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, Fnote, 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.]
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 Gnotes.]
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.