Chapter XLII: State Of The Barbaric World.—Part I

State Of The Barbaric World.—Establishment Of The Lombards On the Danube.—Tribes And Inroads Of The Sclavonians.—Origin, Empire, And Embassies Of The Turks.—The Flight Of The Avars.—Chosroes I, Or Nushirvan, King Of Persia.—His Prosperous Reign And Wars With The Romans.—The Colchian Or Lazic War.—The Æthiopians.

Our estimate of personal merit, is relative to the common
faculties of mankind. The aspiring efforts of genius, or virtue,
either in active or speculative life, are measured, not so much
by their real elevation, as by the height to which they ascend
above the level of their age and country; and the same stature,
which in a people of giants would pass unnoticed, must appear
conspicuous in a race of pygmies. Leonidas, and his three hundred
companions, devoted their lives at Thermopylae; but the education
of the infant, the boy, and the man, had prepared, and almost
insured, this memorable sacrifice; and each Spartan would
approve, rather than admire, an act of duty, of which himself and
eight thousand of his fellow-citizens were equally capable. 1 The
great Pompey might inscribe on his trophies, that he had defeated
in battle two millions of enemies, and reduced fifteen hundred
cities from the Lake Maeotis to the Red Sea: 2 but the fortune of
Rome flew before his eagles; the nations were oppressed by their
own fears, and the invincible legions which he commanded, had
been formed by the habits of conquest and the discipline of ages.
In this view, the character of Belisarius may be deservedly
placed above the heroes of the ancient republics. His
imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times; his virtues
were his own, the free gift of nature or reflection; he raised
himself without a master or a rival; and so inadequate were the
arms committed to his hand, that his sole advantage was derived
from the pride and presumption of his adversaries. Under his
command, the subjects of Justinian often deserved to be called
Romans: but the unwarlike appellation of Greeks was imposed as a
term of reproach by the haughty Goths; who affected to blush,
that they must dispute the kingdom of Italy with a nation of
tragedians, pantomimes, and pirates. 3 The climate of Asia has
indeed been found less congenial than that of Europe to military
spirit: those populous countries were enervated by luxury,
despotism, and superstition; and the monks were more expensive
and more numerous than the soldiers of the East. The regular
force of the empire had once amounted to six hundred and
forty-five thousand men: it was reduced, in the time of
Justinian, to one hundred and fifty thousand; and this number,
large as it may seem, was thinly scattered over the sea and land;
in Spain and Italy, in Africa and Egypt, on the banks of the
Danube, the coast of the Euxine, and the frontiers of Persia. The
citizen was exhausted, yet the soldier was unpaid; his poverty
was mischievously soothed by the privilege of rapine and
indolence; and the tardy payments were detained and intercepted
by the fraud of those agents who usurp, without courage or
danger, the emoluments of war. Public and private distress
recruited the armies of the state; but in the field, and still
more in the presence of the enemy, their numbers were always
defective. The want of national spirit was supplied by the
precarious faith and disorderly service of Barbarian mercenaries.

Even military honor, which has often survived the loss of virtue
and freedom, was almost totally extinct. The generals, who were
multiplied beyond the example of former times, labored only to
prevent the success, or to sully the reputation of their
colleagues; and they had been taught by experience, that if merit
sometimes provoked the jealousy, error, or even guilt, would
obtain the indulgence, of a gracious emperor. 4 In such an age,
the triumphs of Belisarius, and afterwards of Narses, shine with
incomparable lustre; but they are encompassed with the darkest
shades of disgrace and calamity. While the lieutenant of
Justinian subdued the kingdoms of the Goths and Vandals, the
emperor, 5 timid, though ambitious, balanced the forces of the
Barbarians, fomented their divisions by flattery and falsehood,
and invited by his patience and liberality the repetition of
injuries. 6 The keys of Carthage, Rome, and Ravenna, were
presented to their conqueror, while Antioch was destroyed by the
Persians, and Justinian trembled for the safety of
Constantinople.

1 (return) [ It will be a pleasure, not a task, to read
Herodotus, (l. vii. c. 104, 134, p. 550, 615.) The conversation
of Xerxes and Demaratus at Thermopylae is one of the most
interesting and moral scenes in history. It was the torture of
the royal Spartan to behold, with anguish and remorse, the virtue
of his country.]

2 (return) [ See this proud inscription in Pliny, (Hist. Natur.
vii. 27.) Few men have more exquisitely tasted of glory and
disgrace; nor could Juvenal (Satir. x.) produce a more striking
example of the vicissitudes of fortune, and the vanity of human
wishes.]

3 (return) [ This last epithet of Procopius is too nobly
translated by pirates; naval thieves is the proper word;
strippers of garments, either for injury or insult, (Demosthenes
contra Conon Reiske, Orator, Graec. tom. ii. p. 1264.)]

4 (return) [ See the third and fourth books of the Gothic War:
the writer of the Anecdotes cannot aggravate these abuses.]

5 (return) [ Agathias, l. v. p. 157, 158. He confines this
weakness of the emperor and the empire to the old age of
Justinian; but alas! he was never young.]

6 (return) [ This mischievous policy, which Procopius (Anecdot.
c. 19) imputes to the emperor, is revealed in his epistle to a
Scythian prince, who was capable of understanding it.]

Even the Gothic victories of Belisarius were prejudicial to the
state, since they abolished the important barrier of the Upper
Danube, which had been so faithfully guarded by Theodoric and his
daughter. For the defence of Italy, the Goths evacuated Pannonia
and Noricum, which they left in a peaceful and flourishing
condition: the sovereignty was claimed by the emperor of the
Romans; the actual possession was abandoned to the boldness of
the first invader. On the opposite banks of the Danube, the
plains of Upper Hungary and the Transylvanian hills were
possessed, since the death of Attila, by the tribes of the
Gepidae, who respected the Gothic arms, and despised, not indeed
the gold of the Romans, but the secret motive of their annual
subsidies. The vacant fortifications of the river were instantly
occupied by these Barbarians; their standards were planted on the
walls of Sirmium and Belgrade; and the ironical tone of their
apology aggravated this insult on the majesty of the empire. “So
extensive, O Caesar, are your dominions, so numerous are your
cities, that you are continually seeking for nations to whom,
either in peace or in war, you may relinquish these useless
possessions. The Gepidae are your brave and faithful allies; and
if they have anticipated your gifts, they have shown a just
confidence in your bounty.” Their presumption was excused by the
mode of revenge which Justinian embraced. Instead of asserting
the rights of a sovereign for the protection of his subjects, the
emperor invited a strange people to invade and possess the Roman
provinces between the Danube and the Alps and the ambition of the
Gepidae was checked by the rising power and fame of the Lombards.
7 This corrupt appellation has been diffused in the thirteenth
century by the merchants and bankers, the Italian posterity of
these savage warriors: but the original name of Langobards is
expressive only of the peculiar length and fashion of their
beards. I am not disposed either to question or to justify their
Scandinavian origin; 8 nor to pursue the migrations of the
Lombards through unknown regions and marvellous adventures. About
the time of Augustus and Trajan, a ray of historic light breaks
on the darkness of their antiquities, and they are discovered,
for the first time, between the Elbe and the Oder. Fierce, beyond
the example of the Germans, they delighted to propagate the
tremendous belief, that their heads were formed like the heads of
dogs, and that they drank the blood of their enemies, whom they
vanquished in battle. The smallness of their numbers was
recruited by the adoption of their bravest slaves; and alone,
amidst their powerful neighbors, they defended by arms their
high-spirited independence. In the tempests of the north, which
overwhelmed so many names and nations, this little bark of the
Lombards still floated on the surface: they gradually descended
towards the south and the Danube, and, at the end of four hundred
years, they again appear with their ancient valor and renown.
Their manners were not less ferocious. The assassination of a
royal guest was executed in the presence, and by the command, of
the king’s daughter, who had been provoked by some words of
insult, and disappointed by his diminutive stature; and a
tribute, the price of blood, was imposed on the Lombards, by his
brother the king of the Heruli. Adversity revived a sense of
moderation and justice, and the insolence of conquest was
chastised by the signal defeat and irreparable dispersion of the
Heruli, who were seated in the southern provinces of Poland. 9
The victories of the Lombards recommended them to the friendship
of the emperors; and at the solicitations of Justinian, they
passed the Danube, to reduce, according to their treaty, the
cities of Noricum and the fortresses of Pannonia. But the spirit
of rapine soon tempted them beyond these ample limits; they
wandered along the coast of the Hadriatic as far as Dyrrachium,
and presumed, with familiar rudeness to enter the towns and
houses of their Roman allies, and to seize the captives who had
escaped from their audacious hands. These acts of hostility, the
sallies, as it might be pretended, of some loose adventurers,
were disowned by the nation, and excused by the emperor; but the
arms of the Lombards were more seriously engaged by a contest of
thirty years, which was terminated only by the extirpation of the
Gepidae. The hostile nations often pleaded their cause before the
throne of Constantinople; and the crafty Justinian, to whom the
Barbarians were almost equally odious, pronounced a partial and
ambiguous sentence, and dexterously protracted the war by slow
and ineffectual succors. Their strength was formidable, since the
Lombards, who sent into the field several myriads of soldiers,
still claimed, as the weaker side, the protection of the Romans.
Their spirit was intrepid; yet such is the uncertainty of
courage, that the two armies were suddenly struck with a panic;
they fled from each other, and the rival kings remained with
their guards in the midst of an empty plain. A short truce was
obtained; but their mutual resentment again kindled; and the
remembrance of their shame rendered the next encounter more
desperate and bloody. Forty thousand of the Barbarians perished
in the decisive battle, which broke the power of the Gepidae,
transferred the fears and wishes of Justinian, and first
displayed the character of Alboin, the youthful prince of the
Lombards, and the future conqueror of Italy. 10

7 (return) [ Gens Germana feritate ferocior, says Velleius
Paterculus of the Lombards, (ii. 106.) Langobardos paucitas
nobilitat. Plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus cincti non per
obsequium, sed praeliis et perilitando, tuti sunt, (Tacit. de
Moribus German. c. 40.) See likewise Strabo, (l. viii. p. 446.)
The best geographers place them beyond the Elbe, in the bishopric
of Magdeburgh and the middle march of Brandenburgh; and their
situation will agree with the patriotic remark of the count de
Hertzberg, that most of the Barbarian conquerors issued from the
same countries which still produce the armies of Prussia. * Note:
See Malte Brun, vol. i. p 402.—M]

8 (return) [ The Scandinavian origin of the Goths and Lombards,
as stated by Paul Warnefrid, surnamed the deacon, is attacked by
Cluverius, (Germania, Antiq. l. iii. c. 26, p. 102, &c.,) a
native of Prussia, and defended by Grotius, (Prolegom. ad Hist.
Goth. p. 28, &c.,) the Swedish Ambassador.]

9 (return) [ Two facts in the narrative of Paul Diaconus (l. i.
c. 20) are expressive of national manners: 1. Dum ad tabulam
luderet—while he played at draughts. 2. Camporum viridantia lina.
The cultivation of flax supposes property, commerce, agriculture,
and manufactures]

10 (return) [ I have used, without undertaking to reconcile, the
facts in Procopius, (Goth. l. ii. c. 14, l. iii. c. 33, 34, l.
iv. c. 18, 25,) Paul Diaconus, (de Gestis Langobard, l. i. c.
1-23, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. p. 405-419,)
and Jornandes, (de Success. Regnorum, p. 242.) The patient reader
may draw some light from Mascou (Hist. of the Germans, and
Annotat. xxiii.) and De Buat, (Hist. des Peuples, &c., tom. ix.
x. xi.)]

The wild people who dwelt or wandered in the plains of Russia,
Lithuania, and Poland, might be reduced, in the age of Justinian,
under the two great families of the Bulgarians 11 and the
Sclavonians. According to the Greek writers, the former, who
touched the Euxine and the Lake Maeotis, derived from the Huns
their name or descent; and it is needless to renew the simple and
well-known picture of Tartar manners. They were bold and
dexterous archers, who drank the milk, and feasted on the flesh,
of their fleet and indefatigable horses; whose flocks and herds
followed, or rather guided, the motions of their roving camps; to
whose inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were
practised in flight, though incapable of fear. The nation was
divided into two powerful and hostile tribes, who pursued each
other with fraternal hatred. They eagerly disputed the
friendship, or rather the gifts, of the emperor; and the
distinctions which nature had fixed between the faithful dog and
the rapacious wolf was applied by an ambassador who received only
verbal instructions from the mouth of his illiterate prince. 12
The Bulgarians, of whatsoever species, were equally attracted by
Roman wealth: they assumed a vague dominion over the Sclavonian
name, and their rapid marches could only be stopped by the Baltic
Sea, or the extreme cold and poverty of the north. But the same
race of Sclavonians appears to have maintained, in every age, the
possession of the same countries. Their numerous tribes, however
distant or adverse, used one common language (it was harsh and
irregular), and were known by the resemblance of their form,
which deviated from the swarthy Tartar, and approached without
attaining the lofty stature and fair complexion of the German.
Four thousand six hundred villages 13 were scattered over the
provinces of Russia and Poland, and their huts were hastily built
of rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron.
Erected, or rather concealed, in the depth of forests, on the
banks of rivers, or the edges of morasses, we may not perhaps,
without flattery, compare them to the architecture of the beaver;
which they resembled in a double issue, to the land and water,
for the escape of the savage inhabitant, an animal less cleanly,
less diligent, and less social, than that marvellous quadruped.
The fertility of the soil, rather than the labor of the natives,
supplied the rustic plenty of the Sclavonians. Their sheep and
horned cattle were large and numerous, and the fields which they
sowed with millet or panic 14 afforded, in place of bread, a
coarse and less nutritive food. The incessant rapine of their
neighbors compelled them to bury this treasure in the earth; but
on the appearance of a stranger, it was freely imparted by a
people, whose unfavorable character is qualified by the epithets
of chaste, patient, and hospitable. As their supreme god, they
adored an invisible master of the thunder. The rivers and the
nymphs obtained their subordinate honors, and the popular worship
was expressed in vows and sacrifice. The Sclavonians disdained to
obey a despot, a prince, or even a magistrate; but their
experience was too narrow, their passions too headstrong, to
compose a system of equal law or general defence. Some voluntary
respect was yielded to age and valor; but each tribe or village
existed as a separate republic, and all must be persuaded where
none could be compelled. They fought on foot, almost naked, and
except an unwieldy shield, without any defensive armor; their
weapons of offence were a bow, a quiver of small poisoned arrows,
and a long rope, which they dexterously threw from a distance,
and entangled their enemy in a running noose. In the field, the
Sclavonian infantry was dangerous by their speed, agility, and
hardiness: they swam, they dived, they remained under water,
drawing their breath through a hollow cane; and a river or lake
was often the scene of their unsuspected ambuscade. But these
were the achievements of spies or stragglers; the military art
was unknown to the Sclavonians; their name was obscure, and their
conquests were inglorious. 15

11 (return) [ I adopt the appellation of Bulgarians from
Ennodius, (in Panegyr. Theodorici, Opp. Sirmond, tom. i. p. 1598,
1599,) Jornandes, (de Rebus Geticis, c. 5, p. 194, et de Regn.
Successione, p. 242,) Theophanes, (p. 185,) and the Chronicles of
Cassiodorus and Marcellinus. The name of Huns is too vague; the
tribes of the Cutturgurians and Utturgurians are too minute and
too harsh. * Note: The Bulgarians are first mentioned among the
writers of the West in the Panegyric on Theodoric by Ennodius,
Bishop of Pavia. Though they perhaps took part in the conquests
of the Huns, they did not advance to the Danube till after the
dismemberment of that monarchy on the death of Attila. But the
Bulgarians are mentioned much earlier by the Armenian writers.
Above 600 years before Christ, a tribe of Bulgarians, driven from
their native possessions beyond the Caspian, occupied a part of
Armenia, north of the Araxes. They were of the Finnish race; part
of the nation, in the fifth century, moved westward, and reached
the modern Bulgaria; part remained along the Volga, which is
called Etel, Etil, or Athil, in all the Tartar languages, but
from the Bulgarians, the Volga. The power of the eastern
Bulgarians was broken by Batou, son of Tchingiz Khan; that of the
western will appear in the course of the history. From St.
Martin, vol. vii p. 141. Malte-Brun, on the contrary, conceives
that the Bulgarians took their name from the river. According to
the Byzantine historians they were a branch of the Ougres,
(Thunmann, Hist. of the People to the East of Europe,) but they
have more resemblance to the Turks. Their first country, Great
Bulgaria, was washed by the Volga. Some remains of their capital
are still shown near Kasan. They afterwards dwelt in Kuban, and
finally on the Danube, where they subdued (about the year 500)
the Slavo-Servians established on the Lower Danube. Conquered in
their turn by the Avars, they freed themselves from that yoke in
635; their empire then comprised the Cutturgurians, the remains
of the Huns established on the Palus Maeotis. The Danubian
Bulgaria, a dismemberment of this vast state, was long formidable
to the Byzantine empire. Malte-Brun, Prec. de Geog Univ. vol. i.
p. 419.—M. ——According to Shafarik, the Danubian Bulgaria was
peopled by a Slavo Bulgarian race. The Slavish population was
conquered by the Bulgarian (of Uralian and Finnish descent,) and
incorporated with them. This mingled race are the Bulgarians
bordering on the Byzantine empire. Shafarik, ii 152, et seq.—M.
1845]

12 (return) [ Procopius, (Goth. l. iv. c. 19.) His verbal message
(he owns him self an illiterate Barbarian) is delivered as an
epistle. The style is savage, figurative, and original.]

13 (return) [ This sum is the result of a particular list, in a
curious Ms. fragment of the year 550, found in the library of
Milan. The obscure geography of the times provokes and exercises
the patience of the count de Buat, (tom. xi. p. 69—189.) The
French minister often loses himself in a wilderness which
requires a Saxon and Polish guide.]

14 (return) [ Panicum, milium. See Columella, l. ii. c. 9, p.
430, edit. Gesner. Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 24, 25. The
Samaritans made a pap of millet, mingled with mare’s milk or
blood. In the wealth of modern husbandry, our millet feeds
poultry, and not heroes. See the dictionaries of Bomare and
Miller.]

15 (return) [ For the name and nation, the situation and manners,
of the Sclavonians, see the original evidence of the vith
century, in Procopius, (Goth. l. ii. c. 26, l. iii. c. 14,) and
the emperor Mauritius or Maurice (Stratagemat. l. ii. c. 5, apud
Mascon Annotat. xxxi.) The stratagems of Maurice have been
printed only, as I understand, at the end of Scheffer’s edition
of Arrian’s Tactics, at Upsal, 1664, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. l.
iv. c. 8, tom. iii. p. 278,) a scarce, and hitherto, to me, an
inaccessible book.]

I have marked the faint and general outline of the Sclavonians
and Bulgarians, without attempting to define their intermediate
boundaries, which were not accurately known or respected by the
Barbarians themselves. Their importance was measured by their
vicinity to the empire; and the level country of Moldavia and
Wallachia was occupied by the Antes, 16 a Sclavonian tribe, which
swelled the titles of Justinian with an epithet of conquest. 17
Against the Antes he erected the fortifications of the Lower
Danube; and labored to secure the alliance of a people seated in
the direct channel of northern inundation, an interval of two
hundred miles between the mountains of Transylvania and the
Euxine Sea. But the Antes wanted power and inclination to stem
the fury of the torrent; and the light-armed Sclavonians, from a
hundred tribes, pursued with almost equal speed the footsteps of
the Bulgarian horse. The payment of one piece of gold for each
soldier procured a safe and easy retreat through the country of
the Gepidae, who commanded the passage of the Upper Danube. 18
The hopes or fears of the Barbarians; their intense union or
discord; the accident of a frozen or shallow stream; the prospect
of harvest or vintage; the prosperity or distress of the Romans;
were the causes which produced the uniform repetition of annual
visits, 19 tedious in the narrative, and destructive in the
event. The same year, and possibly the same month, in which
Ravenna surrendered, was marked by an invasion of the Huns or
Bulgarians, so dreadful, that it almost effaced the memory of
their past inroads. They spread from the suburbs of
Constantinople to the Ionian Gulf, destroyed thirty-two cities or
castles, erased Potidaea, which Athens had built, and Philip had
besieged, and repassed the Danube, dragging at their horses’
heels one hundred and twenty thousand of the subjects of
Justinian. In a subsequent inroad they pierced the wall of the
Thracian Chersonesus, extirpated the habitations and the
inhabitants, boldly traversed the Hellespont, and returned to
their companions, laden with the spoils of Asia. Another party,
which seemed a multitude in the eyes of the Romans, penetrated,
without opposition, from the Straits of Thermopylae to the
Isthmus of Corinth; and the last ruin of Greece has appeared an
object too minute for the attention of history. The works which
the emperor raised for the protection, but at the expense of his
subjects, served only to disclose the weakness of some neglected
part; and the walls, which by flattery had been deemed
impregnable, were either deserted by the garrison, or scaled by
the Barbarians. Three thousand Sclavonians, who insolently
divided themselves into two bands, discovered the weakness and
misery of a triumphant reign. They passed the Danube and the
Hebrus, vanquished the Roman generals who dared to oppose their
progress, and plundered, with impunity, the cities of Illyricum
and Thrace, each of which had arms and numbers to overwhelm their
contemptible assailants. Whatever praise the boldness of the
Sclavonians may deserve, it is sullied by the wanton and
deliberate cruelty which they are accused of exercising on their
prisoners. Without distinction of rank, or age, or sex, the
captives were impaled or flayed alive, or suspended between four
posts, and beaten with clubs till they expired, or enclosed in
some spacious building, and left to perish in the flames with the
spoil and cattle which might impede the march of these savage
victors. 20 Perhaps a more impartial narrative would reduce the
number, and qualify the nature, of these horrid acts; and they
might sometimes be excused by the cruel laws of retaliation. In
the siege of Topirus, 21 whose obstinate defence had enraged the
Sclavonians, they massacred fifteen thousand males; but they
spared the women and children; the most valuable captives were
always reserved for labor or ransom; the servitude was not
rigorous, and the terms of their deliverance were speedy and
moderate. But the subject, or the historian of Justinian, exhaled
his just indignation in the language of complaint and reproach;
and Procopius has confidently affirmed, that in a reign of
thirty-two years, each annual inroad of the Barbarians consumed
two hundred thousand of the inhabitants of the Roman empire. The
entire population of Turkish Europe, which nearly corresponds
with the provinces of Justinian, would perhaps be incapable of
supplying six millions of persons, the result of this incredible
estimate. 22

16 (return) [ Antes corum fortissimi.... Taysis qui rapidus et
vorticosus in Histri fluenta furens devolvitur, (Jornandes, c. 5,
p. 194, edit. Murator. Procopius, Goth. l. iii. c. 14, et de
Edific. l iv. c. 7.) Yet the same Procopius mentions the Goths
and Huns as neighbors to the Danube, (de Edific. l. v. c. 1.)]

17 (return) [ The national title of Anticus, in the laws and
inscriptions of Justinian, was adopted by his successors, and is
justified by the pious Ludewig (in Vit. Justinian. p. 515.) It
had strangely puzzled the civilians of the middle age.]

18 (return) [ Procopius, Goth. l. iv. c. 25.]

19 (return) [ An inroad of the Huns is connected, by Procopius,
with a comet perhaps that of 531, (Persic. l. ii. c. 4.) Agathias
(l. v. p. 154, 155) borrows from his predecessors some early
facts.]

20 (return) [ The cruelties of the Sclavonians are related or
magnified by Procopius, (Goth. l. iii. c. 29, 38.) For their mild
and liberal behavior to their prisoners, we may appeal to the
authority, somewhat more recent of the emperor Maurice,
(Stratagem. l. ii. c. 5.)]

21 (return) [ Topirus was situate near Philippi in Thrace, or
Macedonia, opposite to the Isle of Thasos, twelve days’ journey
from Constantinople (Cellarius, tom. i. p. 676, 846.)]

22 (return) [ According to the malevolent testimony of the
Anecdotes, (c. 18,) these inroads had reduced the provinces south
of the Danube to the state of a Scythian wilderness.]

In the midst of these obscure calamities, Europe felt the shock
of revolution, which first revealed to the world the name and
nation of the Turks. 2211 Like Romulus, the founder 2212 of that
martial people was suckled by a she-wolf, who afterwards made him
the father of a numerous progeny; and the representation of that
animal in the banners of the Turks preserved the memory, or
rather suggested the idea, of a fable, which was invented,
without any mutual intercourse, by the shepherds of Latium and
those of Scythia. At the equal distance of two thousand miles
from the Caspian, the Icy, the Chinese, and the Bengal Seas, a
ridge of mountains is conspicuous, the centre, and perhaps the
summit, of Asia; which, in the language of different nations, has
been styled Imaus, and Caf, 23 and Altai, and the Golden
Mountains, 2311 and the Girdle of the Earth. The sides of the
hills were productive of minerals; and the iron forges, 24 for
the purpose of war, were exercised by the Turks, the most
despised portion of the slaves of the great khan of the Geougen.
But their servitude could only last till a leader, bold and
eloquent, should arise to persuade his countrymen that the same
arms which they forged for their masters, might become, in their
own hands, the instruments of freedom and victory. They sallied
from the mountains; 25 a sceptre was the reward of his advice;
and the annual ceremony, in which a piece of iron was heated in
the fire, and a smith’s hammer 2511 was successively handled by
the prince and his nobles, recorded for ages the humble
profession and rational pride of the Turkish nation. Bertezena,
2512 their first leader, signalized their valor and his own in
successful combats against the neighboring tribes; but when he
presumed to ask in marriage the daughter of the great khan, the
insolent demand of a slave and a mechanic was contemptuously
rejected. The disgrace was expiated by a more noble alliance with
a princess of China; and the decisive battle which almost
extirpated the nation of the Geougen, established in Tartary the
new and more powerful empire of the Turks. 2513 They reigned over
the north; but they confessed the vanity of conquest, by their
faithful attachment to the mountain of their fathers. The royal
encampment seldom lost sight of Mount Altai, from whence the
River Irtish descends to water the rich pastures of the Calmucks,
26 which nourish the largest sheep and oxen in the world. The
soil is fruitful, and the climate mild and temperate: the happy
region was ignorant of earthquake and pestilence; the emperor’s
throne was turned towards the East, and a golden wolf on the top
of a spear seemed to guard the entrance of his tent. One of the
successors of Bertezena was tempted by the luxury and
superstition of China; but his design of building cities and
temples was defeated by the simple wisdom of a Barbarian
counsellor. “The Turks,” he said, “are not equal in number to one
hundredth part of the inhabitants of China. If we balance their
power, and elude their armies, it is because we wander without
any fixed habitations in the exercise of war and hunting. Are we
strong? we advance and conquer: are we feeble? we retire and are
concealed. Should the Turks confine themselves within the walls
of cities, the loss of a battle would be the destruction of their
empire. The bonzes preach only patience, humility, and the
renunciation of the world. Such, O king! is not the religion of
heroes.” They entertained, with less reluctance, the doctrines of
Zoroaster; but the greatest part of the nation acquiesced,
without inquiry, in the opinions, or rather in the practice, of
their ancestors. The honors of sacrifice were reserved for the
supreme deity; they acknowledged, in rude hymns, their
obligations to the air, the fire, the water, and the earth; and
their priests derived some profit from the art of divination.
Their unwritten laws were rigorous and impartial: theft was
punished with a tenfold restitution; adultery, treason, and
murder, with death; and no chastisement could be inflicted too
severe for the rare and inexpiable guilt of cowardice. As the
subject nations marched under the standard of the Turks, their
cavalry, both men and horses, were proudly computed by millions;
one of their effective armies consisted of four hundred thousand
soldiers, and in less than fifty years they were connected in
peace and war with the Romans, the Persians, and the Chinese. In
their northern limits, some vestige may be discovered of the form
and situation of Kamptchatka, of a people of hunters and
fishermen, whose sledges were drawn by dogs, and whose
habitations were buried in the earth. The Turks were ignorant of
astronomy; but the observation taken by some learned Chinese,
with a gnomon of eight feet, fixes the royal camp in the latitude
of forty-nine degrees, and marks their extreme progress within
three, or at least ten degrees, of the polar circle. 27 Among
their southern conquests the most splendid was that of the
Nephthalites, or white Huns, a polite and warlike people, who
possessed the commercial cities of Bochara and Samarcand, who had
vanquished the Persian monarch, and carried their victorious arms
along the banks, and perhaps to the mouth, of the Indus. On the
side of the West, the Turkish cavalry advanced to the Lake
Maeotis. They passed that lake on the ice. The khan who dwelt at
the foot of Mount Altai issued his commands for the siege of
Bosphorus, 28 a city the voluntary subject of Rome, and whose
princes had formerly been the friends of Athens. 29 To the east,
the Turks invaded China, as often as the vigor of the government
was relaxed: and I am taught to read in the history of the times,
that they mowed down their patient enemies like hemp or grass;
and that the mandarins applauded the wisdom of an emperor who
repulsed these Barbarians with golden lances. This extent of
savage empire compelled the Turkish monarch to establish three
subordinate princes of his own blood, who soon forgot their
gratitude and allegiance. The conquerors were enervated by
luxury, which is always fatal except to an industrious people;
the policy of China solicited the vanquished nations to resume
their independence and the power of the Turks was limited to a
period of two hundred years. The revival of their name and
dominion in the southern countries of Asia are the events of a
later age; and the dynasties, which succeeded to their native
realms, may sleep in oblivion; since their history bears no
relation to the decline and fall of the Roman empire. 30

2211 (return) [ It must be remembered that the name of Turks is
extended to a whole family of the Asiatic races, and not confined
to the Assena, or Turks of the Altai.—M.]

2212 (return) [ Assena (the wolf) was the name of this chief.
Klaproth, Tabl. Hist. de l’Asie p. 114.—M.]

23 (return) [ From Caf to Caf; which a more rational geography
would interpret, from Imaus, perhaps, to Mount Atlas. According
to the religious philosophy of the Mahometans, the basis of Mount
Caf is an emerald, whose reflection produces the azure of the
sky. The mountain is endowed with a sensitive action in its roots
or nerves; and their vibration, at the command of God, is the
cause of earthquakes. (D’Herbelot, p. 230, 231.)]

2311 (return) [ Altai, i. e. Altun Tagh, the Golden Mountain. Von
Hammer Osman Geschichte, vol. i. p. 2.—M.]

24 (return) [ The Siberian iron is the best and most plentiful in
the world; and in the southern parts, above sixty mines are now
worked by the industry of the Russians, (Strahlenberg, Hist. of
Siberia, p. 342, 387. Voyage en Siberie, par l’Abbe Chappe
d’Auteroche, p. 603—608, edit in 12mo. Amsterdam. 1770.) The
Turks offered iron for sale; yet the Roman ambassadors, with
strange obstinacy, persisted in believing that it was all a
trick, and that their country produced none, (Menander in
Excerpt. Leg. p. 152.)]

25 (return) [ Of Irgana-kon, (Abulghazi Khan, Hist. Genealogique
des Tatars, P ii. c. 5, p. 71—77, c. 15, p. 155.) The tradition
of the Moguls, of the 450 years which they passed in the
mountains, agrees with the Chinese periods of the history of the
Huns and Turks, (De Guignes, tom. i. part ii. p. 376,) and the
twenty generations, from their restoration to Zingis.]

2511 (return) [ The Mongol Temugin is also, though erroneously,
explained by Rubruquis, a smith. Schmidt, p 876.—M.]

2512 (return) [ There appears the same confusion here. Bertezena
(Berte-Scheno) is claimed as the founder of the Mongol race. The
name means the gray (blauliche) wolf. In fact, the same tradition
of the origin from a wolf seems common to the Mongols and the
Turks. The Mongol Berte-Scheno, of the very curious Mongol
History, published and translated by M. Schmidt of Petersburg, is
brought from Thibet. M. Schmidt considers this tradition of the
Thibetane descent of the royal race of the Mongols to be much
earlier than their conversion to Lamaism, yet it seems very
suspicious. See Klaproth, Tabl. de l’Asie, p. 159. The Turkish
Bertezena is called Thou-men by Klaproth, p. 115. In 552,
Thou-men took the title of Kha-Khan, and was called Il Khan.—M.]

2513 (return) [ Great Bucharia is called Turkistan: see Hammer,
2. It includes all the last steppes at the foot of the Altai. The
name is the same with that of the Turan of Persian poetic
legend.—M.]

26 (return) [ The country of the Turks, now of the Calmucks, is
well described in the Genealogical History, p. 521—562. The
curious notes of the French translator are enlarged and digested
in the second volume of the English version.]

27 (return) [ Visdelou, p. 141, 151. The fact, though it strictly
belongs to a subordinate and successive tribe, may be introduced
here.]

28 (return) [ Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 12, l. ii. c. 3.
Peyssonel, Observations sur les Peuples Barbares, p. 99, 100,
defines the distance between Caffa and the old Bosphorus at xvi.
long Tartar leagues.]

29 (return) [ See, in a Memoire of M. de Boze, (Mem. de
l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. vi. p. 549—565,) the ancient
kings and medals of the Cimmerian Bosphorus; and the gratitude of
Athens, in the Oration of Demosthenes against Leptines, (in
Reiske, Orator. Graec. tom. i. p. 466, 187.)]

30 (return) [ For the origin and revolutions of the first Turkish
empire, the Chinese details are borrowed from De Guignes (Hist.
des Huns, tom. P. ii. p. 367—462) and Visdelou, (Supplement a la
Bibliotheque Orient. d’Herbelot, p. 82—114.) The Greek or Roman
hints are gathered in Menander (p. 108—164) and Theophylact
Simocatta, (l. vii. c. 7, 8.)]