The Latin world was darkened by this clo_The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes)

Russian fugitive carried the alarm to Sweden; and the remote

nations of the Baltic and the ocean trembled at the approach of

the Tartars, 28 whom their fear and ignorance were inclined to

separate from the human species. Since the invasion of the Arabs

in the eighth century, Europe had never been exposed to a similar

calamity: and if the disciples of Mahomet would have oppressed

her religion and liberty, it might be apprehended that the

shepherds of Scythia would extinguish her cities, her arts, and

all the institutions of civil society. The Roman pontiff

attempted to appease and convert these invincible Pagans by a

mission of Franciscan and Dominican friars; but he was astonished

by the reply of the khan, that the sons of God and of Zingis were

invested with a divine power to subdue or extirpate the nations;

and that the pope would be involved in the universal destruction,

unless he visited in person, and as a suppliant, the royal horde.

The emperor Frederic the Second embraced a more generous mode of

defence; and his letters to the kings of France and England, and

the princes of Germany, represented the common danger, and urged

them to arm their vassals in this just and rational crusade. 29

The Tartars themselves were awed by the fame and valor of the

Franks; the town of Newstadt in Austria was bravely defended

against them by fifty knights and twenty crossbows; and they

raised the siege on the appearance of a German army. After

wasting the adjacent kingdoms of Servia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria,

Batou slowly retreated from the Danube to the Volga to enjoyed

the rewards of victory in the city and palace of Serai, which

started at his command from the midst of the desert. 291

28 (return) [ In the year 1238, the inhabitants of Gothia

(_Sweden_) and Frise were prevented, by their fear of the

Tartars, from sending, as usual, their ships to the herring

fishery on the coast of England; and as there was no exportation,

forty or fifty of these fish were sold for a shilling, (Matthew

Paris, p. 396.) It is whimsical enough, that the orders of a

Mogul khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should have

lowered the price of herrings in the English market.]

29 (return) [ I shall copy his characteristic or flattering

epithets of the different countries of Europe: Furens ac fervens

ad arma Germania, strenuæ militiæ genitrix et alumna Francia,

bellicosa et audax Hispania, virtuosa viris et classe munita

fertilis Anglia, impetuosis bellatoribus referta Alemannia,

navalis Dacia, indomita Italia, pacis ignara Burgundia, inquieta

Apulia, cum maris Græci, Adriatici et Tyrrheni insulis pyraticis

et invictis, Cretâ, Cypro, Siciliâ, cum Oceano conterterminis

insulis, et regionibus, cruenta Hybernia, cum agili Wallia

palustris Scotia, glacialis Norwegia, suam electam militiam sub

vexillo Crucis destinabunt, &c. (Matthew Paris, p. 498.)]

291 (return) [ He was recalled by the death of Octai.—M.]

IV. Even the poor and frozen regions of the north attracted the

arms of the Moguls: Sheibani khan, the brother of the great

Batou, led a horde of fifteen thousand families into the wilds of

Siberia; and his descendants reigned at Tobolskoi above three

centuries, till the Russian conquest. The spirit of enterprise

which pursued the course of the Oby and Yenisei must have led to

the discovery of the icy sea. After brushing away the monstrous

fables, of men with dogs’ heads and cloven feet, we shall find,

that, fifteen years after the death of Zingis, the Moguls were

informed of the name and manners of the Samoyedes in the

neighborhood of the polar circle, who dwelt in subterraneous

huts, and derived their furs and their food from the sole

occupation of hunting. 30

30 (return) [ See Carpin’s relation in Hackluyt, vol. i. p. 30.

The pedigree of the khans of Siberia is given by Abulghazi, (part

viii. p. 485—495.) Have the Russians found no Tartar chronicles

at Tobolskoi? * Note: * See the account of the Mongol library in

Bergman, Nomadische Streifereyen, vol. iii. p. 185, 205, and

Remusat, Hist. des Langues Tartares, p. 327, and preface to

Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen.—M.]

While China, Syria, and Poland, were invaded at the same time by

the Moguls and Tartars, the authors of the mighty mischief were

content with the knowledge and declaration, that their word was

the sword of death. Like the first caliphs, the first successors

of Zingis seldom appeared in person at the head of their

victorious armies. On the banks of the Onon and Selinga, the

royal or _golden horde_ exhibited the contrast of simplicity and

greatness; of the roasted sheep and mare’s milk which composed

their banquets; and of a distribution in one day of five hundred

wagons of gold and silver. The ambassadors and princes of Europe

and Asia were compelled to undertake this distant and laborious

pilgrimage; and the life and reign of the great dukes of Russia,

the kings of Georgia and Armenia, the sultans of Iconium, and the

emirs of Persia, were decided by the frown or smile of the great

khan. The sons and grandsons of Zingis had been accustomed to the

pastoral life; but the village of Caracorum 31 was gradually

ennobled by their election and residence. A change of manners is

implied in the removal of Octai and Mangou from a tent to a

house; and their example was imitated by the princes of their

family and the great officers of the empire. Instead of the

boundless forest, the enclosure of a park afforded the more

indolent pleasures of the chase; their new habitations were

decorated with painting and sculpture; their superfluous

treasures were cast in fountains, and basins, and statues of

massy silver; and the artists of China and Paris vied with each

other in the service of the great khan. 32 Caracorum contained

two streets, the one of Chinese mechanics, the other of Mahometan

traders; and the places of religious worship, one Nestorian

church, two mosques, and twelve temples of various idols, may

represent in some degree the number and division of inhabitants.

Yet a French missionary declares, that the town of St. Denys,

near Paris, was more considerable than the Tartar capital; and

that the whole palace of Mangou was scarcely equal to a tenth

part of that Benedictine abbey. The conquests of Russia and Syria

might amuse the vanity of the great khans; but they were seated

on the borders of China; the acquisition of that empire was the

nearest and most interesting object; and they might learn from

their pastoral economy, that it is for the advantage of the

shepherd to protect and propagate his flock. I have already

celebrated the wisdom and virtue of a Mandarin who prevented the

desolation of five populous and cultivated provinces. In a

spotless administration of thirty years, this friend of his

country and of mankind continually labored to mitigate, or

suspend, the havoc of war; to save the monuments, and to rekindle

the flame, of science; to restrain the military commander by the

restoration of civil magistrates; and to instil the love of peace

and justice into the minds of the Moguls. He struggled with the

barbarism of the first conquerors; but his salutary lessons

produced a rich harvest in the second generation. 321 The

northern, and by degrees the southern, empire acquiesced in the

government of Cublai, the lieutenant, and afterwards the

successor, of Mangou; and the nation was loyal to a prince who

had been educated in the manners of China. He restored the forms

of her venerable constitution; and the victors submitted to the

laws, the fashions, and even the prejudices, of the vanquished

people. This peaceful triumph, which has been more than once

repeated, may be ascribed, in a great measure, to the numbers and

servitude of the Chinese. The Mogul army was dissolved in a vast

and populous country; and their emperors adopted with pleasure a

political system, which gives to the prince the solid substance

of despotism, and leaves to the subject the empty names of

philosophy, freedom, and filial obedience. 322 Under the reign of

Cublai, letters and commerce, peace and justice, were restored;

the great canal, of five hundred miles, was opened from Nankin to

the capital: he fixed his residence at Pekin; and displayed in

his court the magnificence of the greatest monarch of Asia. Yet

this learned prince declined from the pure and simple religion of

his great ancestor: he sacrificed to the idol Fo; and his blind

attachment to the lamas of Thibet and the bonzes of China 33

provoked the censure of the disciples of Confucius. His

successors polluted the palace with a crowd of eunuchs,

physicians, and astrologers, while thirteen millions of their

subjects were consumed in the provinces by famine. One hundred

and forty years after the death of Zingis, his degenerate race,

the dynasty of the Yuen, was expelled by a revolt of the native

Chinese; and the Mogul emperors were lost in the oblivion of the

desert. Before this revolution, they had forfeited their

supremacy over the dependent branches of their house, the khans

of Kipzak and Russia, the khans of Zagatai, or Transoxiana, and

the khans of Iran or Persia. By their distance and power, these

royal lieutenants had soon been released from the duties of

obedience; and after the death of Cublai, they scorned to accept

a sceptre or a title from his unworthy successors. According to

their respective situations, they maintained the simplicity of

the pastoral life, or assumed the luxury of the cities of Asia;

but the princes and their hordes were alike disposed for the

reception of a foreign worship. After some hesitation between the

Gospel and the Koran, they conformed to the religion of Mahomet;

and while they adopted for their brethren the Arabs and Persians,

they renounced all intercourse with the ancient Moguls, the

idolaters of China.

31 (return) [ The Map of D’Anville and the Chinese Itineraries

(De Guignes, tom. i. part ii. p. 57) seem to mark the position of

Holin, or Caracorum, about six hundred miles to the north-west of

Pekin. The distance between Selinginsky and Pekin is near 2000

Russian versts, between 1300 and 1400 English miles, (Bell’s

Travels, vol. ii. p. 67.)]

32 (return) [ Rubruquis found at Caracorum his _countryman

Guillaume Boucher, orfevre de Paris_, who had executed for the

khan a silver tree supported by four lions, and ejecting four

different liquors. Abulghazi (part iv. p. 366) mentions the

painters of Kitay or China.]

321 (return) [ See the interesting sketch of the life of this

minister (Yelin-Thsouthsai) in the second volume of the second

series of Recherches Asiatiques, par A Remusat, p. 64.—M.]

322 (return) [ Compare Hist. des Mongols, p. 616.—M.]

33 (return) [ The attachment of the khans, and the hatred of the

mandarins, to the bonzes and lamas (Duhalde, Hist. de la Chine,

tom. i. p. 502, 503) seems to represent them as the priests of

the same god, of the Indian _Fo_, whose worship prevails among

the sects of Hindostan Siam, Thibet, China, and Japan. But this

mysterious subject is still lost in a cloud, which the

researchers of our Asiatic Society may gradually dispel.]

Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.—Part III.

In this shipwreck of nations, some surprise may be excited by the

escape of the Roman empire, whose relics, at the time of the

Mogul invasion, were dismembered by the Greeks and Latins. Less

potent than Alexander, they were pressed, like the Macedonian,

both in Europe and Asia, by the shepherds of Scythia; and had the

Tartars undertaken the siege, Constantinople must have yielded to

the fate of Pekin, Samarcand, and Bagdad. The glorious and

voluntary retreat of Batou from the Danube was insulted by the

vain triumph of the Franks and Greeks; 34 and in a second

expedition death surprised him in full march to attack the

capital of the Cæsars. His brother Borga carried the Tartar arms

into Bulgaria and Thrace; but he was diverted from the Byzantine

war by a visit to Novogorod, in the fifty-seventh degree of

latitude, where he numbered the inhabitants and regulated the

tributes of Russia. The Mogul khan formed an alliance with the

Mamalukes against his brethren of Persia: three hundred thousand

horse penetrated through the gates of Derbend; and the Greeks

might rejoice in the first example of domestic war. After the

recovery of Constantinople, Michael Palæologus, 35 at a distance

from his court and army, was surprised and surrounded in a

Thracian castle, by twenty thousand Tartars. But the object of

their march was a private interest: they came to the deliverance

of Azzadin, the Turkish sultan; and were content with his person

and the treasure of the emperor. Their general Noga, whose name

is perpetuated in the hordes of Astracan, raised a formidable

rebellion against Mengo Timour, the third of the khans of Kipzak;

obtained in marriage Maria, the natural daughter of Palæologus;

and guarded the dominions of his friend and father. The

subsequent invasions of a Scythian cast were those of outlaws and

fugitives: and some thousands of Alani and Comans, who had been

driven from their native seats, were reclaimed from a vagrant

life, and enlisted in the service of the empire. Such was the

influence in Europe of the invasion of the Moguls. The first

terror of their arms secured, rather than disturbed, the peace of

the Roman Asia. The sultan of Iconium solicited a personal

interview with John Vataces; and his artful policy encouraged the

Turks to defend their barrier against the common enemy. 36 That

barrier indeed was soon overthrown; and the servitude and ruin of

the Seljukians exposed the nakedness of the Greeks. The

formidable Holagou threatened to march to Constantinople at the

head of four hundred thousand men; and the groundless panic of

the citizens of Nice will present an image of the terror which he

had inspired. The accident of a procession, and the sound of a

doleful litany, “From the fury of the Tartars, good Lord, deliver

us,” had scattered the hasty report of an assault and massacre.

In the blind credulity of fear, the streets of Nice were crowded

with thousands of both sexes, who knew not from what or to whom

they fled; and some hours elapsed before the firmness of the

military officers could relieve the city from this imaginary foe.

But the ambition of Holagou and his successors was fortunately

diverted by the conquest of Bagdad, and a long vicissitude of

Syrian wars; their hostility to the Moslems inclined them to

unite with the Greeks and Franks; 37 and their generosity or

contempt had offered the kingdom of Anatolia as the reward of an

Armenian vassal. The fragments of the Seljukian monarchy were

disputed by the emirs who had occupied the cities or the

mountains; but they all confessed the supremacy of the khans of

Persia; and he often interposed his authority, and sometimes his

arms, to check their depredations, and to preserve the peace and

balance of his Turkish frontier. The death of Cazan, 38 one of

the greatest and most accomplished princes of the house of

Zingis, removed this salutary control; and the decline of the

Moguls gave a free scope to the rise and progress of the Ottoman

Empire. 39

34 (return) [ Some repulse of the Moguls in Hungary (Matthew

Paris, p. 545, 546) might propagate and color the report of the

union and victory of the kings of the Franks on the confines of

Bulgaria. Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 310) after forty years,

beyond the Tigris, might be easily deceived.]

35 (return) [ See Pachymer, l. iii. c. 25, and l. ix. c. 26, 27;

and the false alarm at Nice, l. iii. c. 27. Nicephorus Gregoras,

l. iv. c. 6.]

36 (return) [ G. Acropolita, p. 36, 37. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6,

l. iv. c. 5.]

37 (return) [ Abulpharagius, who wrote in the year 1284, declares

that the Moguls, since the fabulous defeat of Batou, had not

attacked either the Franks or Greeks; and of this he is a

competent witness. Hayton likewise, the Armenian prince,

celebrates their friendship for himself and his nation.]

38 (return) [ Pachymer gives a splendid character of Cazan Khan,

the rival of Cyrus and Alexander, (l. xii. c. 1.) In the

conclusion of his history (l. xiii. c. 36) he _hopes_ much from

the arrival of 30,000 Tochars, or Tartars, who were ordered by

the successor of Cazan to restrain the Turks of Bithynia, A.D.

1308.]

39 (return) [ The origin of the Ottoman dynasty is illustrated by

the critical learning of Mm. De Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iv.

p. 329—337) and D’Anville, (Empire Turc, p. 14—22,) two

inhabitants of Paris, from whom the Orientals may learn the

history and geography of their own country. * Note: They may be

still more enlightened by the Geschichte des Osman Reiches, by M.

von Hammer Purgstall of Vienna.—M.]

After the retreat of Zingis, the sultan Gelaleddin of Carizme had

returned from India to the possession and defence of his Persian

kingdoms. In the space of eleven years, that hero fought in

person fourteen battles; and such was his activity, that he led

his cavalry in seventeen days from Teflis to Kerman, a march of a

thousand miles. Yet he was oppressed by the jealousy of the

Moslem princes, and the innumerable armies of the Moguls; and

after his last defeat, Gelaleddin perished ignobly in the

mountains of Curdistan. His death dissolved a veteran and

adventurous army, which included under the name of Carizmians or

Corasmins many Turkman hordes, that had attached themselves to

the sultan’s fortune. The bolder and more powerful chiefs invaded

Syria, and violated the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem: the more

humble engaged in the service of Aladin, sultan of Iconium; and

among these were the obscure fathers of the Ottoman line. They

had formerly pitched their tents near the southern banks of the

Oxus, in the plains of Mahan and Nesa; and it is somewhat

remarkable, that the same spot should have produced the first

authors of the Parthian and Turkish empires. At the head, or in

the rear, of a Carizmian army, Soliman Shah was drowned in the

passage of the Euphrates: his son Orthogrul became the soldier

and subject of Aladin, and established at Surgut, on the banks of

the Sangar, a camp of four hundred families or tents, whom he

governed fifty-two years both in peace and war. He was the father

of Thaman, or Athman, whose Turkish name has been melted into the

appellation of the caliph Othman; and if we describe that

pastoral chief as a shepherd and a robber, we must separate from

those characters all idea of ignominy and baseness. Othman

possessed, and perhaps surpassed, the ordinary virtues of a

soldier; and the circumstances of time and place were propitious

to his independence and success. The Seljukian dynasty was no

more; and the distance and decline of the Mogul khans soon

enfranchised him from the control of a superior. He was situate

on the verge of the Greek empire: the Koran sanctified his

_gazi_, or holy war, against the infidels; and their political

errors unlocked the passes of Mount Olympus, and invited him to

descend into the plains of Bithynia. Till the reign of

Palæologus, these passes had been vigilantly guarded by the

militia of the country, who were repaid by their own safety and

an exemption from taxes. The emperor abolished their privilege

and assumed their office; but the tribute was rigorously

collected, the custody of the passes was neglected, and the hardy

mountaineers degenerated into a trembling crowd of peasants

without spirit or discipline. It was on the twenty-seventh of

July, in the year twelve hundred and ninety-nine of the Christian

æra, that Othman first invaded the territory of Nicomedia; 40 and

the singular accuracy of the date seems to disclose some

foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster. The

annals of the twenty-seven years of his reign would exhibit a

repetition of the same inroads; and his hereditary troops were

multiplied in each campaign by the accession of captives and

volunteers. Instead of retreating to the hills, he maintained the

most useful and defensive posts; fortified the towns and castles

which he had first pillaged; and renounced the pastoral life for

the baths and palaces of his infant capitals. But it was not till

Othman was oppressed by age and infirmities, that he received the

welcome news of the conquest of Prusa, which had been surrendered

by famine or treachery to the arms of his son Orchan. The glory

of Othman is chiefly founded on that of his descendants; but the

Turks have transcribed or composed a royal testament of his last

counsels of justice and moderation. 41

40 (return) [ See Pachymer, l. x. c. 25, 26, l. xiii. c. 33, 34,

36; and concerning the guard of the mountains, l. i. c. 3—6:

Nicephorus Gregoras, l. vii. c. l., and the first book of

Laonicus Chalcondyles, the Athenian.]

41 (return) [ I am ignorant whether the Turks have any writers

older than Mahomet II., * nor can I reach beyond a meagre

chronicle (Annales Turcici ad Annum 1550) translated by John

Gaudier, and published by Leunclavius, (ad calcem Laonic.

Chalcond. p. 311—350,) with copious pandects, or commentaries.

The history of the Growth and Decay (A.D. 1300—1683) of the

Othman empire was translated into English from the Latin MS. of

Demetrius Cantemir, prince of Moldavia, (London, 1734, in folio.)

The author is guilty of strange blunders in Oriental history; but

he was conversant with the language, the annals, and institutions

of the Turks. Cantemir partly draws his materials from the

Synopsis of Saadi Effendi of Larissa, dedicated in the year 1696

to Sultan Mustapha, and a valuable abridgment of the original

historians. In one of the Ramblers, Dr. Johnson praises Knolles

(a General History of the Turks to the present Year. London,

1603) as the first of historians, unhappy only in the choice of

his subject. Yet I much doubt whether a partial and verbose

compilation from Latin writers, thirteen hundred folio pages of

speeches and battles, can either instruct or amuse an enlightened

age, which requires from the historian some tincture of

philosophy and criticism. Note: * We could have wished that M.

von Hammer had given a more clear and distinct reply to this

question of Gibbon. In a note, vol. i. p. 630. M. von Hammer

shows that they had not only sheiks (religious writers) and

learned lawyers, but poets and authors on medicine. But the

inquiry of Gibbon obviously refers to historians. The oldest of

their historical works, of which V. Hammer makes use, is the

“Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade,” i. e. the History of the Great

Grandson of Aaschik Pasha, who was a dervis and celebrated

ascetic poet in the reign of Murad (Amurath) I. Ahmed, the author

of the work, lived during the reign of Bajazet II., but, he says,

derived much information from the book of Scheik Jachshi, the son

of Elias, who was Imaum to Sultan Orchan, (the second Ottoman

king) and who related, from the lips of his father, the

circumstances of the earliest Ottoman history. This book (having

searched for it in vain for five-and-twenty years) our author

found at length in the Vatican. All the other Turkish histories

on his list, as indeed this, were _written_ during the reign of

Mahomet II. It does not appear whether any of the rest cite

earlier authorities of equal value with that claimed by the

“Tarichi Aaschik Paschasade.”—M. (in Quarterly Review, vol. xlix.

p. 292.)]

From the conquest of Prusa, we may date the true æra of the

Ottoman empire. The lives and possessions of the Christian

subjects were redeemed by a tribute or ransom of thirty thousand

crowns of gold; and the city, by the labors of Orchan, assumed

the aspect of a Mahometan capital; Prusa was decorated with a

mosque, a college, and a hospital, of royal foundation; the

Seljukian coin was changed for the name and impression of the new

dynasty: and the most skilful professors, of human and divine

knowledge, attracted the Persian and Arabian students from the

ancient schools of Oriental learning. The office of vizier was

instituted for Aladin, the brother of Orchan; 411 and a different

habit distinguished the citizens from the peasants, the Moslems

from the infidels. All the troops of Othman had consisted of

loose squadrons of Turkman cavalry; who served without pay and

fought without discipline: but a regular body of infantry was

first established and trained by the prudence of his son. A great

number of volunteers was enrolled with a small stipend, but with

the permission of living at home, unless they were summoned to

the field: their rude manners, and seditious temper, disposed

Orchan to educate his young captives as his soldiers and those of

the prophet; but the Turkish peasants were still allowed to mount

on horseback, and follow his standard, with the appellation and

the hopes of _freebooters_. 412 By these arts he formed an army

of twenty-five thousand Moslems: a train of battering engines was

framed for the use of sieges; and the first successful experiment

was made on the cities of Nice and Nicomedia. Orchan granted a

safe-conduct to all who were desirous of departing with their

families and effects; but the widows of the slain were given in

marriage to the conquerors; and the sacrilegious plunder, the

books, the vases, and the images, were sold or ransomed at

Constantinople. The emperor Andronicus the Younger was vanquished

and wounded by the son of Othman: 42 421 he subdued the whole

province or kingdom of Bithynia, as far as the shores of the

Bosphorus and Hellespont; and the Christians confessed the

justice and clemency of a reign which claimed the voluntary

attachment of the Turks of Asia. Yet Orchan was content with the

modest title of emir; and in the list of his compeers, the

princes of Roum or Anatolia, 43 his military forces were

surpassed by the emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, each of whom

could bring into the field an army of forty thousand men. Their

domains were situate in the heart of the Seljukian kingdom; but

the holy warriors, though of inferior note, who formed new

principalities on the Greek empire, are more conspicuous in the

light of history. The maritime country from the Propontis to the

Mæander and the Isle of Rhodes, so long threatened and so often

pillaged, was finally lost about the thirteenth year of

Andronicus the Elder. 44 Two Turkish chieftains, Sarukhan and

Aidin, left their names to their conquests, and their conquests

to their posterity. The captivity or ruin of the _seven_ churches

of Asia was consummated; and the barbarous lords of Ionia and

Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian

antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus, the Christians deplored the

fall of the first angel, the extinction of the first candlestick,

of the Revelations; 45 the desolation is complete; and the temple

of Diana, or the church of Mary, will equally elude the search of

the curious traveller. The circus and three stately theatres of

Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes; Sardes is reduced

to a miserable village; the God of Mahomet, without a rival or a

son, is invoked in the mosques of Thyatira and Pergamus; and the

populousness of Smyrna is supported by the foreign trade of the

Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved by

prophecy, or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by

the emperors, encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant

citizens defended their religion and freedom above fourscore

years; and at length capitulated with the proudest of the

Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia,

Philadelphia is still erect; a column in a scene of ruins; a

pleasing example, that the paths of honor and safety may

sometimes be the same. The servitude of Rhodes was delayed about

two centuries by the establishment of the knights of St. John of

Jerusalem: 46 under the discipline of the order, that island

emerged into fame and opulence; the noble and warlike monks were

renowned by land and sea: and the bulwark of Christendom

provoked, and repelled, the arms of the Turks and Saracens.

411 (return) [ Von Hammer, Osm. Geschichte, vol. i. p. 82.—M.]

412 (return) [ Ibid. p. 91.—M.]

42 (return) [ Cantacuzene, though he relates the battle and

heroic flight of the younger Andronicus, (l. ii. c. 6, 7, 8,)

dissembles by his silence the loss of Prusa, Nice, and Nicomedia,

which are fairly confessed by Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. viii. 15,

ix. 9, 13, xi. 6.) It appears that Nice was taken by Orchan in

1330, and Nicomedia in 1339, which are somewhat different from

the Turkish dates.]

421 (return) [ For the conquests of Orchan over the ten

pachaliks, or kingdoms of the Seljukians, in Asia Minor. see V.

Hammer, vol. i. p. 112.—M.]

43 (return) [ The partition of the Turkish emirs is extracted

from two contemporaries, the Greek Nicephorus Gregoras (l. vii.

1) and the Arabian Marakeschi, (De Guignes, tom. ii. P. ii. p.

76, 77.) See likewise the first book of Laonicus Chalcondyles.]

44 (return) [ Pachymer, l. xiii. c. 13.]

45 (return) [ See the Travels of Wheeler and Spon, of Pocock and

Chandler, and more particularly Smith’s Survey of the Seven

Churches of Asia, p. 205—276. The more pious antiquaries labor to

reconcile the promises and threats of the author of the

Revelations with the _present_ state of the seven cities. Perhaps

it would be more prudent to confine his predictions to the

characters and events of his own times.]

46 (return) [ Consult the ivth book of the Histoire de l’Ordre de

Malthe, par l’Abbé de Vertot. That pleasing writer betrays his

ignorance, in supposing that Othman, a freebooter of the

Bithynian hills, could besiege Rhodes by sea and land.]

The Greeks, by their intestine divisions, were the authors of

their final ruin. During the civil wars of the elder and younger

Andronicus, the son of Othman achieved, almost without

resistance, the conquest of Bithynia; and the same disorders

encouraged the Turkish emirs of Lydia and Ionia to build a fleet,

and to pillage the adjacent islands and the sea-coast of Europe.

In the defence of his life and honor, Cantacuzene was tempted to

prevent, or imitate, his adversaries, by calling to his aid the

public enemies of his religion and country. Amir, the son of

Aidin, concealed under a Turkish garb the humanity and politeness

of a Greek; he was united with the great domestic by mutual

esteem and reciprocal services; and their friendship is compared,

in the vain rhetoric of the times, to the perfect union of

Orestes and Pylades. 47 On the report of the danger of his

friend, who was persecuted by an ungrateful court, the prince of

Ionia assembled at Smyrna a fleet of three hundred vessels, with

an army of twenty-nine thousand men; sailed in the depth of

winter, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Hebrus. From thence,

with a chosen band of two thousand Turks, he marched along the

banks of the river, and rescued the empress, who was besieged in

Demotica by the wild Bulgarians. At that disastrous moment, the

life or death of his beloved Cantacuzene was concealed by his

flight into Servia: but the grateful Irene, impatient to behold

her deliverer, invited him to enter the city, and accompanied her

message with a present of rich apparel and a hundred horses. By a

peculiar strain of delicacy, the Gentle Barbarian refused, in the

absence of an unfortunate friend, to visit his wife, or to taste

the luxuries of the palace; sustained in his tent the rigor of

the winter; and rejected the hospitable gift, that he might share

the hardships of two thousand companions, all as deserving as

himself of that honor and distinction. Necessity and revenge

might justify his predatory excursions by sea and land: he left

nine thousand five hundred men for the guard of his fleet; and

persevered in the fruitless search of Cantacuzene, till his

embarkation was hastened by a fictitious letter, the severity of

the season, the clamors of his independent troops, and the weight

of his spoil and captives. In the prosecution of the civil war,

the prince of Ionia twice returned to Europe; joined his arms

with those of the emperor; besieged Thessalonica, and threatened

Constantinople. Calumny might affix some reproach on his

imperfect aid, his hasty departure, and a bribe of ten thousand

crowns, which he accepted from the Byzantine court; but his

friend was satisfied; and the conduct of Amir is excused by the

more sacred duty of defending against the Latins his hereditary

dominions. The maritime power of the Turks had united the pope,

the king of Cyprus, the republic of Venice, and the order of St.

John, in a laudable crusade; their galleys invaded the coast of

Ionia; and Amir was slain with an arrow, in the attempt to wrest

from the Rhodian knights the citadel of Smyrna. 48 Before his

death, he generously recommended another ally of his own nation;

not more sincere or zealous than himself, but more able to afford

a prompt and powerful succor, by his situation along the

Propontis and in the front of Constantinople. By the prospect of

a more advantageous treaty, the Turkish prince of Bithynia was

detached from his engagements with Anne of Savoy; and the pride

of Orchan dictated the most solemn protestations, that if he

could obtain the daughter of Cantacuzene, he would invariably

fulfil the duties of a subject and a son. Parental tenderness was

silenced by the voice of ambition: the Greek clergy connived at

the marriage of a Christian princess with a sectary of Mahomet;

and the father of Theodora describes, with shameful satisfaction,

the dishonor of the purple. 49 A body of Turkish cavalry attended

the ambassadors, who disembarked from thirty vessels, before his

camp of Selybria. A stately pavilion was erected, in which the

empress Irene passed the night with her daughters. In the

morning, Theodora ascended a throne, which was surrounded with

curtains of silk and gold: the troops were under arms; but the

emperor alone was on horseback. At a signal the curtains were

suddenly withdrawn to disclose the bride, or the victim,

encircled by kneeling eunuchs and hymeneal torches: the sound of

flutes and trumpets proclaimed the joyful event; and her

pretended happiness was the theme of the nuptial song, which was

chanted by such poets as the age could produce. Without the rites

of the church, Theodora was delivered to her barbarous lord: but

it had been stipulated, that she should preserve her religion in

the harem of Bursa; and her father celebrates her charity and

devotion in this ambiguous situation. After his peaceful

establishment on the throne of Constantinople, the Greek emperor

visited his Turkish ally, who with four sons, by various wives,

expected him at Scutari, on the Asiatic shore. The two princes

partook, with seeming cordiality, of the pleasures of the banquet

and the chase; and Theodora was permitted to repass the

Bosphorus, and to enjoy some days in the society of her mother.

But the friendship of Orchan was subservient to his religion and

interest; and in the Genoese war he joined without a blush the

enemies of Cantacuzene.

47 (return) [ Nicephorus Gregoras has expatiated with pleasure on

this amiable character, (l. xii. 7, xiii. 4, 10, xiv. 1, 9, xvi.

6.) Cantacuzene speaks with honor and esteem of his ally, (l.

iii. c. 56, 57, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 86, 89, 95, 96;) but he seems

ignorant of his own sentimental passion for the Turks, and

indirectly denies the possibility of such unnatural friendship,

(l. iv. c. 40.)]

48 (return) [ After the conquest of Smyrna by the Latins, the

defence of this fortress was imposed by Pope Gregory XI. on the

knights of Rhodes, (see Vertot, l. v.)]

49 (return) [ See Cantacuzenus, l. iii. c. 95. Nicephorus

Gregoras, who, for the light of Mount Thabor, brands the emperor

with the names of tyrant and Herod, excuses, rather than blames,

this Turkish marriage, and alleges the passion and power of

Orchan, eggutatoV, kai th dunamo? touV kat’ auton hdh PersikouV

(Turkish) uperairwn SatrapaV, (l. xv. 5.) He afterwards

celebrates his kingdom and armies. See his reign in Cantemir, p.

24—30.]

In the treaty with the empress Anne, the Ottoman prince had

inserted a singular condition, that it should be lawful for him

to sell his prisoners at Constantinople, or transport them into

Asia. A naked crowd of Christians of both sexes and every age, of

priests and monks, of matrons and virgins, was exposed in the

public market; the whip was frequently used to quicken the

charity of redemption; and the indigent Greeks deplored the fate

of their brethren, who were led away to the worst evils of

temporal and spiritual bondage 50 Cantacuzene was reduced to

subscribe the same terms; and their execution must have been

still more pernicious to the empire: a body of ten thousand Turks

had been detached to the assistance of the empress Anne; but the

entire forces of Orchan were exerted in the service of his

father. Yet these calamities were of a transient nature; as soon

as the storm had passed away, the fugitives might return to their

habitations; and at the conclusion of the civil and foreign wars,

Europe was completely evacuated by the Moslems of Asia. It was in

his last quarrel with his pupil that Cantacuzene inflicted the

deep and deadly wound, which could never be healed by his

successors, and which is poorly expiated by his theological

dialogues against the prophet Mahomet. Ignorant of their own

history, the modern Turks confound their first and their final

passage of the Hellespont, 51 and describe the son of Orchan as a

nocturnal robber, who, with eighty companions, explores by

stratagem a hostile and unknown shore. Soliman, at the head of

ten thousand horse, was transported in the vessels, and

entertained as the friend, of the Greek emperor. In the civil

wars of Romania, he performed some service and perpetrated more

mischief; but the Chersonesus was insensibly filled with a

Turkish colony; and the Byzantine court solicited in vain the

restitution of the fortresses of Thrace. After some artful delays

between the Ottoman prince and his son, their ransom was valued

at sixty thousand crowns, and the first payment had been made

when an earthquake shook the walls and cities of the provinces;

the dismantled places were occupied by the Turks; and Gallipoli,

the key of the Hellespont, was rebuilt and repeopled by the

policy of Soliman. The abdication of Cantacuzene dissolved the

feeble bands of domestic alliance; and his last advice admonished

his countrymen to decline a rash contest, and to compare their

own weakness with the numbers and valor, the discipline and

enthusiasm, of the Moslems. His prudent counsels were despised by

the headstrong vanity of youth, and soon justified by the

victories of the Ottomans. But as he practised in the field the

exercise of the _jerid_, Soliman was killed by a fall from his

horse; and the aged Orchan wept and expired on the tomb of his

valiant son. 511

50 (return) [ The most lively and concise picture of this

captivity may be found in the history of Ducas, (c. 8,) who

fairly describes what Cantacuzene confesses with a guilty blush!]

51 (return) [ In this passage, and the first conquests in Europe,

Cantemir (p. 27, &c.) gives a miserable idea of his Turkish

guides; nor am I much better satisfied with Chalcondyles, (l. i.

p. 12, &c.) They forget to consult the most authentic record, the

ivth book of Cantacuzene. I likewise regret the last books, which

are still manuscript, of Nicephorus Gregoras. * Note: Von Hammer

excuses the silence with which the Turkish historians pass over

the earlier intercourse of the Ottomans with the European

continent, of which he enumerates sixteen different occasions, as

if they disdained those peaceful incursions by which they gained

no conquest, and established no permanent footing on the

Byzantine territory. Of the romantic account of Soliman’s first

expedition, he says, “As yet the prose of history had not

asserted its right over the poetry of tradition.” This defence

would scarcely be accepted as satisfactory by the historian of

the Decline and Fall.—M. (in Quarterly Review, vol. xlix. p.

293.)]

511 (return) [ In the 75th year of his age, the 35th of his

reign. V. Hammer. M.]

Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turks.—Part IV.

But the Greeks had not time to rejoice in the death of their

enemies; and the Turkish cimeter was wielded with the same spirit

by Amurath the First, the son of Orchan, and the brother of

Soliman. By the pale and fainting light of the Byzantine annals,

52 we can discern, that he subdued without resistance the whole

province of Romania or Thrace, from the Hellespont to Mount

Hæmus, and the verge of the capital; and that Adrianople was

chosen for the royal seat of his government and religion in

Europe. Constantinople, whose decline is almost coeval with her

foundation, had often, in the lapse of a thousand years, been

assaulted by the Barbarians of the East and West; but never till

this fatal hour had the Greeks been surrounded, both in Asia and

Europe, by the arms of the same hostile monarchy. Yet the

prudence or generosity of Amurath postponed for a while this easy

conquest; and his pride was satisfied with the frequent and

humble attendance of the emperor John Palæologus and his four

sons, who followed at his summons the court and camp of the

Ottoman prince. He marched against the Sclavonian nations between

the Danube and the Adriatic, the Bulgarians, Servians, Bosnians,

and Albanians; and these warlike tribes, who had so often

insulted the majesty of the empire, were repeatedly broken by his

destructive inroads. Their countries did not abound either in

gold or silver; nor were their rustic hamlets and townships

enriched by commerce or decorated by the arts of luxury. But the

natives of the soil have been distinguished in every age by their

hardiness of mind and body; and they were converted by a prudent

institution into the firmest and most faithful supporters of the

Ottoman greatness. 53 The vizier of Amurath reminded his

sovereign that, according to the Mahometan law, he was entitled

to a fifth part of the spoil and captives; and that the duty

might easily be levied, if vigilant officers were stationed in

Gallipoli, to watch the passage, and to select for his use the

stoutest and most beautiful of the Christian youth. The advice

was followed: the edict was proclaimed; many thousands of the

European captives were educated in religion and arms; and the new

militia was consecrated and named by a celebrated dervis.

Standing in the front of their ranks, he stretched the sleeve of

his gown over the head of the foremost soldier, and his blessing

was delivered in these words: “Let them be called Janizaries,

(_Yengi cheri_, or new soldiers;) may their countenance be ever

bright! their hand victorious! their sword keen! may their spear

always hang over the heads of their enemies! and wheresoever they

go, may they return with a _white face!_” 54 541 Such was the

origin of these haughty troops, the terror of the nations, and

sometimes of the sultans themselves. Their valor has declined,

their discipline is relaxed, and their tumultuary array is

incapable of contending with the order and weapons of modern

tactics; but at the time of their institution, they possessed a

decisive superiority in war; since a regular body of infantry, in

constant exercise and pay, was not maintained by any of the

princes of Christendom. The Janizaries fought with the zeal of

proselytes against their _idolatrous_ countrymen; and in the

battle of Cossova, the league and independence of the Sclavonian

tribes was finally crushed. As the conqueror walked over the

field, he observed that the greatest part of the slain consisted

of beardless youths; and listened to the flattering reply of his

vizier, that age and wisdom would have taught them not to oppose

his irresistible arms. But the sword of his Janizaries could not

defend him from the dagger of despair; a Servian soldier started

from the crowd of dead bodies, and Amurath was pierced in the

belly with a mortal wound. 542 The grandson of Othman was mild in

his temper, modest in his apparel, and a lover of learning and

virtue; but the Moslems were scandalized at his absence from

public worship; and he was corrected by the firmness of the

mufti, who dared to reject his testimony in a civil cause: a

mixture of servitude and freedom not unfrequent in Oriental

history. 55

52 (return) [ After the conclusion of Cantacuzene and Gregoras,

there follows a dark interval of a hundred years. George Phranza,

Michael Ducas, and Laonicus Chalcondyles, all three wrote after

the taking of Constantinople.]

53 (return) [ See Cantemir, p. 37—41, with his own large and

curious annotations.]

54 (return) [ _White_ and _black_ face are common and proverbial

expressions of praise and reproach in the Turkish language. Hic

_niger_ est, hunc tu Romane caveto, was likewise a Latin

sentence.]

541 (return) [ According to Von Hammer. vol. i. p. 90, Gibbon and

the European writers assign too late a date to this enrolment of

the Janizaries. It took place not in the reign of Amurath, but in

that of his predecessor Orchan.—M.]

542 (return) [ Ducas has related this as a deliberate act of

self-devotion on the part of a Servian noble who pretended to

desert, and stabbed Amurath during a conference which he had

requested. The Italian translator of Ducas, published by Bekker

in the new edition of the Byzantines, has still further

heightened the romance. See likewise in Von Hammer (Osmanische

Geschichte, vol. i. p. 138) the popular Servian account, which

resembles that of Ducas, and may have been the source of that of

his Italian translator. The Turkish account agrees more nearly

with Gibbon; but the Servian, (Milosch Kohilovisch) while he lay

among the heap of the dead, pretended to have some secret to

impart to Amurath, and stabbed him while he leaned over to

listen.—M.]

55 (return) [ See the life and death of Morad, or Amurath I., in

Cantemir, (p 33—45,) the first book of Chalcondyles, and the

Annales Turcici of Leunclavius. According to another story, the

sultan was stabbed by a Croat in his tent; and this accident was

alleged to Busbequius (Epist i. p. 98) as an excuse for the

unworthy precaution of pinioning, as if were, between two

attendants, an ambassador’s arms, when he is introduced to the

royal presence.]

The character of Bajazet, the son and successor of Amurath, is

strongly expressed in his surname of _Ilderim_, or the lightning;

and he might glory in an epithet, which was drawn from the fiery

energy of his soul and the rapidity of his destructive march. In

the fourteen years of his reign, 56 he incessantly moved at the

head of his armies, from Boursa to Adrianople, from the Danube to

the Euphrates; and, though he strenuously labored for the

propagation of the law, he invaded, with impartial ambition, the

Christian and Mahometan princes of Europe and Asia. From Angora

to Amasia and Erzeroum, the northern regions of Anatolia were

reduced to his obedience: he stripped of their hereditary

possessions his brother emirs of Ghermian and Caramania, of Aidin

and Sarukhan; and after the conquest of Iconium the ancient

kingdom of the Seljukians again revived in the Ottoman dynasty.

Nor were the conquests of Bajazet less rapid or important in

Europe. No sooner had he imposed a regular form of servitude on

the Servians and Bulgarians, than he passed the Danube to seek

new enemies and new subjects in the heart of Moldavia. 57

Whatever yet adhered to the Greek empire in Thrace, Macedonia,

and Thessaly, acknowledged a Turkish master: an obsequious bishop

led him through the gates of Thermopylæ into Greece; and we may

observe, as a singular fact, that the widow of a Spanish chief,

who possessed the ancient seat of the oracle of Delphi, deserved

his favor by the sacrifice of a beauteous daughter. The Turkish

communication between Europe and Asia had been dangerous and

doubtful, till he stationed at Gallipoli a fleet of galleys, to

command the Hellespont and intercept the Latin succors of

Constantinople. While the monarch indulged his passions in a

boundless range of injustice and cruelty, he imposed on his

soldiers the most rigid laws of modesty and abstinence; and the

harvest was peaceably reaped and sold within the precincts of his

camp. Provoked by the loose and corrupt administration of

justice, he collected in a house the judges and lawyers of his

dominions, who expected that in a few moments the fire would be

kindled to reduce them to ashes. His ministers trembled in

silence: but an Æthiopian buffoon presumed to insinuate the true

cause of the evil; and future venality was left without excuse,

by annexing an adequate salary to the office of cadhi. 58 The

humble title of emir was no longer suitable to the Ottoman

greatness; and Bajazet condescended to accept a patent of sultan

from the caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the

Mamalukes: 59 a last and frivolous homage that was yielded by

force to opinion; by the Turkish conquerors to the house of Abbas

and the successors of the Arabian prophet. The ambition of the

sultan was inflamed by the obligation of deserving this august

title; and he turned his arms against the kingdom of Hungary, the

perpetual theatre of the Turkish victories and defeats.

Sigismond, the Hungarian king, was the son and brother of the

emperors of the West: his cause was that of Europe and the

church; and, on the report of his danger, the bravest knights of

France and Germany were eager to march under his standard and

that of the cross. In the battle of Nicopolis, Bajazet defeated a

confederate army of a hundred thousand Christians, who had

proudly boasted, that if the sky should fall, they could uphold

it on their lances. The far greater part were slain or driven

into the Danube; and Sigismond, escaping to Constantinople by the

river and the Black Sea, returned after a long circuit to his

exhausted kingdom. 60 In the pride of victory, Bajazet threatened

that he would besiege Buda; that he would subdue the adjacent

countries of Germany and Italy, and that he would feed his horse

with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter at Rome. His

progress was checked, not by the miraculous interposition of the

apostle, not by a crusade of the Christian powers, but by a long

and painful fit of the gout. The disorders of the moral, are

sometimes corrected by those of the physical, world; and an

acrimonious humor falling on a single fibre of one man, may

prevent or suspend the misery of nations.

56 (return) [ The reign of Bajazet I., or Ilderim Bayazid, is

contained in Cantemir, (p. 46,) the iid book of Chalcondyles, and

the Annales Turcici. The surname of Ilderim, or lightning, is an

example, that the conquerors and poets of every age have _felt_

the truth of a system which derives the sublime from the

principle of terror.]

57 (return) [ Cantemir, who celebrates the victories of the great

Stephen over the Turks, (p. 47,) had composed the ancient and

modern state of his principality of Moldavia, which has been long

promised, and is still unpublished.]

58 (return) [ Leunclav. Annal. Turcici, p. 318, 319. The venality

of the cadhis has long been an object of scandal and satire; and

if we distrust the observations of our travellers, we may consult

the feeling of the Turks themselves, (D’Herbelot, Bibliot.

Orientale, p. 216, 217, 229, 230.)]

59 (return) [ The fact, which is attested by the Arabic history

of Ben Schounah, a contemporary Syrian, (De Guignes Hist. des

Huns. tom. iv. p. 336.) destroys the testimony of Saad Effendi

and Cantemir, (p. 14, 15,) of the election of Othman to the

dignity of sultan.]

60 (return) [ See the Decades Rerum Hungaricarum (Dec. iii. l.

ii. p. 379) of Bonfinius, an Italian, who, in the xvth century,

was invited into Hungary to compose an eloquent history of that

kingdom. Yet, if it be extant and accessible, I should give the

preference to some homely chronicle of the time and country.]

Such is the general idea of the Hungarian war; but the disastrous

adventure of the French has procured us some memorials which

illustrate the victory and character of Bajazet. 61 The duke of

Burgundy, sovereign of Flanders, and uncle of Charles the Sixth,

yielded to the ardor of his son, John count of Nevers; and the

fearless youth was accompanied by four princes, his _cousins_,

and those of the French monarch. Their inexperience was guided by

the Sire de Coucy, one of the best and oldest captain of

Christendom; 62 but the constable, admiral, and marshal of France

63 commanded an army which did not exceed the number of a

thousand knights and squires. 631 These splendid names were the

source of presumption and the bane of discipline. So many might

aspire to command, that none were willing to obey; their national

spirit despised both their enemies and their allies; and in the

persuasion that Bajazet _would_ fly, or _must_ fall, they began

to compute how soon they should visit Constantinople and deliver

the holy sepulchre. When their scouts announced the approach of

the Turks, the gay and thoughtless youths were at table, already

heated with wine; they instantly clasped their armor, mounted

their horses, rode full speed to the vanguard, and resented as an

affront the advice of Sigismond, which would have deprived them

of the right and honor of the foremost attack. The battle of

Nicopolis would not have been lost, if the French would have

obeyed the prudence of the Hungarians; but it might have been

gloriously won, had the Hungarians imitated the valor of the

French. They dispersed the first line, consisting of the troops

of Asia; forced a rampart of stakes, which had been planted

against the cavalry; broke, after a bloody conflict, the

Janizaries themselves; and were at length overwhelmed by the

numerous squadrons that issued from the woods, and charged on all

sides this handful of intrepid warriors. In the speed and secrecy

of his march, in the order and evolutions of the battle, his

enemies felt and admired the military talents of Bajazet. They

accuse his cruelty in the use of victory. After reserving the

count of Nevers, and four-and-twenty lords, 632 whose birth and

riches were attested by his Latin interpreters, the remainder of

the French captives, who had survived the slaughter of the day,

were led before his throne; and, as they refused to abjure their

faith, were successively beheaded in his presence. The sultan was

exasperated by the loss of his bravest Janizaries; and if it be

true, that, on the eve of the engagement, the French had

massacred their Turkish prisoners, 64 they might impute to

themselves the consequences of a just retaliation. 641 A knight,

whose life had been spared, was permitted to return to Paris,

that he might relate the deplorable tale, and solicit the ransom

of the noble captives. In the mean while, the count of Nevers,

with the princes and barons of France, were dragged along in the

marches of the Turkish camp, exposed as a grateful trophy to the

Moslems of Europe and Asia, and strictly confined at Boursa, as

often as Bajazet resided in his capital. The sultan was pressed

each day to expiate with their blood the blood of his martyrs;

but he had pronounced that they should live, and either for mercy

or destruction his word was irrevocable. He was assured of their

value and importance by the return of the messenger, and the

gifts and intercessions of the kings of France and of Cyprus.

Lusignan presented him with a gold saltcellar of curious

workmanship, and of the price of ten thousand ducats; and Charles

the Sixth despatched by the way of Hungary a cast of Norwegian

hawks, and six horse-loads of scarlet cloth, of fine linen of

Rheims, and of Arras tapestry, representing the battles of the

great Alexander. After much delay, the effect of distance rather

than of art, Bajazet agreed to accept a ransom of two hundred

thousand ducats for the count of Nevers and the surviving princes

and barons: the marshal Boucicault, a famous warrior, was of the

number of the fortunate; but the admiral of France had been slain

in battle; and the constable, with the Sire de Coucy, died in the

prison of Boursa. This heavy demand, which was doubled by

incidental costs, fell chiefly on the duke of Burgundy, or rather

on his Flemish subjects, who were bound by the feudal laws to

contribute for the knighthood and captivity of the eldest son of

their lord. For the faithful discharge of the debt, some

merchants of Genoa gave security to the amount of five times the

sum; a lesson to those warlike times, that commerce and credit

are the links of the society of nations. It had been stipulated

in the treaty, that the French captives should swear never to

bear arms against the person of their conqueror; but the

ungenerous restraint was abolished by Bajazet himself. “I

despise,” said he to the heir of Burgundy, “thy oaths and thy

arms. Thou art young, and mayest be ambitious of effacing the

disgrace or misfortune of thy first chivalry. Assemble thy

powers, proclaim thy design, and be assured that Bajazet will

rejoice to meet thee a second time in a field of battle.” Before

their departure, they were indulged in the freedom and

hospitality of the court of Boursa. The French princes admired

the magnificence of the Ottoman, whose hunting and hawking

equipage was composed of seven thousand huntsmen and seven

thousand falconers. 65 In their presence, and at his command, the

belly of one of his chamberlains was cut open, on a complaint

against him for drinking the goat’s milk of a poor woman. The

strangers were astonished by this act of justice; but it was the

justice of a sultan who disdains to balance the weight of

evidence, or to measure the degrees of guilt.

61 (return) [ I should not complain of the labor of this work, if

my materials were always derived from such books as the chronicle

of honest Froissard, (vol. iv. c. 67, 72, 74, 79—83, 85, 87, 89,)

who read little, inquired much, and believed all. The original

Mémoires of the Maréchal de Boucicault (Partie i. c. 22—28) add

some facts, but they are dry and deficient, if compared with the

pleasant garrulity of Froissard.]

62 (return) [ An accurate Memoir on the Life of Enguerrand VII.,

Sire de Coucy, has been given by the Baron de Zurlauben, (Hist.

de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxv.) His rank and

possessions were equally considerable in France and England; and,

in 1375, he led an army of adventurers into Switzerland, to

recover a large patrimony which he claimed in right of his

grandmother, the daughter of the emperor Albert I. of Austria,

(Sinner, Voyage dans la Suisse Occidentale, tom. i. p. 118—124.)]

63 (return) [ That military office, so respectable at present,

was still more conspicuous when it was divided between two

persons, (Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Françoise, tom. ii. p. 5.)

One of these, the marshal of the crusade, was the famous

Boucicault, who afterwards defended Constantinople, governed

Genoa, invaded the coast of Asia, and died in the field of

Azincour.]

631 (return) [ Daru, Hist. de Venice, vol. ii. p. 104, makes the

whole French army amount to 10,000 men, of whom 1000 were

knights. The curious volume of Schiltberger, a German of Munich,

who was taken prisoner in the battle, (edit. Munich, 1813,) and

which V. Hammer receives as authentic, gives the whole number at

6000. See Schiltberger. Reise in dem Orient. and V. Hammer, note,

p. 610.—M.]

632 (return) [ According to Schiltberger there were only twelve

French lords granted to the prayer of the “duke of Burgundy,” and

“Herr Stephan Synther, and Johann von Bodem.” Schiltberger, p.

13.—M.]

64 (return) [ For this odious fact, the Abbé de Vertot quotes the

Hist. Anonyme de St. Denys, l. xvi. c. 10, 11. (Ordre de Malthe,

tom. ii. p. 310.)]

641 (return) [ See Schiltberger’s very graphic account of the

massacre. He was led out to be slaughtered in cold blood with the

rest f the Christian prisoners, amounting to 10,000. He was

spared at the intercession of the son of Bajazet, with a few

others, on account of their extreme youth. No one under 20 years

of age was put to death. The “duke of Burgundy” was obliged to be

a spectator of this butchery which lasted from early in the

morning till four o’clock, P. M. It ceased only at the

supplication of the leaders of Bajazet’s army. Schiltberger, p.

14.—M.]

65 (return) [ Sherefeddin Ali (Hist. de Timour Bec, l. v. c. 13)

allows Bajazet a round number of 12,000 officers and servants of

the chase. A part of his spoils was afterwards displayed in a

hunting-match of Timour, l. hounds with satin housings; 2.

leopards with collars set with jewels; 3. Grecian greyhounds; and

4, dogs from Europe, as strong as African lions, (idem, l. vi. c.

15.) Bajazet was particularly fond of flying his hawks at cranes,

(Chalcondyles, l. ii. p. 85.)]

After his enfranchisement from an oppressive guardian, John

Palæologus remained thirty-six years, the helpless, and, as it

should seem, the careless spectator of the public ruin. 66 Love,

or rather lust, was his only vigorous passion; and in the

embraces of the wives and virgins of the city, the Turkish slave

forgot the dishonor of the emperor of the _Romans_ Andronicus,

his eldest son, had formed, at Adrianople, an intimate and guilty

friendship with Sauzes, the son of Amurath; and the two youths

conspired against the authority and lives of their parents. The

presence of Amurath in Europe soon discovered and dissipated

their rash counsels; and, after depriving Sauzes of his sight,

the Ottoman threatened his vassal with the treatment of an

accomplice and an enemy, unless he inflicted a similar punishment

on his own son. Palæologus trembled and obeyed; and a cruel

precaution involved in the same sentence the childhood and

innocence of John, the son of the criminal. But the operation was

so mildly, or so unskilfully, performed, that the one retained

the sight of an eye, and the other was afflicted only with the

infirmity of squinting. Thus excluded from the succession, the

two princes were confined in the tower of Anema; and the piety of

Manuel, the second son of the reigning monarch, was rewarded with

the gift of the Imperial crown. But at the end of two years, the

turbulence of the Latins and the levity of the Greeks, produced a

revolution; 661 and the two emperors were buried in the tower

from whence the two prisoners were exalted to the throne. Another

period of two years afforded Palæologus and Manuel the means of

escape: it was contrived by the magic or subtlety of a monk, who

was alternately named the angel or the devil: they fled to

Scutari; their adherents armed in their cause; and the two

Byzantine factions displayed the ambition and animosity with

which Cæsar and Pompey had disputed the empire of the world. The

Roman world was now contracted to a corner of Thrace, between the

Propontis and the Black Sea, about fifty miles in length and

thirty in breadth; a space of ground not more extensive than the

lesser principalities of Germany or Italy, if the remains of

Constantinople had not still represented the wealth and

populousness of a kingdom. To restore the public peace, it was

found necessary to divide this fragment of the empire; and while

Palæologus and Manuel were left in possession of the capital,

almost all that lay without the walls was ceded to the blind

princes, who fixed their residence at Rhodosto and Selybria. In

the tranquil slumber of royalty, the passions of John Palæologus

survived his reason and his strength: he deprived his favorite

and heir of a blooming princess of Trebizond; and while the

feeble emperor labored to consummate his nuptials, Manuel, with a

hundred of the noblest Greeks, was sent on a peremptory summons

to the Ottoman _porte_. They served with honor in the wars of

Bajazet; but a plan of fortifying Constantinople excited his

jealousy: he threatened their lives; the new works were instantly

demolished; and we shall bestow a praise, perhaps above the merit

of Palæologus, if we impute this last humiliation as the cause of

his death.

66 (return) [ For the reigns of John Palæologus and his son

Manuel, from 1354 to 1402, see Ducas, c. 9—15, Phranza, l. i. c.

16—21, and the ist and iid books of Chalcondyles, whose proper

subject is drowned in a sea of episode.]

661 (return) [ According to Von Hammer it was the power of

Bajazet, vol. i. p. 218.]

The earliest intelligence of that event was communicated to

Manuel, who escaped with speed and secrecy from the palace of

Boursa to the Byzantine throne. Bajazet affected a proud

indifference at the loss of this valuable pledge; and while he

pursued his conquests in Europe and Asia, he left the emperor to

struggle with his blind cousin John of Selybria, who, in eight

years of civil war, asserted his right of primogeniture. At

length, the ambition of the victorious sultan pointed to the

conquest of Constantinople; but he listened to the advice of his

vizier, who represented that such an enterprise might unite the

powers of Christendom in a second and more formidable crusade.

His epistle to the emperor was conceived in these words: “By the

divine clemency, our invincible cimeter has reduced to our

obedience almost all Asia, with many and large countries in

Europe, excepting only the city of Constantinople; for beyond the

walls thou hast nothing left. Resign that city; stipulate thy

reward; or tremble, for thyself and thy unhappy people, at the

consequences of a rash refusal.” But his ambassadors were

instructed to soften their tone, and to propose a treaty, which

was subscribed with submission and gratitude. A truce of ten

years was purchased by an annual tribute of thirty thousand

crowns of gold; the Greeks deplored the public toleration of the

law of Mahomet, and Bajazet enjoyed the glory of establishing a

Turkish cadhi, and founding a royal mosque in the metropolis of

the Eastern church. 67 Yet this truce was soon violated by the

restless sultan: in the cause of the prince of Selybria, the

lawful emperor, an army of Ottomans again threatened

Constantinople; and the distress of Manuel implored the

protection of the king of France. His plaintive embassy obtained

much pity and some relief; and the conduct of the succor was

intrusted to the marshal Boucicault, 68 whose religious chivalry

was inflamed by the desire of revenging his captivity on the

infidels. He sailed with four ships of war, from Aiguesmortes to

the Hellespont; forced the passage, which was guarded by

seventeen Turkish galleys; landed at Constantinople a supply of

six hundred men-at-arms and sixteen hundred archers; and reviewed

them in the adjacent plain, without condescending to number or

array the multitude of Greeks. By his presence, the blockade was

raised both by sea and land; the flying squadrons of Bajazet were

driven to a more respectful distance; and several castles in

Europe and Asia were stormed by the emperor and the marshal, who

fought with equal valor by each other’s side. But the Ottomans

soon returned with an increase of numbers; and the intrepid

Boucicault, after a year’s struggle, resolved to evacuate a

country which could no longer afford either pay or provisions for

his soldiers. The marshal offered to conduct Manuel to the French

court, where he might solicit in person a supply of men and

money; and advised, in the mean while, that, to extinguish all

domestic discord, he should leave his blind competitor on the

throne. The proposal was embraced: the prince of Selybria was

introduced to the capital; and such was the public misery, that

the lot of the exile seemed more fortunate than that of the

sovereign. Instead of applauding the success of his vassal, the

Turkish sultan claimed the city as his own; and on the refusal of

the emperor John, Constantinople was more closely pressed by the

calamities of war and famine. Against such an enemy prayers and

resistance were alike unavailing; and the savage would have

devoured his prey, if, in the fatal moment, he had not been

overthrown by another savage stronger than himself. By the

victory of Timour or Tamerlane, the fall of Constantinople was

delayed about fifty years; and this important, though accidental,

service may justly introduce the life and character of the Mogul

conqueror.

67 (return) [ Cantemir, p. 50—53. Of the Greeks, Ducas alone (c.

13, 15) acknowledges the Turkish cadhi at Constantinople. Yet

even Ducas dissembles the mosque.]

68 (return) [ Mémoires du bon Messire Jean le Maingre, dit

_Boucicault_, Maréchal de France, partie ire c. 30, 35.]

Chapter LXV: Elevation Of Timour Or Tamerlane, And His

Death.—Part I.

Elevation Of Timour Or Tamerlane To The Throne Of Samarcand.—His

Conquests In Persia, Georgia, Tartary Russia, India, Syria, And

Anatolia.—His Turkish War.— Defeat And Captivity Of Bajazet.—Death

Of Timour.—Civil War Of The Sons Of Bajazet.—Restoration Of The

Turkish Monarchy By Mahomet The First.—Siege Of Constantinople By

Amurath The Second.

The conquest and monarchy of the world was the first object of

the ambition of Timour. To live in the memory and esteem of

future ages was the second wish of his magnanimous spirit. All

the civil and military transactions of his reign were diligently

recorded in the journals of his secretaries: 1 the authentic

narrative was revised by the persons best informed of each

particular transaction; and it is believed in the empire and

family of Timour, that the monarch himself composed the

_commentaries_ 2 of his life, and the _institutions_ 3 of his

government. 4 But these cares were ineffectual for the

preservation of his fame, and these precious memorials in the

Mogul or Persian language were concealed from the world, or, at

least, from the knowledge of Europe. The nations which he

vanquished exercised a base and impotent revenge; and ignorance

has long repeated the tale of calumny, 5 which had disfigured the

birth and character, the person, and even the name, of

_Tamerlane_. 6 Yet his real merit would be enhanced, rather than

debased, by the elevation of a peasant to the throne of Asia; nor

can his lameness be a theme of reproach, unless he had the

weakness to blush at a natural, or perhaps an honorable,

infirmity. 606

1 (return) [ These journals were communicated to Sherefeddin, or

Cherefeddin Ali, a native of Yezd, who composed in the Persian

language a history of Timour Beg, which has been translated into

French by M. Petit de la Croix, (Paris, 1722, in 4 vols. 12 mo.,)

and has always been my faithful guide. His geography and

chronology are wonderfully accurate; and he may be trusted for

public facts, though he servilely praises the virtue and fortune

of the hero. Timour’s attention to procure intelligence from his

own and foreign countries may be seen in the Institutions, p.

215, 217, 349, 351.]

2 (return) [ These Commentaries are yet unknown in Europe: but

Mr. White gives some hope that they may be imported and

translated by his friend Major Davy, who had read in the East

this “minute and faithful narrative of an interesting and

eventful period.” * Note: The manuscript of Major Davy has been

translated by Major Stewart, and published by the Oriental

Translation Committee of London. It contains the life of Timour,

from his birth to his forty-first year; but the last thirty years

of western war and conquest are wanting. Major Stewart intimates

that two manuscripts exist in this country containing the whole

work, but excuses himself, on account of his age, from

undertaking the laborious task of completing the translation. It

is to be hoped that the European public will be soon enabled to

judge of the value and authenticity of the Commentaries of the

Cæsar of the East. Major Stewart’s work commences with the Book

of Dreams and Omens—a wild, but characteristic, chronicle of

Visions and Sortes Koranicæ. Strange that a life of Timour should

awaken a reminiscence of the diary of Archbishop Laud! The early

dawn and the gradual expression of his not less splendid but more

real visions of ambition are touched with the simplicity of truth

and nature. But we long to escape from the petty feuds of the

pastoral chieftain, to the triumphs and the legislation of the

conqueror of the world.—M.]

3 (return) [ I am ignorant whether the original institution, in

the Turki or Mogul language, be still extant. The Persic version,

with an English translation, and most valuable index, was

published (Oxford, 1783, in 4to.) by the joint labors of Major

Davy and Mr. White, the Arabic professor. This work has been

since translated from the Persic into French, (Paris, 1787,) by

M. Langlès, a learned Orientalist, who has added the life of

Timour, and many curious notes.]

4 (return) [ Shaw Allum, the present Mogul, reads, values, but

cannot imitate, the institutions of his great ancestor. The

English translator relies on their internal evidence; but if any

suspicions should arise of fraud and fiction, they will not be

dispelled by Major Davy’s letter. The Orientals have never

cultivated the art of criticism; the patronage of a prince, less

honorable, perhaps, is not less lucrative than that of a

bookseller; nor can it be deemed incredible that a Persian, the

_real_ author, should renounce the credit, to raise the value and

price, of the work.]

5 (return) [ The original of the tale is found in the following

work, which is much esteemed for its florid elegance of style:

_Ahmedis Arabsiad_ (Ahmed Ebn Arabshah) _Vitæ et Rerum gestarum

Timuri. Arabice et Latine. Edidit Samuel Henricus Manger.

Franequer_, 1767, 2 tom. in 4to. This Syrian author is ever a

malicious, and often an ignorant enemy: the very titles of his

chapters are injurious; as how the wicked, as how the impious, as

how the viper, &c. The copious article of Timur, in Bibliothèque

Orientale, is of a mixed nature, as D’Herbelot indifferently

draws his materials (p. 877—888) from Khondemir Ebn Schounah, and

the Lebtarikh.]

6 (return) [ _Demir_ or _Timour_ signifies in the Turkish

language, Iron; and it is the appellation of a lord or prince. By

the change of a letter or accent, it is changed into _Lenc_, or

Lame; and a European corruption confounds the two words in the

name of Tamerlane. * Note: According to the memoirs he was so

called by a Shaikh, who, when visited by his mother on his birth,

was reading the verse of the Koran, “Are you sure that he who

dwelleth in heaven will not cause the earth to swallow you up,

and behold _it shall shake_, Tamûrn.” The Shaikh then stopped and

said, “We have named your son _Timûr_,” p. 21.—M.]

606 (return) [ He was lamed by a wound at the siege of the

capital of Sistan. Sherefeddin, lib. iii. c. 17. p. 136. See Von

Hammer, vol. i. p. 260.—M.]

In the eyes of the Moguls, who held the indefeasible succession

of the house of Zingis, he was doubtless a rebel subject; yet he

sprang from the noble tribe of Berlass: his fifth ancestor,

Carashar Nevian, had been the vizier 607 of Zagatai, in his new

realm of Transoxiana; and in the ascent of some generations, the

branch of Timour is confounded, at least by the females, 7 with

the Imperial stem. 8 He was born forty miles to the south of

Samarcand in the village of Sebzar, in the fruitful territory of

Cash, of which his fathers were the hereditary chiefs, as well as

of a toman of ten thousand horse. 9 His birth 10 was cast on one

of those periods of anarchy, which announce the fall of the

Asiatic dynasties, and open a new field to adventurous ambition.

The khans of Zagatai were extinct; the emirs aspired to

independence; and their domestic feuds could only be suspended by

the conquest and tyranny of the khans of Kashgar, who, with an

army of Getes or Calmucks, 11 invaded the Transoxian kingdom.

From the twelfth year of his age, Timour had entered the field of

action; in the twenty-fifth 111 he stood forth as the deliverer

of his country; and the eyes and wishes of the people were turned

towards a hero who suffered in their cause. The chiefs of the law

and of the army had pledged their salvation to support him with

their lives and fortunes; but in the hour of danger they were

silent and afraid; and, after waiting seven days on the hills of

Samarcand, he retreated to the desert with only sixty horsemen.

The fugitives were overtaken by a thousand Getes, whom he

repulsed with incredible slaughter, and his enemies were forced

to exclaim, “Timour is a wonderful man: fortune and the divine

favor are with him.” But in this bloody action his own followers

were reduced to ten, a number which was soon diminished by the

desertion of three Carizmians. 112 He wandered in the desert with

his wife, seven companions, and four horses; and sixty-two days

was he plunged in a loathsome dungeon, from whence he escaped by

his own courage and the remorse of the oppressor. After swimming

the broad and rapid steam of the Jihoon, or Oxus, he led, during

some months, the life of a vagrant and outlaw, on the borders of

the adjacent states. But his fame shone brighter in adversity; he

learned to distinguish the friends of his person, the associates

of his fortune, and to apply the various characters of men for

their advantage, and, above all, for his own. On his return to

his native country, Timour was successively joined by the parties

of his confederates, who anxiously sought him in the desert; nor

can I refuse to describe, in his pathetic simplicity, one of

their fortunate encounters. He presented himself as a guide to

three chiefs, who were at the head of seventy horse. “When their

eyes fell upon me,” says Timour, “they were overwhelmed with joy;

and they alighted from their horses; and they came and kneeled;

and they kissed my stirrup. I also came down from my horse, and

took each of them in my arms. And I put my turban on the head of

the first chief; and my girdle, rich in jewels and wrought with

gold, I bound on the loins of the second; and the third I clothed

in my own coat. And they wept, and I wept also; and the hour of

prayer was arrived, and we prayed. And we mounted our horses, and

came to my dwelling; and I collected my people, and made a

feast.” His trusty bands were soon increased by the bravest of

the tribes; he led them against a superior foe; and, after some

vicissitudes of war the Getes were finally driven from the

kingdom of Transoxiana. He had done much for his own glory; but

much remained to be done, much art to be exerted, and some blood

to be spilt, before he could teach his equals to obey him as

their master. The birth and power of emir Houssein compelled him

to accept a vicious and unworthy colleague, whose sister was the

best beloved of his wives. Their union was short and jealous; but

the policy of Timour, in their frequent quarrels, exposed his

rival to the reproach of injustice and perfidy; and, after a

final defeat, Houssein was slain by some sagacious friends, who

presumed, for the last time, to disobey the commands of their

lord. 113 At the age of thirty-four, 12 and in a general diet or

_couroultai_, he was invested with _Imperial_ command, but he

affected to revere the house of Zingis; and while the emir Timour

reigned over Zagatai and the East, a nominal khan served as a

private officer in the armies of his servant. A fertile kingdom,

five hundred miles in length and in breadth, might have satisfied

the ambition of a subject; but Timour aspired to the dominion of

the world; and before his death, the crown of Zagatai was one of

the twenty-seven crowns which he had placed on his head. 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 his conquests

in, I. Persia, II. Tartary, and, III. India, 13 and from thence

proceed to the more interesting narrative of his Ottoman war.

607 (return) [ In the memoirs, the title Gurgân is in one place

(p. 23) interpreted the son-in-law; in another (p. 28) as Kurkan,

great prince, generalissimo, and prime minister of Jagtai.—M.]

7 (return) [ After relating some false and foolish tales of

Timour _Lenc_, Arabshah is compelled to speak truth, and to own

him for a kinsman of Zingis, per mulieres, (as he peevishly

adds,) laqueos Satanæ, (pars i. c. i. p. 25.) The testimony of

Abulghazi Khan (P. ii. c. 5, P. v. c. 4) is clear,

unquestionable, and decisive.]

8 (return) [ According to one of the pedigrees, the fourth

ancestor of Zingis, and the ninth of Timour, were brothers; and

they agreed, that the posterity of the elder should succeed to

the dignity of khan, and that the descendants of the younger

should fill the office of their minister and general. This

tradition was at least convenient to justify the _first_ steps of

Timour’s ambition, (Institutions, p. 24, 25, from the MS.

fragments of Timour’s History.)]

9 (return) [ See the preface of Sherefeddin, and Abulfeda’s

Geography, (Chorasmiæ, &c., Descriptio, p. 60, 61,) in the iiid

volume of Hudson’s Minor Greek Geographers.]

10 (return) [ See his nativity in Dr. Hyde, (Syntagma Dissertat.

tom. ii. p. 466,) as it was cast by the astrologers of his

grandson Ulugh Beg. He was born, A.D. 1336, April 9, 11º 57'. p.

m., lat. 36. I know not whether they can prove the great

conjunction of the planets from whence, like other conquerors and

prophets, Timour derived the surname of Saheb Keran, or master of

the conjunctions, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 878.)]

11 (return) [ In the Institutions of Timour, these subjects of

the khan of Kashgar are most improperly styled Ouzbegs, or

Usbeks, a name which belongs to another branch and country of

Tartars, (Abulghazi, P. v. c. v. P. vii. c. 5.) Could I be sure

that this word is in the Turkish original, I would boldly

pronounce, that the Institutions were framed a century after the

death of Timour, since the establishment of the Usbeks in

Transoxiana. * Note: Col. Stewart observes, that the Persian

translator has sometimes made use of the name Uzbek by

anticipation. He observes, likewise, that these Jits (Getes) are

not to be confounded with the ancient Getæ: they were unconverted

Turks. Col. Tod (History of Rajasthan, vol. i. p. 166) would

identify the Jits with the ancient race.—M.]

111 (return) [ He was twenty-seven before he served his first

wars under the emir Houssein, who ruled over Khorasan and

Mawerainnehr. Von Hammer, vol. i. p. 262. Neither of these

statements agrees with the Memoirs. At twelve he was a boy. “I

fancied that I perceived in myself all the signs of greatness and

wisdom, and whoever came to visit me, I received with great

hauteur and dignity.” At seventeen he undertook the management of

the flocks and herds of the family, (p. 24.) At nineteen he

became religious, and “left off playing chess,” made a kind of

Budhist vow never to injure living thing and felt his foot

paralyzed from having accidentally trod upon an ant, (p. 30.) At

twenty, thoughts of rebellion and greatness rose in his mind; at

twenty-one, he seems to have performed his first feat of arms. He

was a practised warrior when he served, in his twenty-seventh

year, under Emir Houssein.]

112 (return) [ Compare Memoirs, page 61. The imprisonment is

there stated at fifty-three days. “At this time I made a vow to

God that I would never keep any person, whether guilty or

innocent, for any length of time, in prison or in chains.” p.

63.—M.]

113 (return) [ Timour, on one occasion, sent him this message:

“He who wishes to embrace the bride of royalty must kiss her

across the edge of the sharp sword,” p. 83. The scene of the

trial of Houssein, the resistance of Timour gradually becoming

more feeble, the vengeance of the chiefs becoming proportionably

more determined, is strikingly portrayed. Mem. p 130.—M.]

12 (return) [ The ist book of Sherefeddin is employed on the

private life of the hero: and he himself, or his secretary,

(Institutions, p. 3—77,) enlarges with pleasure on the thirteen

designs and enterprises which most truly constitute his

_personal_ merit. It even shines through the dark coloring of

Arabshah, (P. i. c. 1—12.)]

13 (return) [ The conquests of Persia, Tartary, and India, are

represented in the iid and iiid books of Sherefeddin, and by

Arabshah, (c. 13—55.) Consult the excellent Indexes to the

Institutions. * Note: Compare the seventh book of Von Hammer,

Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches.—M.]

I. For every war, a motive of safety or revenge, of honor or

zeal, of right or convenience, may be readily found in the

jurisprudence of conquerors. No sooner had Timour reunited to the

patrimony of Zagatai the dependent countries of Carizme and

Candahar, than he turned his eyes towards the kingdoms of Iran or

Persia. From the Oxus to the Tigris, that extensive country was

left without a lawful sovereign since the death of Abousaid, the

last of the descendants of the great Holacou. Peace and justice

had been banished from the land above forty years; and the Mogul

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 Ibrahim, who was prepared for

the remark; and his flattery was rewarded by the smile of Timour.

14 Shah Mansour, 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 Timour: he stood

firm as a rock, and received on his helmet two weighty strokes of

a cimeter: 15 the Moguls rallied; the head of Mansour 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 Ormuz 16 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

Holacou 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 Turkmans 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 Teflis became his

proselyte and friend.

14 (return) [ The reverence of the Tartars for the mysterious

number of _nine_ is declared by Abulghazi Khan, who, for that

reason, divides his Genealogical History into nine parts.]

15 (return) [ According to Arabshah, (P. i. c. 28, p. 183,) the

coward Timour ran away to his tent, and hid himself from the

pursuit of Shah Mansour under the women’s garments. Perhaps

Sherefeddin (l. iii. c. 25) has magnified his courage.]

16 (return) [ The history of Ormuz is not unlike that of Tyre.

The old city, on the continent, was destroyed by the Tartars, and

renewed in a neighboring island, without fresh water or

vegetation. The kings of Ormuz, rich in the Indian trade and the

pearl fishery, possessed large territories both in Persia and

Arabia; but they were at first the tributaries of the sultans of

Kerman, and at last were delivered (A.D. 1505) by the Portuguese

tyrants from the tyranny of their own viziers, (Marco Polo, l. i.

c. 15, 16, fol. 7, 8. Abulfeda, Geograph. tabul. xi. p. 261, 262,

an original Chronicle of Ormuz, in Texeira, or Stevens’s History

of Persia, p. 376—416, and the Itineraries inserted in the ist

volume of Ramusio, of Ludovico Barthema, (1503,) fol. 167, of

Andrea Corsali, (1517) fol. 202, 203, and of Odoardo Barbessa,

(in 1516,) fol. 313—318.)]

II. A just retaliation might be urged for the invasion of

Turkestan, or the Eastern Tartary. The dignity of Timour could

not endure the impunity of the Getes: he passed the Sihoon,

subdued the kingdom of Kashgar, and marched seven times into the

heart of their country. His most distant camp was two months’

journey, or four hundred and eighty leagues to the north-east of

Samarcand; and his emirs, who traversed the River Irtish,

engraved in the forests of Siberia a rude memorial of their

exploits. The conquest of Kipzak, or the Western Tartary, 17 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 Mogul 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 Zingis. Through the gates of Derbend, he

entered Persia at the head of ninety thousand horse: with the

innumerable forces of Kipzak, Bulgaria, Circassia, and Russia, he

passed the Sihoon, burnt the palaces of Timour, and compelled

him, amidst the winter snows, to contend for Samarcand 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 Kipzak 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

Kipzak, 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. 18 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 Timour

into the tributary provinces of Russia: a duke of the reigning

family was made prisoner amidst the ruins of his capital; and

Yeletz, 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, and the resistance would

have been feeble, since the hopes of the Russians were placed in

a miraculous image of the Virgin, to whose protection they

ascribed the casual and voluntary retreat of the conqueror.

Ambition and prudence recalled him to the South, the desolate

country was exhausted, and the Mogul soldiers were enriched with

an immense spoil of precious furs, of linen of Antioch, 19 and of

ingots of gold and silver. 20 On the banks of the Don, or Tanais,

he received an humble deputation from the consuls and merchants

of Egypt, 21 Venice, Genoa, Catalonia, and Biscay, who occupied

the commerce and city of Tana, or Azoph, 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 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. 22 Revenge prompted him to

burn the cities of Serai and Astrachan, 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. 23

17 (return) [ Arabshah had travelled into Kipzak, and acquired a

singular knowledge of the geography, cities, and revolutions, of

that northern region, (P. i. c. 45—49.)]

18 (return) [ Institutions of Timour, p. 123, 125. Mr. White, the

editor, bestows some animadversion on the superficial account of

Sherefeddin, (l. iii. c. 12, 13, 14,) who was ignorant of the

designs of Timour, and the true springs of action.]

19 (return) [ The furs of Russia are more credible than the

ingots. But the linen of Antioch has never been famous: and

Antioch was in ruins. I suspect that it was some manufacture of

Europe, which the Hanse merchants had imported by the way of

Novogorod.]

20 (return) [ M. Levesque (Hist. de Russie, tom. ii. p. 247. Vie

de Timour, p. 64—67, before the French version of the Institutes)

has corrected the error of Sherefeddin, and marked the true limit

of Timour’s conquests. His arguments are superfluous; and a

simple appeal to the Russian annals is sufficient to prove that

Moscow, which six years before had been taken by Toctamish,

escaped the arms of a more formidable invader.]

21 (return) [ An Egyptian consul from Grand Cairo is mentioned in

Barbaro’s voyage to Tana in 1436, after the city had been

rebuilt, (Ramusio, tom. ii. fol. 92.)]

22 (return) [ The sack of Azoph is described by Sherefeddin, (l.

iii. c. 55,) and much more particularly by the author of an

Italian chronicle, (Andreas de Redusiis de Quero, in Chron.

Tarvisiano, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xix. p.

802—805.) He had conversed with the Mianis, two Venetian

brothers, one of whom had been sent a deputy to the camp of

Timour, and the other had lost at Azoph three sons and 12,000

ducats.]

23 (return) [ Sherefeddin only says (l. iii. c. 13) that the rays

of the setting, and those of the rising sun, were scarcely

separated by any interval; a problem which may be solved in the

latitude of Moscow, (the 56th degree,) with the aid of the Aurora

Borealis, and a long summer twilight. But a _day_ of forty days

(Khondemir apud D’Herbelot, p. 880) would rigorously confine us

within the polar circle.]

III. When Timour first proposed to his princes and emirs the

invasion of India or Hindostan, 24 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 Hindostan: the soubahs of the provinces had erected

the standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy of Sultan

Mahmoud was despised even in the harem of Delhi. The Mogul army

moved in three great divisions; and Timour 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. 241 Between the Jihoon 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. Timour crossed

the Indus at the ordinary passage of Attok; and successively

traversed, in the footsteps of Alexander, the _Punjab_, or five

rivers, 25 that fall into the master stream. From Attok to Delhi,

the high road measures no more than six hundred miles; but the

two conquerors deviated to the south-east; and the motive of

Timour was to join his grandson, who had achieved by his command

the conquest of Moultan. On the eastern bank of the Hyphasis, on

the edge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and wept: the

Mogul entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batmir, 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. 251 The siege, more especially of the

castle, might have been a work of time; but he tempted, by the

appearance of weakness, the sultan Mahmoud and his vizier to

descend into the plain, with ten thousand cuirassiers, forty

thousand of his foot-guards, and one hundred and twenty

elephants, whose tusks are said to have been armed with sharp and

poisoned daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the

imagination of his troops, he condescended to use some

extraordinary precautions of fire and a ditch, of iron spikes and

a rampart of bucklers; but the event taught the Moguls to smile

at their own fears; and as soon as these unwieldy animals were

routed, the inferior species (the men of India) disappeared from

the field. Timour made his triumphal entry into the capital of

Hindostan; and admired, with a view to imitate, the architecture

of the stately mosque; but the order or license of a general

pillage and massacre polluted the festival of his victory. He

resolved to purify his soldiers in the blood of the idolaters, or

Gentoos, who still surpass, in the proportion of ten to one, the

numbers of the Moslems. 252 In this pious design, he advanced one

hundred miles to the north-east of Delhi, passed the Ganges,

fought several battles by land and water, and penetrated to the

famous rock of Coupele, the statue of the cow, 253 that _seems_

to discharge the mighty river, whose source is far distant among

the mountains of Thibet. 26 His return was along the skirts of

the northern hills; nor could this rapid campaign of one year

justify the strange foresight of his emirs, that their children

in a warm climate would degenerate into a race of Hindoos.

24 (return) [ For the Indian war, see the Institutions, (p.

129—139,) the fourth book of Sherefeddin, and the history of

Ferishta, (in Dow, vol. ii. p. 1—20,) which throws a general

light on the affairs of Hindostan.]

241 (return) [ Gibbon (observes M. von Hammer) is mistaken in the

correspondence of the ninety-two squadrons of his army with the

ninety-two names of God: the names of God are ninety-nine. and

Allah is the hundredth, p. 286, note. But Gibbon speaks of the

names or epithets of Mahomet, not of God.—M.]

25 (return) [ The rivers of the Punjab, the five eastern branches

of the Indus, have been laid down for the first time with truth

and accuracy in Major Rennel’s incomparable map of Hindostan. In

this Critical Memoir he illustrates with judgment and learning

the marches of Alexander and Timour. * Note See vol. i. ch. ii.

note 1.—M.]

251 (return) [ They took, on their march, 100,000 slaves, Guebers

they were all murdered. V. Hammer, vol. i. p. 286. They are

called idolaters. Briggs’s Ferishta, vol. i. p. 491.—M.]

252 (return) [ See a curious passage on the destruction of the

Hindoo idols, Memoirs, p. 15.—M.]

253 (return) [ Consult the very striking description of the Cow’s

Mouth by Captain Hodgson, Asiat. Res. vol. xiv. p. 117. “A most

wonderful scene. The B’hagiratha or Ganges issues from under a

very low arch at the foot of the grand snow bed. My guide, an

illiterate mountaineer compared the pendent icicles to Mahodeva’s

hair.” (Compare Poems, Quarterly Rev. vol. xiv. p. 37, and at the

end of my translation of Nala.) “Hindoos of research may formerly

have been here; and if so, I cannot think of any place to which

they might more aptly give the name of a cow’s mouth than to this

extraordinary debouche.”—M.]

26 (return) [ The two great rivers, the Ganges and Burrampooter,

rise in Thibet, from the opposite ridges of the same hills,

separate from each other to the distance of 1200 miles, and,

after a winding course of 2000 miles, again meet in one point

near the Gulf of Bengal. Yet so capricious is Fame, that the

Burrampooter is a late discovery, while his brother Ganges has

been the theme of ancient and modern story Coupele, the scene of

Timour’s last victory, must be situate near Loldong, 1100 miles

from Calcutta; and in 1774, a British camp! (Rennel’s Memoir, p.

7, 59, 90, 91, 99.)]

It was on the banks of the Ganges that Timour was informed, by

his speedy messengers, of the disturbances which had arisen on

the confines of Georgia and Anatolia, of the revolt of the

Christians, and the ambitious designs of the sultan Bajazet. His

vigor of mind and body was not impaired by sixty-three years, and

innumerable fatigues; and, after enjoying some tranquil months in

the palace of Samarcand, he proclaimed a new expedition of seven

years into the western countries of Asia. 27 To the soldiers who

had served in the Indian war he granted the choice of remaining

at home, or following their prince; but the troops of all the

provinces and kingdoms of Persia were commanded to assemble at

Ispahan, and wait the arrival of the Imperial standard. It was

first directed against the Christians of Georgia, who were strong

only in their rocks, their castles, and the winter season; but

these obstacles were overcome by the zeal and perseverance of

Timour: the rebels submitted to the tribute or the Koran; and if

both religions boasted of their martyrs, that name is more justly

due to the Christian prisoners, who were offered the choice of

abjuration or death. On his descent from the hills, the emperor

gave audience to the first ambassadors of Bajazet, and opened the

hostile correspondence of complaints and menaces, which fermented

two years before the final explosion. Between two jealous and

haughty neighbors, the motives of quarrel will seldom be wanting.

The Mogul and Ottoman conquests now touched each other in the

neighborhood of Erzeroum, and the Euphrates; nor had the doubtful

limit been ascertained by time and treaty. Each of these

ambitious monarchs might accuse his rival of violating his

territory, of threatening his vassals, and protecting his rebels;

and, by the name of rebels, each understood the fugitive princes,

whose kingdoms he had usurped, and whose life or liberty he

implacably pursued. The resemblance of character was still more

dangerous than the opposition of interest; and in their

victorious career, Timour was impatient of an equal, and Bajazet

was ignorant of a superior. The first epistle 28 of the Mogul

emperor must have provoked, instead of reconciling, the Turkish

sultan, whose family and nation he affected to despise. 29 “Dost

thou not know, that the greatest part of Asia is subject to our

arms and our laws? that our invincible forces extend from one sea

to the other? that the potentates of the earth form a line before

our gate? and that we have compelled Fortune herself to watch

over the prosperity of our empire. What is the foundation of thy

insolence and folly? Thou hast fought some battles in the woods

of Anatolia; contemptible trophies! Thou hast obtained some

victories over the Christians of Europe; thy sword was blessed by

the apostle of God; and thy obedience to the precept of the

Koran, in waging war against the infidels, is the sole

consideration that prevents us from destroying thy country, the

frontier and bulwark of the Moslem world. Be wise in time;

reflect; repent; and avert the thunder of our vengeance, which is

yet suspended over thy head. Thou art no more than a pismire; why

wilt thou seek to provoke the elephants? Alas! they will trample

thee under their feet.” In his replies, Bajazet poured forth the

indignation of a soul which was deeply stung by such unusual

contempt. After retorting the basest reproaches on the thief and

rebel of the desert, the Ottoman recapitulates his boasted

victories in Iran, Touran, and the Indies; and labors to prove,

that Timour had never triumphed unless by his own perfidy and the

vices of his foes. “Thy armies are innumerable: be they so; but

what are the arrows of the flying Tartar against the cimeters and

battle-axes of my firm and invincible Janizaries? I will guard

the princes who have implored my protection: seek them in my

tents. The cities of Arzingan and Erzeroum are mine; and unless

the tribute be duly paid, I will demand the arrears under the

walls of Tauris and Sultania.” The ungovernable rage of the

sultan at length betrayed him to an insult of a more domestic

kind. “If I fly from thy arms,” said he, “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.” 30 Any violation

by word or deed of the secrecy of the harem is an unpardonable

offence among the Turkish nations; 31 and the political quarrel

of the two monarchs was imbittered by private and personal

resentment. Yet in his first expedition, Timour was satisfied

with the siege and destruction of Siwas or Sebaste, a strong city

on the borders of Anatolia; and he revenged the indiscretion of

the Ottoman, on a garrison of four thousand Armenians, who were

buried alive for the brave and faithful discharge of their duty.

311 As a Mussulman, he seemed to respect the pious occupation of

Bajazet, who was still engaged in the blockade of Constantinople;

and after this salutary lesson, the Mogul conqueror checked his

pursuit, and turned aside to the invasion of Syria and Egypt. In

these transactions, the Ottoman prince, by the Orientals, and

even by Timour, is styled the _Kaissar of Roum_, the Cæsar of the

Romans; a title which, by a small anticipation, might be given to

a monarch who possessed the provinces, and threatened the city,

of the successors of Constantine. 32

27 (return) [ See the Institutions, p. 141, to the end of the 1st

book, and Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 1—16,) to the entrance of Timour

into Syria.]

28 (return) [ We have three copies of these hostile epistles in

the Institutions, (p. 147,) in Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 14,) and in

Arabshah, (tom. ii. c. 19 p. 183—201;) which agree with each

other in the spirit and substance rather than in the style. It is

probable, that they have been translated, with various latitude,

from the Turkish original into the Arabic and Persian tongues. *

Note: Von Hammer considers the letter which Gibbon inserted in

the text to be spurious. On the various copies of these letters,

see his note, p 116.—M.]

29 (return) [ The Mogul emir distinguishes himself and his

countrymen by the name of _Turks_, and stigmatizes the race and

nation of Bajazet with the less honorable epithet of _Turkmans_.

Yet I do not understand how the Ottomans could be descended from

a Turkman sailor; those inland shepherds were so remote from the

sea, and all maritime affairs. * Note: Price translated the word

pilot or boatman.—M.]

30 (return) [ According to the Koran, (c. ii. p. 27, and Sale’s

Discourses, p. 134,) Mussulman who had thrice divorced his wife,

(who had thrice repeated the words of a divorce,) could not take

her again, till after she had been married _to_, and repudiated

_by_, another husband; an ignominious transaction, which it is

needless to aggravate, by supposing that the first husband must

see her enjoyed by a second before his face, (Rycaut’s State of

the Ottoman Empire, l. ii. c. 21.)]

31 (return) [ The common delicacy of the Orientals, in never

speaking of their women, is ascribed in a much higher degree by

Arabshah to the Turkish nations; and it is remarkable enough,

that Chalcondyles (l. ii. p. 55) had some knowledge of the

prejudice and the insult. * Note: See Von Hammer, p. 308, and

note, p. 621.—M.]

311 (return) [ Still worse barbarities were perpetrated on these

brave men. Von Hammer, vol. i. p. 295.—M.]

32 (return) [ For the style of the Moguls, see the Institutions,

(p. 131, 147,) and for the Persians, the Bibliothèque Orientale,

(p. 882;) but I do not find that the title of Cæsar has been

applied by the Arabians, or assumed by the Ottomans themselves.]

Chapter LXV: Elevation Of Timour Or Tamerlane, And His

Death.—Part II.

The military republic of the Mamalukes still reigned in Egypt and

Syria: but the dynasty of the Turks was overthrown by that of the

Circassians; 33 and their favorite Barkok, from a slave and a

prisoner, was raised and restored to the throne. In the midst of

rebellion and discord, he braved the menaces, corresponded with

the enemies, and detained the ambassadors, of the Mogul, who

patiently expected his decease, to revenge the crimes of the

father on the feeble reign of his son Farage. The Syrian emirs 34

were assembled at Aleppo to repel the invasion: they confided in

the fame and discipline of the Mamalukes, in the temper of their

swords and lances of the purest steel of Damascus, in the

strength of their walled cities, and in the populousness of sixty

thousand villages; and instead of sustaining a siege, they threw

open their gates, and arrayed their forces in the plain. But

these forces were not cemented by virtue and union; and some

powerful emirs had been seduced to desert or betray their more

loyal companions. Timour’s front was covered with a line of

Indian elephants, whose turrets were filled with archers and

Greek fire: the rapid evolutions of his cavalry completed the

dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on each other:

many thousands were stifled or slaughtered in the entrance of the

great street; the Moguls entered with the fugitives; and after a

short defence, the citadel, the impregnable citadel of Aleppo,

was surrendered by cowardice or treachery. Among the suppliants

and captives, Timour distinguished the doctors of the law, whom

he invited to the dangerous honor of a personal conference. 35

The Mogul prince was a zealous Mussulman; but his Persian schools

had taught him to revere the memory of Ali and Hosein; and he had

imbibed a deep prejudice against the Syrians, as the enemies of

the son of the daughter of the apostle of God. To these doctors

he proposed a captious question, which the casuists of Bochara,

Samarcand, and Herat, were incapable of resolving. “Who are the

true martyrs, of those who are slain on my side, or on that of my

enemies?” But he was silenced, or satisfied, by the dexterity of

one of the cadhis of Aleppo, who replied in the words of Mahomet

himself, that the motive, not the ensign, constitutes the martyr;

and that the Moslems of either party, who fight only for the

glory of God, may deserve that sacred appellation. The true

succession of the caliphs was a controversy of a still more

delicate nature; and the frankness of a doctor, too honest for

his situation, provoked the emperor to exclaim, “Ye are as false

as those of Damascus: Moawiyah was a usurper, Yezid a tyrant, and

Ali alone is the lawful successor of the prophet.” A prudent

explanation restored his tranquillity; and he passed to a more

familiar topic of conversation. “What is your age?” said he to

the cadhi. “Fifty years.”—“It would be the age of my eldest son:

you see me here (continued Timour) a poor lame, decrepit mortal.

Yet by my arm has the Almighty been pleased to subdue the

kingdoms of Iran, Touran, and the Indies. I am not a man of

blood; and God is my witness, that in all my wars I have never

been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the

authors of their own calamity.” During this peaceful conversation

the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood, and reechoed with the

cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks of violated

virgins. The rich plunder that was abandoned to his soldiers

might stimulate their avarice; but their cruelty was enforced by

the peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads,

which, according to his custom, were curiously piled in columns

and pyramids: the Moguls celebrated the feast of victory, while

the surviving Moslems passed the night in tears and in chains. I

shall not dwell on the march of the destroyer from Aleppo to

Damascus, where he was rudely encountered, and almost overthrown,

by the armies of Egypt. A retrograde motion was imputed to his

distress and despair: one of his nephews deserted to the enemy;

and Syria rejoiced in the tale of his defeat, when the sultan was

driven by the revolt of the Mamalukes to escape with

precipitation and shame to his palace of Cairo. Abandoned by

their prince, the inhabitants of Damascus still defended their

walls; and Timour consented to raise the siege, if they would

adorn his retreat with a gift or ransom; each article of nine

pieces. But no sooner had he introduced himself into the city,

under color of a truce, than he perfidiously violated the treaty;

imposed a contribution of ten millions of gold; and animated his

troops to chastise the posterity of those Syrians who had

executed, or approved, the murder of the grandson of Mahomet. A

family which had given honorable burial to the head of Hosein,

and a colony of artificers, whom he sent to labor at Samarcand,

were alone reserved in the general massacre, and after a period

of seven centuries, Damascus was reduced to ashes, because a

Tartar was moved by religious zeal to avenge the blood of an

Arab. The losses and fatigues of the campaign obliged Timour to

renounce the conquest of Palestine and Egypt; but in his return

to the Euphrates he delivered Aleppo to the flames; and justified

his pious motive by the pardon and reward of two thousand

sectaries of Ali, who were desirous to visit the tomb of his son.

I have expatiated on the personal anecdotes which mark the

character of the Mogul hero; but I shall briefly mention, 36 that

he erected on the ruins of Bagdad a pyramid of ninety thousand

heads; again visited Georgia; encamped on the banks of Araxes;

and proclaimed his resolution of marching against the Ottoman

emperor. Conscious of the importance of the war, he collected his

forces from every province: eight hundred thousand men were

enrolled on his military list; 37 but the splendid commands of

five, and ten, thousand horse, may be rather expressive of the

rank and pension of the chiefs, than of the genuine number of

effective soldiers. 38 In the pillage of Syria, the Moguls had

acquired immense riches: but the delivery of their pay and

arrears for seven years more firmly attached them to the Imperial

standard.

33 (return) [ See the reigns of Barkok and Pharadge, in M. De

Guignes, (tom. iv. l. xxii.,) who, from the Arabic texts of

Aboulmahasen, Ebn (Schounah, and Aintabi, has added some facts to

our common stock of materials.)]

34 (return) [ For these recent and domestic transactions,

Arabshah, though a partial, is a credible, witness, (tom. i. c.

64—68, tom. ii. c. 1—14.) Timour must have been odious to a

Syrian; but the notoriety of facts would have obliged him, in

some measure, to respect his enemy and himself. His bitters may

correct the luscious sweets of Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 17—29.)]

35 (return) [ These interesting conversations appear to have been

copied by Arabshah (tom. i. c. 68, p. 625—645) from the cadhi and

historian Ebn Schounah, a principal actor. Yet how could he be

alive seventy-five years afterwards? (D’Herbelot, p. 792.)]

36 (return) [ The marches and occupations of Timour between the

Syrian and Ottoman wars are represented by Sherefeddin (l. v. c.

29—43) and Arabshah, (tom. ii. c. 15—18.)]

37 (return) [ This number of 800,000 was extracted by Arabshah,

or rather by Ebn Schounah, ex rationario Timuri, on the faith of

a Carizmian officer, (tom. i. c. 68, p. 617;) and it is

remarkable enough, that a Greek historian (Phranza, l. i. c. 29)

adds no more than 20,000 men. Poggius reckons 1,000,000; another

Latin contemporary (Chron. Tarvisianum, apud Muratori, tom. xix.

p. 800) 1,100,000; and the enormous sum of 1,600,000 is attested

by a German soldier, who was present at the battle of Angora,

(Leunclav. ad Chalcondyl. l. iii. p. 82.) Timour, in his

Institutions, has not deigned to calculate his troops, his

subjects, or his revenues.]

38 (return) [ A wide latitude of non-effectives was allowed by

the Great Mogul for his own pride and the benefit of his

officers. Bernier’s patron was Penge-Hazari, commander of 5000

horse; of which he maintained no more than 500, (Voyages, tom. i.

p. 288, 289.)]

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) · 第 73 / 79 章

The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of savage hostility: a