Conquests of Zingis Khan and the Moguls from China to Poland. Escape of Constantinople and the Greeks. Origin of the Ottoman Turks in Bithynia. Reigns and Victories of Othman, Orchan, Amurath the First, and Bajazet the First. Foundation and Progress of the Turkish Monarchy in Asia and Europe. Danger of Constantinople and the Greek Empire.
From the petty quarrels of a city and her suburbs, from the cowardice and discord of the falling Greeks, I shall now ascend to the victorious Turks; whose domestic slavery was ennobled by martial discipline, religious enthusiasm, and the energy of the national character. The rise and progress of the Ottomans, the present sovereigns of Constantinople, are connected with the most important scenes of modern history; but they are founded on a previous knowledge of the great eruption of the Moguls and Tartars; whose rapid conquests may be compared with the primitive convulsions of nature, which have agitated and altered the surface of the globe. I have long since asserted my claim to introduce the nations, the immediate or remote authors of the fall of the Roman empire; nor can I refuse myself to those events, which, from their uncommon magnitude, will interest a philosophic mind in the history of blood. (1)
Zingis Khan, first emperor of the Moguls and Tartars, A.D. 1206-1227.
From the spacious highlands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea, the tide of emigration and war has repeatedly been poured. These ancient seats of the Huns and Turks were occupied in the twelfth century by many pastoral tribes, of the same descent and similar manners, which were united and led to conquest by the formidable Zingis. In his ascent to greatness, that Barbarian (whose private appellation was Temugin) had trampled on the necks of his equals. His birth was noble; but it was the pride of victory, that the prince
or people deduced his seventh ancestor from the immaculate
conception of a virgin. His father had reigned over
thirteen hordes, which composed about thirty or forty
thousand families: above two thirds refused to pay tithes or
obedience to his infant son; and at the age of thirteen,
Temugin fought a battle against his rebellious subjects.
The future conqueror of Asia was reduced to fly and to obey;
but he rose superior to his fortune, and in his fortieth
year he had established his fame and dominion over the
circumjacent tribes. In a state of society, in which policy
is rude and valour is universal, the ascendant of one man
must be founded on his power and resolution to punish his
enemies and recompense his friends. His first military
league was ratified by the simple rites of sacrificing a
horse and tasting of a running stream: Temugin pledged
himself to divide with his followers the sweets and the
bitters of life; and when he had shared among them his
horses and apparel, he was rich in their gratitude and his
own hopes. After his first victory, he placed seventy
cauldrons on the fire, and seventy of the most guilty rebels
were cast headlong into the boiling water. The sphere of his
attraction was continually enlarged by the ruin of the proud
and the submission of the prudent; and the boldest
chieftains might tremble, when they beheld, enchased in
silver, the skull of the khan of Keraites; (2) who, under the
name of Prester John, had corresponded with the Roman
pontiff and the princes of Europe. The ambition of Temugin
condescended to employ the arts of superstition; and it was
from a naked prophet, who could ascend to heaven on a white
horse, that he accepted the title of Zingis, (3) the most great; and a divine right to the conquest and dominion of the earth. In a general couroultai, or diet, he was seated on a felt, which was long afterwards revered as a relic, and solemnly proclaimed great khan, or emperor of the Moguls (4) and Tartars. (5) Of these kindred, though rival, names, the former had given birth to the imperial race; and the latter has been extended by accident or error over the spacious wilderness of the north.
His laws.
The code of laws which Zingis dictated to his subjects was
adapted to the preservation of a domestic peace, and the
exercise of foreign hostility. The punishment of death was
inflicted on the crimes of adultery, murder, perjury, and
the capital thefts of a horse or ox; and the fiercest of men
were mild and just in their intercourse with each other.
The future election of the great khan was vested in the
princes of his family and the heads of the tribes; and the
regulations of the chase were essential to the pleasures and
plenty of a Tartar camp. The victorious nation was held
sacred from all servile labours, which were abandoned to
slaves and strangers; and every labor was servile except the
profession of arms. The service and discipline of the
troops, who were armed with bows, cimeters, and iron maces,
and divided by hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands, were
the institutions of a veteran commander. Each officer and
soldier was made responsible, under pain of death, for the
safety and honour of his companions; and the spirit of
conquest breathed in the law, that peace should never be
granted unless to a vanquished and suppliant enemy. But it
is the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and
applause. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by
the example of a Barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of
philosophy, (6) and established by his laws a system of pure
theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article
of faith was the existence of one God, the Author of all
good; who fills by his presence the heavens and earth, which
he has created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were
addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and many of
them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the
religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These
various systems in freedom and concord were taught and
practised within the precincts of the same camp; and the
Bonze, the Imam, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin
priest, enjoyed the same honourable exemption from service
and tribute: in the mosque of Bochara, the insolent victor
might trample the Koran under his horse's feet, but the calm
legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most
hostile sects. The reason of Zingis was not informed by
books: the khan could neither read nor write; and, except
the tribe of the Igours, the greatest part of the Moguls and
Tartars were as illiterate as their sovereign. The memory
of their exploits was preserved by tradition: sixty- eight
years after the death of Zingis, these traditions were
collected and transcribed; (7) the brevity of their domestic
annals may be supplied by the Chinese, (8) Persians, (9)
Armenians, (10) Syrians, (11) Arabians, (12) Greeks, (13)
Russians, (14) Poles, (15) Hungarians, (16) and Latins; (17) and
each nation will deserve credit in the relation of their own
disasters and defeats. (18)
His invasion of China, A.D. 1210-1214.
The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced
the hordes of the desert, who pitched their tents between
the wall of China and the Volga; and the Mogul emperor
became the monarch of the pastoral world, the lord of many
millions of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their united
strength, and were impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy
climates of the south. His ancestors had been the
tributaries of the Chinese emperors; and Temugin himself had
been disgraced by a title of honour and servitude. The court
of Pekin was astonished by an embassy from its former
vassal, who, in the tone of the king of nations, exacted the
tribute and obedience which he had paid, and who affected to
treat the son of heaven as the most contemptible of mankind.
A haughty answer disguised their secret apprehensions; and
their fears were soon justified by the march of innumerable
squadrons, who pierced on all sides the feeble rampart of
the great wall. Ninety cities were stormed, or starved, by
the Moguls; ten only escaped; and Zingis, from a knowledge
of the filial piety of the Chinese, covered his vanguard
with their captive parents; an unworthy, and by degrees a
fruitless, abuse of the virtue of his enemies. His invasion
was supported by the revolt of a hundred thousand Khitans,
who guarded the frontier: yet he listened to a treaty; and a
princess of China, three thousand horses, five hundred
youths, and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and silk,
were the price of his retreat. In his second expedition, he
compelled the Chinese emperor to retire beyond the yellow
river to a more southern residence. The siege of Pekin (19)
was long and laborious: the inhabitants were reduced by
famine to decimate and devour their fellow-citizens; when
their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of gold
and silver from their engines; but the Moguls introduced a
mine to the centre of the capital; and the conflagration of
the palace burnt above thirty days. China was desolated by
Tartar war and domestic faction; and the five northern
provinces were added to the empire of Zingis.
of Carizme, Transoxiana, and Persia, A.D. 1218-1224.
In the West, he touched the dominions of Mohammed, sultan of
Carizime, who reigned from the Persian Gulf to the borders
of India and Turkestan; and who, in the proud imitation of
Alexander the Great, forgot the servitude and ingratitude of
his fathers to the house of Seljuk. It was the wish of
Zingis to establish a friendly and commercial intercourse
with the most powerful of the Moslem princes: nor could he
be tempted by the secret solicitations of the caliph of
Bagdad, who sacrificed to his personal wrongs the safety of
the church and state. A rash and inhuman deed provoked and
justified the Tartar arms in the invasion of the southern
Asia. A caravan of three ambassadors and one hundred and
fifty merchants were arrested and murdered at Otrar, by the
command of Mohammed; nor was it till after a demand and
denial of justice, till he had prayed and fasted three
nights on a mountain, that the Mogul emperor appealed to the
judgment of God and his sword. Our European battles, says a
philosophic writer, (20) are petty skirmishes, if compared to
the numbers that have fought and fallen in the fields of
Asia. Seven hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to
have marched under the standard of Zingis and his four sons.
In the vast plains that extend to the north of the Sihon or
Jaxartes, they were encountered by four hundred thousand
soldiers of the sultan; and in the first battle, which was
suspended by the night, one hundred and sixty thousand
Carizmians were slain. Mohammed was astonished by the
multitude and valour of his enemies: he withdrew from the
scene of danger, and distributed his troops in the frontier
towns; trusting that the Barbarians, invincible in the
field, would be repulsed by the length and difficulty of so
many regular sieges. But the prudence of Zingis had formed
a body of Chinese engineers, skilled in the mechanic arts;
informed perhaps of the secret of gunpowder, and capable,
under his discipline, of attacking a foreign country with
more vigour and success than they had defended their own. The
Persian historians will relate the sieges and reduction of
Otrar, Cogende, Bochara, Samarcand, Carizme, Herat, Merou,
Nisabour, Balch, and Candahar; and the conquest of the rich
and populous countries of Transoxiana, Carizme, and
Chorazan. The destructive hostilities of Attila and the Huns
have long since been elucidated by the example of Zingis and
the Moguls; and in this more proper place I shall be content
to observe, that, from the Caspian to the Indus, they ruined
a tract of many hundred miles, which was adorned with the
habitations and labours of mankind, and that five centuries
have not been sufficient to repair the ravages of four
years. The Mogul emperor encouraged or indulged the fury of
his troops: the hope of future possession was lost in the
ardour of rapine and slaughter; and the cause of the war
exasperated their native fierceness by the pretence of
justice and revenge. The downfall and death of the sultan
Mohammed, who expired, unpitied and alone, in a desert
island of the Caspian Sea, is a poor atonement for the
calamities of which he was the author. Could the Carizmian
empire have been saved by a single hero, it would have been
saved by his son Gelaleddin, whose active valour repeatedly
checked the Moguls in the career of victory. Retreating, as
he fought, to the banks of the Indus, he was oppressed by
their innumerable host, till, in the last moment of despair,
Gelaleddin spurred his horse into the waves, swam one of the
broadest and most rapid rivers of Asia, and extorted the
admiration and applause of Zingis himself. It was in this
camp that the Mogul conqueror yielded with reluctance to the
murmurs of his weary and wealthy troops, who sighed for the
enjoyment of their native land. Eucumbered with the spoils
of Asia, he slowly measured back his footsteps, betrayed
some pity for the misery of the vanquished, and declared his
intention of rebuilding the cities which had been swept away
by the tempest of his arms. After he had repassed the Oxus
and Jaxartes, he was joined by two generals, whom he had
detached with thirty thousand horse, to subdue the western
provinces of Persia. They had trampled on the nations which
opposed their passage, penetrated through the gates of
Derbent, traversed the Volga and the desert, and
accomplished the circuit of the Caspian Sea, by an
expedition which had never been attempted, and has never
been repeated. His death, A.D. 1227. The return of Zingis was signalized by the overthrow of the rebellious or independent kingdoms of Tartary; and he died in the fulness of years and glory, with
his last breath exhorting and instructing his sons to
achieve the conquest of the Chinese empire.
Conquests of the Moguls under the successors of Zingis, A.D. 1227-1295.
The harem of Zingis was composed of five hundred wives and
concubines; and of his numerous progeny, four sons,
illustrious by their birth and merit, exercised under their
father the principal offices of peace and war. Toushi was
his great huntsman, Zagatai (21) his judge, Octai his minister, and Tuli his general; and their names and actions are often conspicuous in the history of his conquests.
Firmly united for their own and the public interest, the
three brothers and their families were content with
dependent sceptres; and Octai, by general consent, was
proclaimed great khan, or emperor of the Moguls and Tartars.
He was succeeded by his son Gayuk, after whose death the
empire devolved to his cousins Mangou and Cublai, the sons
of Tuli, and the grandsons of Zingis. In the sixty-eight
years of his four first successors, the Mogul subdued almost
all Asia, and a large portion of Europe. Without confining
myself to the order of time, without expatiating on the
detail of events, I shall present a general picture of the
progress of their arms; I. In the East; II. In the South;
III. In the West; and IV. In the North.
Of the northern empire of China, A.D. 1234.
I. Before the invasion of Zingis, China was divided into
two empires or dynasties of the North and South; (22) and the
difference of origin and interest was smoothed by a general
conformity of laws, language, and national manners. The
Northern empire, which had been dismembered by Zingis, was
finally subdued seven years after his death. After the loss
of Pekin, the emperor had fixed his residence at Kaifong, a
city many leagues in circumference, and which contained,
according to the Chinese annals, fourteen hundred thousand
families of inhabitants and fugitives. He escaped from
thence with only seven horsemen, and made his last stand in
a third capital, till at length the hopeless monarch,
protesting his innocence and accusing his fortune, ascended
a funeral pile, and gave orders, that, as soon as he had
stabbed himself, the fire should be kindled by his
attendants. The dynasty of the Song, the native and ancient
sovereigns of the whole empire, survived about forty-five
years the fall of the Northern usurpers; and the perfect
conquest was reserved for the arms of Cublai. During this
interval, the Moguls were often diverted by foreign wars;
and, if the Chinese seldom dared to meet their victors in
the field, their passive courage presented and endless
succession of cities to storm and of millions to slaughter.
In the attack and defence of places, the engines of
antiquity and the Greek fire were alternately employed: the
use of gunpowder in cannon and bombs appears as a familiar
practice; (23) and the sieges were conducted by the
Mahometans and Franks, who had been liberally invited into
the service of Cublai. After passing the great river, the
troops and artillery were conveyed along a series of canals,
till they invested the royal residence of Hamcheu, or
Quinsay, in the country of silk, the most delicious climate
of China. The emperor, a defenceless youth, surrendered his
person and sceptre; and before he was sent in exile into
Tartary, he struck nine times the ground with his forehead,
to adore in prayer or thanksgiving the mercy of the great
khan. Of the southern, A.D. 1279. Yet the war (it was now styled a rebellion) was still maintained in the southern provinces from Hamcheu to Canton;
and the obstinate remnant of independence and hostility was
transported from the land to the sea. But when the fleet of
the Song was surrounded and oppressed by a superior
armament, their last champion leaped into the waves with his
infant emperor in his arms.
"It is more glorious," he cried, "to die a prince, than to live a slave."
A hundred thousand Chinese imitated his example; and the whole empire, from Tonkin to the great wall, submitted to the dominion of Cublai. His boundless ambition aspired to the conquest of Japan: his fleet was twice shipwrecked; and the lives of a hundred thousand Moguls and Chinese were sacrificed in the fruitless expedition. But the circumjacent kingdoms, Corea, Tonkin, Cochinchina, Pegu, Bengal, and Thibet, were reduced in different degrees of tribute and obedience by the effort or terror of his arms. He explored the Indian Ocean with a fleet of a thousand ships: they sailed in sixty-eight days, most probably to the Isle of Borneo, under the equinoctial line; and though they returned not without spoil or glory, the emperor was dissatisfied that the savage king had escaped from their hands.
Of Persia and the empire of the Caliphs, A.D. 1258.
II. The conquest of Hindostan by the Moguls was reserved in
a later period for the house of Timour; but that of Iran, or
Persia, was achieved by Holagou Khan, the grandson of
Zingis, the brother and lieutenant of the two successive
emperors, Mangou and Cublai. I shall not enumerate the
crowd of sultans, emirs, and atabeks, whom he trampled into
dust; but the extirpation of the Assassins, or Ismaelians
(24) of Persia, may be considered as a service to mankind.
Among the hills to the south of the Caspian, these odious
sectaries had reigned with impunity above a hundred and
sixty years; and their prince, or Imam, established his
lieutenant to lead and govern the colony of Mount Libanus,
so famous and formidable in the history of the crusades. (25)
With the fanaticism of the Koran the Ismaelians had blended
the Indian transmigration, and the visions of their own
prophets; and it was their first duty to devote their souls
and bodies in blind obedience to the vicar of God. The
daggers of his missionaries were felt both in the East and
West: the Christians and the Moslems enumerate, and persons
multiply, the illustrious victims that were sacrificed to
the zeal, avarice, or resentment of the old man (as he was
corruptly styled) of the mountain. But these daggers, his
only arms, were broken by the sword of Holagou, and not a
vestige is left of the enemies of mankind, except the word
assassin, which, in the most odious sense, has been adopted
in the languages of Europe. The extinction of the
Abbassides cannot be indifferent to the spectators of their
greatness and decline. Since the fall of their Seljukian
tyrants the caliphs had recovered their lawful dominion of
Bagdad and the Arabian Irak; but the city was distracted by
theological factions, and the commander of the faithful was
lost in a harem of seven hundred concubines. The invasion of
the Moguls he encountered with feeble arms and haughty
embassies.
"On the divine decree," said the caliph Mostasem, "is founded the throne of the sons of Abbas: and their foes shall surely be destroyed in this world and in the next. Who is this Holagou that dares to rise against them? If he be desirous of peace, let him instantly depart from the sacred territory; and perhaps he may obtain from our clemency the pardon of his fault."
This presumption was cherished by a perfidious vizier, who assured his master, that, even if the Barbarians had entered the city, the women and children, from the terraces, would be sufficient to overwhelm them with stones. But when Holagou touched the phantom, it instantly vanished into smoke. After a siege of two months, Bagdad was stormed and sacked by the Moguls; and their savage commander pronounced the death of the caliph Mostasem, the last of the temporal successors of Mahomet; whose noble kinsmen, of the race of Abbas, had reigned in Asia above five hundred years. Whatever might be the designs of the conqueror, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina (26) were protected by the Arabian desert; but the Moguls spread beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, pillaged Aleppo and Damascus, and threatened to join the Franks in the deliverance of Jerusalem. Egypt was lost, had she been defended only by her feeble offspring; but the Mamalukes had breathed in their infancy the keenness of a Scythian air: equal in valour, superior in discipline, they met the Moguls in many a well-fought field; and drove back the stream of hostility to the eastward of the Euphrates. Of Anatolia, A.D. 1242-1272. But it overflowed with resistless violence the kingdoms of Armenia and Anatolia, of which the former was possessed by the Christians, and the latter by the Turks. The sultans of Iconium opposed some resistance to the Mogul arms, till Azzadin sought a refuge among the Greeks of Constantinople, and his feeble successors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty, were finally extirpated by the khans of Persia.
Of Kipzak, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Etc, A.D. 1235-1245.
III. No sooner had Octai subverted the northern empire of
China, than he resolved to visit with his arms the most
remote countries of the West. Fifteen hundred thousand
Moguls and Tartars were inscribed on the military roll: of
these the great khan selected a third, which he intrusted to
the command of his nephew Batou, the son of Tuli; who
reigned over his father's conquests to the north of the
Caspian Sea. After a festival of forty days, Batou set
forwards on this great expedition; and such was the speed
and ardour of his innumerable squadrons, than in less than
six years they had measured a line of ninety degrees of
longitude, a fourth part of the circumference of the globe.
The great rivers of Asia and Europe, the Volga and Kama, the
Don and Borysthenes, the Vistula and Danube, they either
swam with their horses or passed on the ice, or traversed in
leathern boats, which followed the camp, and transported
their wagons and artillery. By the first victories of Batou,
the remains of national freedom were eradicated in the
immense plains of Turkestan and Kipzak. (27) In his rapid
progress, he overran the kingdoms, as they are now styled,
of Astracan and Cazan; and the troops which he detached
towards Mount Caucasus explored the most secret recesses of
Georgia and Circassia. The civil discord of the great
dukes, or princes, of Russia, betrayed their country to the
Tartars. They spread from Livonia to the Black Sea, and
both Moscow and Kiow, the modern and the ancient capitals,
were reduced to ashes; a temporary ruin, less fatal than the
deep, and perhaps indelible, mark, which a servitude of two
hundred years has imprinted on the character of the
Russians. The Tartars ravaged with equal fury the countries
which they hoped to possess, and those which they were
hastening to leave. From the permanent conquest of Russia
they made a deadly, though transient, inroad into the heart
of Poland, and as far as the borders of Germany. The cities
of Lublin and Cracow were obliterated: they approached the
shores of the Baltic; and in the battle of Lignitz they
defeated the dukes of Silesia, the Polish palatines, and the
great master of the Teutonic order, and filled nine sacks
with the right ears of the slain. From Lignitz, the extreme
point of their western march, they turned aside to the
invasion of Hungary; and the presence or spirit of Batou
inspired the host of five hundred thousand men: the
Carpathian hills could not be long impervious to their
divided columns; and their approach had been fondly
disbelieved till it was irresistibly felt. The king, Bela
the Fourth, assembled the military force of his counts and
bishops; but he had alienated the nation by adopting a
vagrant horde of forty thousand families of Comans, and
these savage guests were provoked to revolt by the suspicion
of treachery and the murder of their prince. The whole
country north of the Danube was lost in a day, and
depopulated in a summer; and the ruins of cities and
churches were overspread with the bones of the natives, who
expiated the sins of their Turkish ancestors. An
ecclesiastic, who fled from the sack of Waradin, describes
the calamities which he had seen, or suffered; and the
sanguinary rage of sieges and battles is far less atrocious
than the treatment of the fugitives, who had been allured
from the woods under a promise of peace and pardon and who
were coolly slaughtered as soon as they had performed the
labours of the harvest and vintage. In the winter the
Tartars passed the Danube on the ice, and advanced to Gran
or Strigonium, a German colony, and the metropolis of the
kingdom. Thirty engines were planted against the walls; the
ditches were filled with sacks of earth and dead bodies; and
after a promiscuous massacre, three hundred noble matrons
were slain in the presence of the khan. Of all the cities
and fortresses of Hungary, three alone survived the Tartar
invasion, and the unfortunate Bata hid his head among the
islands of the Adriatic.
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 valour 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.
Of Siberia, A.D. 1242, etc.
IV. Even the poor and frozen regions of the North attracted AD. 1242, etc. the arms of the Moguls: Sheibam Khan, the brother of the great Batou, led an hord of fifteen thousand families into the wilds of Siberia; and his descendants reigned at Toboiskoy 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 neighbourhood of the polar circle, who dwelt in subterraneous huts, and derived their firs and their food from the sole occupation of hunting. (30)
The successors of Zingis, A.D. 1227-1259.
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. adopt the manners of China, A.D. 1259-1368. 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. 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. 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. Division of the Mogul empire, A.D. 1259-1300. 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.
Escape of Constantinople and the Greek empire from the Moguls, A.D. 1240-1304.
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 Caesars. 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 Palaeologus, (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 Palaeologus; 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; Decline of the Mogul khans of Persia, A.D. 1304, May 31. 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)
Origin of the Ottomans, A.D. 1240, etc.
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 Teflia 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. Reign of Othman, A.D. 1299-1326. 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 Palaeologus,
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 aera, 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)
Reign of Orchan, A.D. 1326-1360.
From the conquest of Prusa, we may date the true aera 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 labours 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; 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. His conquest of Bithynia, A.D. 1326-1339. 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) 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. Division of Anatolia among the Turkish emirs, A.D. 1300, etc. 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 Maeander 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. Loss of the Asiatic provinces, A.D. 1312, etc. 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 honour and safety may sometimes be the same. The knights of Rhodes, A.D. 1310, August 15 - 1523, January 1. 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.
First passage of the Turks into Europe, A.D. 1341-1347.
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 honour,
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 rigour 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
honour 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 clamours 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 succour, by his situation along
the Propontis and in the front of Constantinople. Marriage of Orchan with a Greek princess, A.D. 1346. 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 dishonour 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.
Establishment of the Ottomans in Europe, A.D. 1353.
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 valour, 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. Death or Orchan and his son Soliman. 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.
The reign and European conquests of Amurath I., A.D. 1360-1389, September.
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 Haemus, 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 Palaeologus 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 Janizeries 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 dervish. 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, (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)
Such was the origin of these haughty troops, the terror of the nations, and sometimes of the sultans themselves. Their valour 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. 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 infrequent in Oriental history. (55)
The reign of Bajazet I. Ilderim, A.D. 1389-1403, March 9.
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. His conquests from the Euphrates to the Danube. 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 Thermopylae 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 favour 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 succours 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 Aethiopian 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. Battle of Nicopolis, A.D. 1396, Sept. 28. 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 humour
falling on a single fibre of one man, may prevent or suspend
the misery of nations.
Crusade and captivity of the French princes, A.D. 1396-1398.
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 ardour 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. 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 armour, 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 honour 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 valour 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, 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. 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.
The emperor John Palaeologus, A.D. 1355, January 8 -1391.
After his enfranchisement from an oppressive guardian, John
Palaeologus 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 dishonour 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. Palaeologus 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. Discord of the Greeks. 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; 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
Palaeologus 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
Caesar 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 Palaeologus 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
Palaeologus survived his reason and his strength: he
deprived his favourite 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 honour 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 Palaeologus, if we impute this last
humiliation as the cause of his death.
The emperor Manuel, A.D. 1391-1425, July 25.
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: Distress of Constantinople, A.D. 1395- 1402.
"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 succour 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 valour 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.
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