropolis of the
nation. Moscow trembled at the approach of the Tartar. Ambition and
prudence recalled him to the south, the desolate country was exhausted,
and the Mongol soldiers were enriched with an immense spoil of precious
furs, of linen of Antioch, and of ingots of gold and silver. On the
banks of the Don, or Tanais, he received a humble deputation from the
consuls and merchants of Egypt, Venice, Genoa, Catalonia, and Biscay,
who occupied the commerce and city of Tana, or Azov, at the mouth of the
river. They offered their gifts, admired his magnificence, and trusted
his royal word. But the peaceful visit of an emir, who explored the
state of the magazines and harbor, was speedily followed by the
destructive presence of the Tartars. The city of Tana was reduced to
ashes; the Moslems were pillaged and dismissed; but all the Christians
who had not fled to their ships were condemned either to death or
slavery. Revenge prompted him to burn the cities of Sarai and Astrakhan,
the monuments of rising civilization; and his vanity proclaimed that he
had penetrated to the region of perpetual daylight, a strange
phenomenon, which authorized his Mahometan doctors to dispense with the
obligation of evening prayer.
When Timur first proposed to his princes and emirs the invasion of India
or Hindustan, he was answered by a murmur of discontent: "The rivers!
and the mountains and deserts! and the soldiers clad in armor! and the
elephants, destroyers of men!" But the displeasure of the Emperor was
more dreadful than all these terrors; and his superior reason was
convinced that an enterprise of such tremendous aspect was safe and easy
in the execution. He was informed by his spies of the weakness and
anarchy of Hindustan: the _subahs_ of the provinces had erected the
standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy of Sultan Mahmud was
despised even in the harem of Delhi. The Mongol army moved in three
great divisions, and Timur observes with pleasure that the ninety-two
squadrons of a thousand horse most fortunately corresponded with the
ninety-two names or epithets of the prophet Mahomet.
Between the Jihun and the Indus they crossed one of the ridges of
mountains which are styled by the Arabian geographers the "Stony Girdles
of the Earth." The highland robbers were subdued or extirpated; but
great numbers of men and horses perished in the snow; the Emperor
himself was let down a precipice on a portable scaffold--the ropes were
one hundred and fifty cubits in length--and before he could reach the
bottom, this dangerous operation was five times repeated. Timur crossed
the Indus at the ordinary passage of Attock, and successively traversed,
in the footsteps of Alexander, the Punjab, or five rivers, that fall
into the master stream. From Attock to Delhi the high road measures no
more than six hundred miles; but the two conquerors deviated to the
southeast; and the motive of Timur was to join his grandson, who had
achieved by his command the conquest of Multan. On the eastern bank of
the Hyphasis, on the edge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and
wept; the Mongol entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batnir, and
stood in arms before the gates of Delhi, a great and flourishing city,
which had subsisted three centuries under the dominion of the Mahometan
kings.