Chapter VIII: Part 8

Marino Falieri had been an active servant of Venice through a long life. He had filled almost all the great offices which were intrusted to her nobles. He had governed her distant colonies, accompanied her armies in that position of _proveditore_, omnipotent civilian critic of all the movements of war, which so much disgusted the generals of the republic. He had been ambassador at the courts of both emperor and pope, and was serving his country in that capacity at Avignon when the news of his election reached him.

It is thus evident that Falieri was not a man used to the position of a lay figure, although at seventy-six the dignified retirement of a throne, even when so encircled with restrictions, would seem not inappropriate. That he was of a haughty and hasty temper seems apparent. It is told of him that, after waiting long for a bishop to head a procession at Treviso where he was _podesta_ ("chief magistrate"), he astonished the tardy prelate by a box on the ear when he finally appeared, a punishment for keeping the authorities waiting.

Old age to a statesman, however, is in many cases an advantage rather than a defect, and Falieri was young in vigor and character, and still full of life and strength. He was married a second time to presumably a beautiful wife much younger than himself, though the chroniclers are not agreed even on the subject of her name, whether she was a Gradenigo or a Contarini. The well-known story of young Steno's insult to this lady and to her old husband has found a place in all subsequent histories, but there is no trace of it in the unpublished documents of the state.

The story goes that Michel Steno, one of those young and insubordinate gallants who are a danger to every aristocratic state, having been turned out of the presence of the Dogaressa for some unseemly freedom of behavior, wrote upon the chair of the Doge in boyish petulance an insulting taunt, such as might well rouse a high-tempered old man to fury. According to Sanudo, the young man, on being brought before the Forty,[56] confessed that he had thus avenged himself in a fit of passion; and regard having been had to his age and the "heat of love" which had been the cause of his original misdemeanor--a reason seldom taken into account by the tribunals of the state--he was condemned to prison for two months, and afterward to be banished for a year from Venice.

The Doge took this light punishment greatly amiss, considering it, indeed, as a further insult.

Sabellico says not a word of Michel Steno, or of this definite cause of offence, and Romanin quotes the contemporary records to show that though _Alcuni zovanelli fioli de gentiluomini di Venetia_ are supposed to have affronted the Doge, no such story finds a place in any of them. But the old man thus translated from active life and power, soon became bitterly sensible in his new position that he was _senza parentado_, with few relations, and flouted by the _giovinastri_, the dissolute young gentlemen who swaggered about the Broglio in their finery, strong in the support of fathers and uncles.

That he found himself, at the same time, shelved in his new rank, powerless, and regarded as a nobody in the state where hitherto he had been a potent signior--mastered in every action by the secret tribunal, and presiding nominally in councils where his opinion was of little consequence--is evident. And a man so well acquainted, and so long, with all the proceedings of the state, who had seen consummated the shutting out of the people, and since had watched through election after election a gradual tightening of the bonds round the feet of the doge, would naturally have many thoughts when he found himself the wearer of that restricted and diminished crown.

He could not be unconscious of how the stream was going, nor unaware of that gradual sapping of privilege and decreasing of power which even in his own case had gone further than with his predecessor. Perhaps he had noted with an indignant mind the new limits of the _promissione_, a narrower charter than ever, when he was called upon to sign it. He had no mind, we may well believe, to retire thus from the administration of affairs. And when these giovinastri, other people's boys, the scum of the gay world, flung their unsavory jests in the face of the old man who had no son to come after him, the silly insults so lightly uttered, so little thought of, the natural scoff of youth at old age, stung him to the quick.

Old Falieri's heart burned within him at his own injuries and those of his old comrades. How he was induced to head the conspiracy, and put his crown, his life, and honor on the cast, there is no further information. His fierce temper, and the fact that he had no powerful house behind him to help to support his case, probably made him reckless. In April, 1355, six months after his arrival in Venice as doge, the smouldering fire broke out. Two of the conspirators were seized with compunction on the eve of the catastrophe and betrayed the plot--one with a merciful motive to serve a patrician he loved, the other with perhaps less noble intentions--and, without a blow struck, the conspiracy collapsed. There was no real heart in it, nothing to give it consistence; the hot passion of a few men insulted, the variable gaseous excitement of wronged commoners, and the ambition--if it was ambition--of one enraged and affronted old man, without an heir to follow him or anything that could make it worth his while to conquer.

An enterprise more wild was never undertaken. It was the passionate stand of despair against force so overwhelming as to make mad the helpless, yet not submissive, victims. The Doge, who no doubt in former days had felt it to be a mere affair of the populace, a thing with which a noble ambassador and proveditore had nothing to do, a struggle beneath his notice, found himself at last, with fury and amazement, to be a fellow-sufferer caught in the same toils. There seems no reason to believe that Falieri consciously staked the remnant of his life on the forlorn hope of overcoming that awful and pitiless power, with any real hope of establishing his own supremacy. His aspect is rather that of a man betrayed by passion, and wildly forgetful of all possibility in his fierce attempt to free himself and get the upper hand. One cannot but feel in that passion of helpless age and unfriendedness, something of the terrible disappointment of one to whom the real situation of affairs had never been revealed before; who had come home triumphant to reign like the doges of old, and, only after the ducal cap was on his head and the palace of the state had become his home, found out that the doge--like the unconsidered plebeian--had been reduced to bondage; his judgment and experience put aside in favor of the deliberations of a secret tribunal, and the very boys, when they were nobles, at liberty to jeer at his declining years.

The lesser conspirators, all men of the humbler sort--Calendario, the architect, who was then at work upon the palace, a number of seamen, and other little-known persons--were hanged; not like the greater criminals, beheaded between the columns, but strung up--a horrible fringe--along the side of the palazzo. The fate of Falieri himself is too generally known to demand description. Calmed by the tragic touch of fate, the Doge bore all the humiliations of his doom with dignity, and was beheaded at the head of the stairs where he had sworn the promissione on first assuming the office of doge.

What a contrast was this from that triumphant day when probably he felt that his reward had come to him after the long and faithful service of years. Death stills disappointment as well as rage, and Falieri is said to have acknowledged the justice of his sentence. He had never made any attempt to justify or defend himself, but frankly and at once avowed his guilt and made no attempt to escape from its penalties. His body was conveyed privately to the Church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, the great "Zanipolo"--with which all visitors to Venice are familiar--and was buried in secrecy and silence in the _atrio_ of a little chapel behind the great church--where no doubt for centuries the pavement was worn by many feet with little thought of those who lay below. Even from that refuge his bones have been driven forth, but his name remains in the corner of the Hall of the Great Council, where--with a certain dramatic affectation--the painter-historians have painted a black veil across the vacant place. "This is the place of Marino Falieri, beheaded for his crimes," is all the record left of the Doge disgraced.

Was it a crime? The question is one which it is difficult to discuss with any certainty. That Falieri desired to establish--as so many had done in other cities--an independent despotism in Venice, seems entirely unproved. It was the prevailing fear; the one suggestion which alarmed everybody and made sentiment unanimous. But one of the special points which are recorded by the chroniclers as working in him to madness, was that he was _senza parentado_--without any backing of relationship or allies--_i.e._, sonless, with no one to come after him. How little likely then was an old man to embark on such a desperate venture for self-aggrandizement merely. He had, indeed, a nephew who was involved in his fate, but apparently not so deeply as to expose him to the last penalty of the law.

The incident altogether points more to a sudden outbreak of the rage and disappointment of an old public servant coming back from his weary labors for the state in triumph and satisfaction to what seemed the supreme reward; and finding himself no more than a puppet in the hands of remorseless masters, subject to the scoffs of the younger generation, with his eyes opened by his own suffering, perceiving for the first time what justice there was in the oft-repeated protest of the people, and how they and he alike were crushed under the iron heel of that oligarchy to which the power of the people and that of the Prince were equally obnoxious. The chroniclers of his time were so much at a loss to find any reason for such an attempt on the part of a man, _non abbiando alcum propinquo_, that they agree in attributing it to diabolical inspiration.

It was more probably that fury which springs from a sense of wrong, which the sight of the wrongs of others raised to frenzy, and that intolerable impatience of the impotent which is more harsh in its hopelessness than the greatest hardihood. He could not but die for it, but there seems no more reason to characterize this impossible attempt as deliberate treason than to give the same name to many an alliance formed between prince and people in other regions--the king and commons of the early Stuarts, for example--against the intolerable exactions and cruelty of an aristocracy too powerful to be faced alone by either.

CHARLES IV OF GERMANY PUBLISHES HIS GOLDEN BULL

A.D. 1356

SIR ROBERT COMYN

The Golden Bull of Charles IV of Germany, Emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire, first published at the Diet of Nuremberg
in 1356, was a charter--sometimes called the "Magna Charta
of Germany"--regulating the election of the emperor. It was
called "golden" because the seal attached to the parchment
on which it was engrossed was of gold instead of the
customary lead. In a diet at Metz in the same year six
additional clauses were promulgated.

By some historians the origin of the imperial electoral
college is assigned to the year 1125, when at the election
of Lothair II certain of the nobles and church dignitaries
made a selection of candidates to be voted for. But until
the promulgation of the Golden Bull the constitution and
prerogatives of the college were never definitely
ascertained.

The personal traits and the languid reign of Charles IV have
been treated by historians with derision. He forgot the
general welfare of the empire in his eagerness to enrich his
own house and aggrandize his paternal kingdom of Bohemia.
The one remarkable law which emanated from him, and whereby
alone his reign is distinguished in the constitutional
history of the empire, is that embodied in the Golden Bull.
By this instrument the dignity of the electors was greatly
enhanced, and the disputes which had arisen between members
of the same house as to their right of suffrage were
terminated. The number of electors was absolutely restricted
to seven.

After a solemn invocation of the Trinity, a reprobation of the seven deadly sins, and a pointed allusion to the seven candlesticks and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, the Golden Bull proceeds to the subject of the imperial election. It provides, in the first place, for the safe conduct of the seven electors to and from Frankfort-on-the-Main, which is fixed as the place of election; it directs the archbishop of Mainz to summon the electors upon the death of the emperor, and regulates the manner in which their proxies are to be appointed; it enjoins the citizens of Frankfort to protect the assembled electors; and forbids them to admit any stranger into the city during the election.

It next prescribes the form of oath to be taken by the electors; and also forbids them to quit the city before the completion of the election; and after thirty days restricts their diet to bread and water. A majority of votes is to decide the election; and in case any elector obtain three votes, his own vote is to be taken in his favor.

The precedence of the electors is thus settled: First, the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves; then the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The Elector of Treves is to vote first; then the Elector of Cologne; then the secular electors; and the Elector of Mainz is finally to collect the votes and deliver his own.

The Elector of Cologne is to perform the coronation. At all feasts the Margrave of Brandenburg, as grand chamberlain, is to present the Emperor with water to wash; the King of Bohemia, as cup-bearer, is to offer the goblet of wine; the Count Palatine, as grand steward, is to set the first dish on the table; and the Duke of Saxony is to officiate as grand marshal.

The Count Palatine and the Duke of Saxony are declared vicars of the empire during the vacancy of the throne. An exclusive jurisdiction is guaranteed to the electors; and their precedence over all other princes of Germany is enforced.

The right of voting is vested in the eldest son of a deceased elector, provided he have attained the age of eighteen; and during the minority, the guardianship and vote are vested in the next kinsman of the deceased.

If one of the lay electorates become vacant by default of heirs, it shall revert to the Emperor, and be by him disposed of--Bohemia excepted, where the vacancy is to be supplied by ancient mode of election.

The electors are invested with the possession of all mines discovered within their respective territories. They are authorized to give refuge to the Jews, and to receive dues payable within their states. They are also privileged to coin money, and to purchase lands subject to the feudal rights of the sovereign.

A yearly assembly of the electors, in one of the imperial cities, is enjoined.

All privileges granted to any city or community prejudicial to the rights of the electors are revoked. All fraudulent resignations of fiefs by vassals, with intent to attack their lords, are declared void. All leagues, associations, and confederacies, not sanctioned by law, are made punishable by fine; and all burgesses and subjects of princes and nobles are to adhere to their original subjection, and not to claim any rights or exemptions as burgesses of any city unless actually domiciled therein.

Challenges, with design of destroying another's property or committing any outrage, are prohibited; and all challenges are to be given three days before the onset.

The forms of summoning electors, and of their delegation of proxies, are laid down. And the right of voting, as well as all other rights, is declared inseparably incident to the electoral principality.

On grand occasions the Duke of Saxony is to carry the sword; the Count Palatine, the globe; the Margrave of Brandenburg, the sceptre. In celebrating mass before the Emperor, the benedictions are to be pronounced by the senior spiritual elector present.

All persons conspiring against the lives of the electors are declared guilty of leze-majesty, and shall forfeit their lives and possessions. The lives of their sons, though justly forfeited, are spared only by the particular bounty of the Emperor; but they are declared incapable of holding any property, honor, or dignity, and doomed to perpetual poverty. The daughters are permitted to enjoy one-fourth of their mother's succession.

The secular principalities, Bohemia, the Palatinate, the duchy of Saxony, and the margravate of Brandenburg, are declared indivisible and entire, descendible in the male line.

On all the solemn occasions the electors shall attend the Emperor, and the arch-chancellors shall carry the seals. And the bull then proceeds minutely to point out the manner in which the electors are to exercise their ministerial functions at the imperial banquet; and regulates the order and disposition of the imperial and electoral tables.

Frankfort is again declared as the place of election; Aix-la-Chapelle, of coronation; and Nuremberg, for holding the first royal court.

The electors are exempted from all payments on receiving their fiefs from their sovereign. But other princes are to pay certain fees, etc., to the imperial officers.

Lastly, the secular electors are enjoined to instruct their sons in the Latin, Italian, and Slavonic tongues.

At the final promulgation of the bull in the Diet of Metz the Emperor and Empress feasted, in the presence of the dauphin (Charles V) and the legate of Pope Innocent VI, with all the pageantry and ceremonies prescribed by the new ordinances. The imperial tables were spread in the grand square of the city; Rudolph, Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, attended with a silver measure of oats, and marshalled the order of the company; Louis II, Margrave of Brandenburg, presented to the Emperor the golden basin, with water and fair napkins; Rupert, Count Palatine, placed the first dish upon the table; and the Emperor's brother, Wenceslaus, representing the King of Bohemia, officiated as cup-bearer. Lastly, the princes of Schwarzburg and the deputy huntsman came with three hounds amid the loud din of horns, and carried up a stag and a boar to the table of the Emperor.

INSURRECTION OF THE JACQUERIE IN FRANCE

A.D. 1358

SIR JOHN FROISSART

The defeat of the French under King John II, at Poitiers, by
the British forces of Edward, the Black Prince, September
19, 1356, aroused great indignation among the common people
of France, with scorn of the nobility; for these leaders,
with an army of sixty thousand, had fled before an enemy
whom they outnumbered seven to one. In the next assembly of
the states-general the bourgeois obtained a preponderance so
intolerable to the nobles that they withdrew to their homes.
A little later the deputies of the clergy also retired,
leaving only the representatives of the cities--among whom
the supremacy of the members from Paris was generally
accepted--to deal with the affairs of the kingdom.

At this point appeared a man who in an age "so uncivilized
and sombre," says Pierre Robiquet, "by wonderful instinct
laid down and nearly succeeded in obtaining the adoption of
the essential principles on which modern society is
founded--the government of the country by elected
representatives, taxes voted by representatives of the
taxpayers, abolition of privileges founded upon right of
birth, extension of political rights to all citizens, and
subordination of traditional sovereignty to that of the
nation." This man was Étienne Marcel, provost of the
merchants of Paris--that is to say, mayor of the
municipality, whom eminent historians have called the
greatest personage of the fourteenth century. During a
career of three years his name dominates French history--a
brief ascendency, but of potent influence. His endeavor, in
Thierry's view, "was, as it were, a premature attempt at the
grand designs of Providence, and the mirror of the bloody
changes of fortune through which those designs were destined
to advance to their accomplishment under the impulse of
human passions."

After the disaster of Poitiers, Marcel finished the
fortifications of Paris and barricaded the streets, and in
the assembly there he presided over the bourgeois--the Third
Estate. In the growing conflict between the two other
estates--nobles and clergy--and the third, Marcel armed the
bourgeois and began an open revolution, thus organizing the
commune for carrying out his designs. The nobles were
meanwhile laying heavier miseries upon the peasantry, and in
the spring of 1358 occurred the rising of the Jacquerie,
here described by Froissart, whose brilliant narrative is to
be read in the light of modern critical judgment, which
regards it as an exaggeration both of the numbers of the
insurgents and their atrocities, while Froissart had no
capacity for understanding the conditions which explain, if
they do not also justify, the present revolt.

This outbreak, to which Marcel gave his support, was enough
to ruin his cause, and he died in a massacre, July 31, 1358,
having failed "because the time was not yet ripe," and
because the violence to which he lent his sanction was
overcome by stronger violence.

A marvellous and great tribulation befell the kingdom of France, in Beauvoisis, Brie, upon the river Marne, in the Laonnois, and in the neighborhood of Soissons. Some of the inhabitants of the country towns assembled together in Beauvoisis, without any leader; they were not at first more than one hundred men. They said that the nobles of the kingdom of France, knights and squires, were a disgrace to it, and that it would be a very meritorious act to destroy them all; to which proposition everyone assented, and added, shame befall him that should be the means of preventing the gentlemen from being wholly destroyed. They then, without further counsel, collected themselves in a body, and with no other arms than the staves shod with iron which some had, and others with knives, marched to the house of a knight who lived near, and, breaking it open, murdered the knight, his lady, and all the children, both great and small; they then burned the house.

After this, their second expedition was to the strong castle of another knight, which they took, and, having tied him to a stake, many of them violated his wife and daughter before his eyes; they then murdered the lady, her daughter, and the other children, and last of all the knight himself, with much cruelty. They destroyed and burned his castle. They did the like to many castles and handsome houses; and their numbers increased so much that they were in a short time upward of six thousand. Wherever they went they received additions, for all of their rank in life followed them, while everyone else fled, carrying off with them their ladies, damsels, and children ten or twenty leagues distant, where they thought they could place them in security, leaving their houses, with all their riches in them.

These wicked people, without leader and without arms, plundered and burned all the houses they came to, murdered every gentleman, and violated every lady and damsel they could find. He who committed the most atrocious actions, and such as no human creature would have imagined, was the most applauded and considered as the greatest man among them. I dare not write the horrible and inconceivable atrocities they committed on the persons of the ladies.

Among other infamous acts they murdered a knight, and, having fastened him to a spit, roasted him before the eyes of his wife and his children, and forced her to eat some of her husband's flesh, and then knocked her brains out. They had chosen a king among them, who came from Clermont in Beauvoisis. He was elected as the worst of the bad, and they denominated him "Jacques Bonhomme."[57]

These wretches burned and destroyed in the county of Beauvoisis, and at Corbie, Amiens, and Montdidier, upward of sixty good houses and strong castles. By the acts of such traitors in the country of Brie and thereabout, it behooved every lady, knight, and squire, having the means of escape, to fly to Meaux, if they wished to preserve themselves from being insulted and afterward murdered. The Duchess of Normandy, the Duchess of Orleans, and many other ladies had adopted this course. These cursed people thus supported themselves in the countries between Paris, Noyon, and Soissons, and in all the territory of Coucy, in the County of Valois. In the bishoprics of Noyon, Laon, and Soissons there were upward of one hundred castles and good houses of knights and squires destroyed.

When the gentlemen of Beauvoisis, Corbie, Vermandois, and of the lands where these wretches were associated, saw to what lengths their madness had extended, they sent for succor to their friends in Flanders, Hainault, and Bohemia; from which places numbers soon came and united themselves with the gentlemen of the country. They began therefore to kill and destroy these wretches wherever they met them, and hung them up by troops on the nearest trees. The King of Navarre even destroyed in one day, near Clermont in Beauvoisis, upward of three thousand; but they were by this time so much increased in numbers that, had they been all together, they would have amounted to more than one hundred thousand. When they were asked for what reason they acted so wickedly, they replied, they knew not, but they did so because they saw others do it, and they thought that by this means they should destroy all the nobles and gentlemen in the world.

At this period the Duke of Normandy, suspecting the King of Navarre, the provost of merchants and those of his faction--for they were always unanimous in their sentiments--set out from Paris, and went to the bridge at Charenton-upon-Marne, where he issued a special summons for the attendance of the crown vassals, and sent a defiance to the provost of merchants and to all those who should support him. The provost, being fearful he would return in the night-time to Paris--which was then unenclosed--collected as many workmen as possible from all parts, and employed them to make ditches all around Paris. He also surrounded it by a wall with strong gates. For the space of one year there were three hundred workmen daily employed; the expense of which was equal to maintaining an army. I must say that to surround with a sufficient defence such a city as Paris was an act of greater utility than any provost of merchants had ever done before; for otherwise it would have been plundered and destroyed several times by the different factions.

At the time these wicked men were overrunning the country, the Earl of Foix, and his cousin the Captal of Buch were returning from a crusade in Prussia. They were informed, on their entering France, of the distress the nobles were in; and they learned at the city of Chalons that the Duchess of Orleans and three hundred other ladies, under the protection of the Duke of Orleans, were fled to Meaux on account of these disturbances. The two knights resolved to go to the assistance of these ladies, and to reënforce them with all their might, notwithstanding the Captal was attached to the English; but at that time there was a truce between the two kings. They might have in their company about sixty lances.

They were most cheerfully received, on their arrival at Meaux, by the ladies and damsels; for these Jacks and peasants of Brie had heard what number of ladies, married and unmarried, and young children of quality were in Meaux; they had united themselves with those of Valois and were on their road thither. On the other hand, those of Paris had also been informed of the treasures Meaux contained, and had set out from that place in crowds. Having met the others, they amounted together to nine thousand men. Their forces were augmenting every step they advanced.

They came to the gates of the town, which the inhabitants opened to them and allowed them to enter; they did so in such numbers that all the streets were quite filled, as far as the market-place, which is tolerably strong, but it required to be guarded, though the river Marne nearly surrounds it. The noble dames who were lodged there, seeing such multitudes rushing toward them, were exceedingly frightened. On this, the two lords and their company advanced to the gate of the market-place, which they had opened, and, marching under the banners of the Earl of Foix and Duke of Orleans, and the pennon of the Captal of Buch, posted themselves in front of this peasantry, who were badly armed.

When these banditti perceived such a troop of gentlemen, so well equipped, sally forth to guard the market-place, the foremost of them began to fall back. The gentlemen then followed them, using their lances and swords. When they felt the weight of their blows, they, through fear, turned about so fast they fell one over the other. All manner of armed persons then rushed out of the barriers, drove them before them, striking them down like beasts, and clearing the town of them; for they kept neither regularity nor order, slaying so many that they were tired. They flung them in great heaps into the river. In short, they killed upward of seven thousand. Not one would have escaped if they had chosen to pursue them farther.

On the return of the men-at-arms, they set fire to the town of Meaux, burned it; and all the peasants they could find were shut up in it, because they had been of the party of the Jacks. Since this discomfiture which happened to them at Meaux, they never collected again in any great bodies; for the young Enguerrand de Coucy had plenty of gentlemen under his orders, who destroyed them, wherever they could be met with, without mercy.

CONQUESTS OF TIMUR THE TARTAR

A.D. 1370-1405

EDWARD GIBBON

Timur, better known as Tamerlane ("Timur the Lame"), was
born in Central Asia--probably in the village of Sebzar,
near Samarkand, in Transoxiana (Turkestan). He is supposed
to have been descended from a follower of Genghis Khan,
founder of the Mongol empire; or, as some say, directly, by
the mother's side, from Genghis himself. He is the
Tamerlaine or Tamburlaine of Marlowe and other dramatists.
Gibbon introduces him in the _Decline and Fall_, apparently
because fascinated with the subject, although he gives as a
historical reason the fact that Timur's triumph in Asia
delayed the final fall of Constantinople--taken by the Turks
in 1453.

In early youth the future ruler of so vast an empire was
engaged in struggles for ascendency with the petty chiefs of
rival tribes. His boundless ambition early conceived the
conquest and monarchy of the world; his wish was "to live in
the memory and esteem of future ages." He was born in a
period of anarchy, when the crumbling kingdoms of the
Asiatic dynasties were no longer able to resist the
adventurous spirit determined to occupy the new field of
military triumph which opened before him. At the age of
twenty-five Timur was hailed as the deliverer of his
country. When he chose Samarkand as the capital of his
dominion, he declared his purpose to make that dominion
embrace the whole habitable earth; and at the height of his
power he ruled from the Great Wall of China to the centre of
Russia on the north, while his sovereignty extended to the
Mediterranean and the Nile on the west, and on the east to
the sources of the Ganges. In his own person he united
twenty-seven different sovereignties, and nine several
dynasties of kings gave place to the unparalleled conqueror,
who won by the sword a larger portion of the globe than
Cyrus or Alexander, Cæsar or Attila, Genghis Khan,
Charlemagne, or Napoleon.

It was believed in the family and empire of Timur that he
himself composed the _Commentaries_ of his life and the
_Institutions_ of his government, which, however, were
probably the work of his secretaries. These manuscripts have
been of great service to historians in their study of
Timur's career.

At the age of thirty-four, and in a general diet, Timur was invested with imperial command, but he affected to revere the house of Genghis; and while the emir Timur reigned over Zagatai and the East, a nominal khan served as a private officer in the armies of his servant. Without expatiating on the victories of thirty-five campaigns, without describing the lines of march which he repeatedly traced over the continent of Asia, I shall briefly represent Timur's conquests in Persia, Tartary, and India, and from thence proceed to the more interesting narrative of his Ottoman war.

No sooner had Timur reunited to the patrimony of Zagatai the dependent countries of Karizme and Kandahar than he turned his eyes toward the kingdoms of Iran or Persia. From the Oxus to the Tigris that extensive country was without a lawful sovereign. Peace and justice had been banished from the land above forty years; and the Mongol invader might seem to listen to the cries of an oppressed people. Their petty tyrants might have opposed him with confederate arms: they separately stood and successively fell; and the difference of their fate was only marked by the promptitude of submission or the obstinacy of resistance. Ibrahim, Prince of Shirwan or Albania, kissed the footstool of the imperial throne. His peace offerings of silks, horses, and jewels were composed, according to the Tartar fashion, each article of nine pieces; but a critical spectator observed that there were only eight slaves. "I myself am the ninth," replied Ibraham, who was prepared for the remark: and his flattery was rewarded by the smile of Timur.

Shah Mansur, Prince of Fars, or the proper Persia, was one of the least powerful, but most dangerous, of his enemies. In a battle under the walls of Shiraz, he broke, with three or four thousand soldiers, the _coul_, or main body, of thirty thousand horse, where the Emperor fought in person. No more than fourteen or fifteen guards remained near the standard of Timur; he stood firm as a rock, and received on his helmet two weighty strokes of a cimeter; the Mongols rallied; the head of Mansur was thrown at his feet; and he declared his esteem of the valor of a foe by extirpating all the males of so intrepid a race. From Shiraz his troops advanced to the Persian Gulf; and the richness and weakness of Ormus were displayed in an annual tribute of six hundred thousand dinars of gold.

Bagdad was no longer the city of peace, the seat of the caliphs; but the noblest conquest of Khulagu could not be overlooked by his ambitious successor. The whole course of the Tigris and Euphrates, from the mouth to the sources of those rivers, was reduced to his obedience; he entered Edessa; and the Turcomans of the black sheep were chastised for the sacrilegious pillage of a caravan of Mecca. In the mountains of Georgia the native Christians still braved the law and the sword of Mahomet; by three expeditions he obtained the merit of the _gazie_, or holy war; and the Prince of Tiflis became his proselyte and friend.

A just retaliation might be urged for the invasion of Turkestan, or the Eastern Tartary. The dignity of Timur could not endure the impunity of the Getes: he passed the Sihun, subdued the kingdom of Kashgar, and marched seven times into the heart of their country. His most distant camp was two months' journey to the northeast of Samarkand; and his emirs, who traversed the river Irtysh, engraved in the forests of Siberia a rude memorial of their exploits. The conquest of Kiptchak, or the Western Tartary, was founded on the double motive of aiding the distressed and chastising the ungrateful. Toctamish, a fugitive prince, was entertained and protected in his court; the ambassadors of Auruss Khan were dismissed with a haughty denial, and followed on the same day by the armies of Zagatai; and their success established Toctamish in the Mongol empire of the North.

But, after a reign of ten years, the new Khan forgot the merits and the strength of his benefactor--the base usurper, as he deemed him, of the sacred rights of the house of Genghis. Through the gates of Derbent he entered Persia at the head of ninety thousand horse: with the innumerable forces of Kiptchak, Bulgaria, Circassia, and Russia, he passed the Sihun, burned the palaces of Timur, and compelled him, amid the winter snows, to contend for Samarkand and his life. After a mild expostulation and a glorious victory the Emperor resolved on revenge; and by the east and the west of the Caspian and the Volga he twice invaded Kiptchak with such mighty powers that thirteen miles were measured from his right to his left wing. In a march of five months they rarely beheld the footsteps of man; and their daily subsistence was often trusted to the fortune of the chase. At length the armies encountered each other; but the treachery of the standard-bearer, who, in the heat of action, reversed the imperial standard of Kiptchak, determined the victory of the Zagatais and Toctamish--I speak the language of the _Institutions_--gave the tribe of Toushi to the wind of desolation. He fled to the Christian Duke of Lithuania, again returned to the banks of the Volga, and, after fifteen battles with a domestic rival, at last perished in the wilds of Siberia.

The pursuit of a flying enemy carried Timur into the tributary provinces of Russia; a duke of the reigning family was made prisoner amid the ruins of his capital; and Yelets, by the pride and ignorance of the orientals, might easily be confounded with the genuine metropolis of the nation. Moscow trembled at the approach of the Tartar. Ambition and prudence recalled him to the south, the desolate country was exhausted, and the Mongol soldiers were enriched with an immense spoil of precious furs, of linen of Antioch, and of ingots of gold and silver. On the banks of the Don, or Tanais, he received a humble deputation from the consuls and merchants of Egypt, Venice, Genoa, Catalonia, and Biscay, who occupied the commerce and city of Tana, or Azov, at the mouth of the river. They offered their gifts, admired his magnificence, and trusted his royal word. But the peaceful visit of an emir, who explored the state of the magazines and harbor, was speedily followed by the destructive presence of the Tartars. The city of Tana was reduced to ashes; the Moslems were pillaged and dismissed; but all the Christians who had not fled to their ships were condemned either to death or slavery. Revenge prompted him to burn the cities of Sarai and Astrakhan, the monuments of rising civilization; and his vanity proclaimed that he had penetrated to the region of perpetual daylight, a strange phenomenon, which authorized his Mahometan doctors to dispense with the obligation of evening prayer.

When Timur first proposed to his princes and emirs the invasion of India or Hindustan, he was answered by a murmur of discontent: "The rivers! and the mountains and deserts! and the soldiers clad in armor! and the elephants, destroyers of men!" But the displeasure of the Emperor was more dreadful than all these terrors; and his superior reason was convinced that an enterprise of such tremendous aspect was safe and easy in the execution. He was informed by his spies of the weakness and anarchy of Hindustan: the _subahs_ of the provinces had erected the standard of rebellion; and the perpetual infancy of Sultan Mahmud was despised even in the harem of Delhi. The Mongol army moved in three great divisions, and Timur observes with pleasure that the ninety-two squadrons of a thousand horse most fortunately corresponded with the ninety-two names or epithets of the prophet Mahomet.

Between the Jihun and the Indus they crossed one of the ridges of mountains which are styled by the Arabian geographers the "Stony Girdles of the Earth." The highland robbers were subdued or extirpated; but great numbers of men and horses perished in the snow; the Emperor himself was let down a precipice on a portable scaffold--the ropes were one hundred and fifty cubits in length--and before he could reach the bottom, this dangerous operation was five times repeated. Timur crossed the Indus at the ordinary passage of Attock, and successively traversed, in the footsteps of Alexander, the Punjab, or five rivers, that fall into the master stream. From Attock to Delhi the high road measures no more than six hundred miles; but the two conquerors deviated to the southeast; and the motive of Timur was to join his grandson, who had achieved by his command the conquest of Multan. On the eastern bank of the Hyphasis, on the edge of the desert, the Macedonian hero halted and wept; the Mongol entered the desert, reduced the fortress of Batnir, and stood in arms before the gates of Delhi, a great and flourishing city, which had subsisted three centuries under the dominion of the Mahometan kings.

The siege, more especially of the castle, might have been a work of time; but he tempted, by the appearance of weakness, the Sultan Mahmud and his wazir to descend into the plain, with ten thousand cuirassiers, forty thousand of his foot-guards, and one hundred and twenty elephants, whose tusks are said to have been armed with sharp and poisoned daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the imagination of his troops, he condescended to use some extraordinary precautions of fire and a ditch, of iron spikes and a rampart of bucklers; but the event taught the Mongols to smile at their own fears; and as soon as these unwieldy animals were routed, the inferior species (the men of India) disappeared from the field. Timur made his triumphal entry into the capital of Hindustan, and admired, with a view to imitate, the architecture of the stately mosque; but the order or license of a general pillage and massacre polluted the festival of his victory. He resolved to purify his soldiers in the blood of the idolaters, or Gentoos, who still surpass, in the proportion of ten to one, the numbers of the Moslems. In this pious design he advanced one hundred miles to the northeast of Delhi, passed the Ganges, fought several battles by land and water, and penetrated to the famous rock of Cupele, the statue of the cow,[58] that _seems_ to discharge the mighty river, whose source is far distant among the mountains of Tibet. His return was along the skirts of the northern hills; nor could this rapid campaign of one year justify the strange foresight of his emirs, that their children in a warm climate would degenerate into a race of Hindus.

It was on the banks of the Ganges that Timur was informed, by his speedy messengers, of the disturbances which had arisen on the confines of Georgia and Anatolia, of the revolt of the Christians, and the ambitious designs of the sultan Bajazet. His vigor of mind and body was not impaired by sixty-three years and innumerable fatigues; and, after enjoying some tranquil months in the palace of Samarkand, he proclaimed a new expedition of seven years into the western countries of Asia. To the soldiers who had served in the Indian war he granted the choice of remaining at home or following their prince; but the troops of all the provinces and kingdoms of Persia were commanded to assemble at Ispahan and wait the arrival of the imperial standard. It was first directed against the Christians of Georgia, who were strong only in their rocks, their castles, and the winter season; but these obstacles were overcome by the zeal and perseverance of Timur: the rebels submitted to the tribute or the _Koran_; and if both religions boasted of their martyrs, that name is more justly due to the Christian prisoners, who were offered the choice of abjuration or death.

On his descent from the hills the Emperor gave audience to the first ambassadors of Bajazet, and opened the hostile correspondence of complaints and menaces, which fermented two years before the final explosion. Between two jealous and haughty neighbors, the motives of quarrel will seldom be wanting. The Mongol and Ottoman conquests now touched each other in the neighborhood of Erzerum and the Euphrates; nor had the doubtful limit been ascertained by time and treaty. Each of these ambitious monarchs might accuse his rival of violating his territory, of threatening his vassals and protecting his rebels; and, by the name of rebels, each understood the fugitive princes, whose kingdoms he had usurped and whose life or liberty he implacably pursued. In their victorious career Timur was impatient of an equal, and Bajazet was ignorant of a superior.

In his first expedition, Timur was satisfied with the siege and destruction of Sebaste, a strong city on the borders of Anatolia. He then turned aside to the invasion of Syria and Egypt, where the military republic of the mamelukes still reigned. The Syrian emirs were assembled at Aleppo to repel the invasion; they confided in the fame and discipline of the mamelukes, in the temper of their swords and lances of the purest steel of Damascus, in the strength of their walled cities, and in the populousness of sixty thousand villages; and instead of sustaining a siege, they threw open their gates and arrayed their forces in the plain. But these forces were not cemented by virtue and union, and some powerful emirs had been seduced to desert or betray their more loyal companions. Timur's front was covered with a line of Indian elephants, whose turrets were filled with archers and Greek fire; the rapid evolutions of his cavalry completed the dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on each other; many thousands were stifled or slaughtered in the entrance of the great street; the Mongols entered with the fugitives; and after a short defence the impregnable citadel of Aleppo was surrendered by cowardice or treachery. Among the suppliants and captives, Timur distinguished the doctors of the law, whom he invited to the dangerous honor of a personal conference. The Mongol Prince was a zealous Mussulman; but his Persian schools had taught him to revere the memory of Ali and Hasan; and he had imbibed a deep prejudice against the Syrians as the enemies of the son of the daughter of the apostle of God. To these doctors he proposed a captious question, which the casuists of Samarkand and Herat were incapable of resolving. "Who are the true martyrs, of those who are slain on my side or on that of my enemies?" But he was silenced, or satisfied, by the dexterity of one of the cadis of Aleppo, who replied, in the words of Mahomet himself, that the motive, not the ensign, constitutes the martyr; and that the Moslems of either party who fight only for the glory of God may deserve that sacred appellation. The true succession of the caliphs was a controversy of a still more delicate nature; and the frankness of a doctor, too honest for his situation, provoked the Emperor to exclaim: "Ye are as false as those of Damascus: Moawiyah was a usurper, Yezid a tyrant, and Ali alone is the lawful successor of the Prophet." A prudent explanation restored his tranquillity, and he passed to a more familiar topic of conversation. "What is your age?" said he to the cadi. "Fifty years." "It would be the age of my eldest son: you see me here," continued Timur, "a poor, lame, decrepit mortal. Yet by my arms has the Almighty been pleased to subdue the kingdoms of Iran, Turan, and the Indies. I am not a man of blood; and God is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity." During this peaceful conversation the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood and reëchoed with the cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks of violated virgins. The rich plunder that was abandoned to his soldiers might stimulate their avarice; but their cruelty was enforced by the peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom, were curiously piled in columns and pyramids. The Mongols celebrated the feast of victory, while the surviving Moslems passed the night in tears and in chains.

I shall not dwell on the march of the destroyer from Aleppo to Damascus, where he was rudely encountered, and almost overthrown, by the armies of Egypt. A retrograde motion was imputed to his distress and despair; one of his nephews deserted to the enemy; and Syria rejoiced in the tale of his defeat, when the Sultan was driven, by the revolt of the mamelukes, to escape with precipitation and shame to his palace of Cairo. Abandoned by their Prince, the inhabitants of Damascus still defended their walls; and Timur consented to raise the siege if they would adorn his retreat with a gift or ransom, each article of nine pieces. But no sooner had he introduced himself into the city, under color of a truce, than he perfidiously violated the treaty, imposed a contribution of ten millions of gold, and animated his troops to chastise the posterity of those Syrians who had executed, or approved, the murder of the grandson of Mahomet. After a period of seven centuries Damascus was reduced to ashes, because a Tartar was moved by religious zeal to avenge the blood of an Arab.

The losses and fatigues of the campaign obliged Timur to renounce the conquest of Palestine and Egypt; but in his return to the Euphrates he delivered Aleppo to the flames and justified his pious motive by the pardon and reward of two thousand sectaries of Ali, who were desirous to visit the tomb of his son. I have expatiated on the personal anecdotes which mark the character of the Mongol hero, but I shall briefly mention that he erected, on the ruins of Bagdad, a pyramid of ninety thousand heads; again visited Georgia; encamped on the banks of the Araxes; and proclaimed his resolution of marching against the Ottoman Emperor. Conscious of the importance of the war, he collected his forces from every province; eight hundred thousand men were enrolled on his military list, but the splendid commands of five and ten thousand horse may be rather expressive of the rank and pension of the chiefs than of the genuine number of effective soldiers. In the pillage of Syria the Mongols had acquired immense riches; but the delivery of their pay and arrears for seven years more firmly attached them to the imperial standard.

During this diversion of the Mongol arms, Bajazet had two years to collect his forces for a more serious encounter. They consisted of four hundred thousand horse and foot whose merit and fidelity were of an unequal complexion. We may discriminate the janizaries, who have been gradually raised to an establishment of forty thousand men; a national cavalry (the _spahis_ of modern times); twenty thousand cuirassiers of Europe, clad in black and impenetrable armor; the troops of Anatolia, whose princes had taken refuge in the camp of Timur: and a colony of Tartars, whom he had driven from Kiptchak, and to whom Bajazet had assigned a settlement in the plains of Adrianople. The fearless confidence of the Sultan urged him to meet his antagonist; and, as if he had chosen that spot for revenge, he displayed his banner near the ruins of the unfortunate Sebaste.

In the mean while Timur moved from the Araxes through the countries of Armenia and Anatolia. His boldness was secured by the wisest precautions; his speed was guided by order and discipline; and the woods, the mountains, and the rivers were diligently explored by the flying squadrons, who marked his road and preceded his standard. Firm in his plan of fighting in the heart of the Ottoman kingdom, he avoided their camp, dexterously inclined to the left, occupied Cæsarea, traversed the salt desert and the river Halys, and invested Angora; while the Sultan, immovable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar swiftness to the crawling of a snail. He returned on the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora; and as both generals were alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a memorable battle, which has immortalized the glory of Timur and the shame of Bajazet.