The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of savage hostility: a 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.]
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 Fnote, 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.]