Chapter LXV: Elevation Of Timour Or Tamerlane, And His

Death.—Part III.

On the throne of Samarcand, 63 he displayed, in a short repose,
his magnificence and power; listened to the complaints of the
people; distributed a just measure of rewards and punishments;
employed his riches in the architecture of palaces and temples;
and gave audience to the ambassadors of Egypt, Arabia, India,
Tartary, Russia, and Spain, the last of whom presented a suit of
tapestry which eclipsed the pencil of the Oriental artists. The
marriage of six of the emperor’s grandsons was esteemed an act of
religion as well as of paternal tenderness; and the pomp of the
ancient caliphs was revived in their nuptials. They were
celebrated in the gardens of Canighul, decorated with innumerable
tents and pavilions, which displayed the luxury of a great city
and the spoils of a victorious camp. Whole forests were cut down
to supply fuel for the kitchens; the plain was spread with
pyramids of meat, and vases of every liquor, to which thousands
of guests were courteously invited: the orders of the state, and
the nations of the earth, were marshalled at the royal banquet;
nor were the ambassadors of Europe (says the haughty Persian)
excluded from the feast; since even the _casses_, the smallest of
fish, find their place in the ocean. 64 The public joy was
testified by illuminations and masquerades; the trades of
Samarcand passed in review; and every trade was emulous to
execute some quaint device, some marvellous pageant, with the
materials of their peculiar art. After the marriage contracts had
been ratified by the cadhis, the bride-grooms and their brides
retired to the nuptial chambers: nine times, according to the
Asiatic fashion, they were dressed and undressed; and at each
change of apparel, pearls and rubies were showered on their
heads, and contemptuously abandoned to their attendants. A
general indulgence was proclaimed: every law was relaxed, every
pleasure was allowed; the people was free, the sovereign was
idle; and the historian of Timour may remark, that, after
devoting fifty years to the attainment of empire, the only happy
period of his life were the two months in which he ceased to
exercise his power. But he was soon awakened to the cares of
government and war. The standard was unfurled for the invasion of
China: the emirs made their report of two hundred thousand, the
select and veteran soldiers of Iran and Touran: their baggage and
provisions were transported by five hundred great wagons, and an
immense train of horses and camels; and the troops might prepare
for a long absence, since more than six months were employed in
the tranquil journey of a caravan from Samarcand to Pekin.
Neither age, nor the severity of the winter, could retard the
impatience of Timour; he mounted on horseback, passed the Sihoon
on the ice, marched seventy-six parasangs, three hundred miles,
from his capital, and pitched his last camp in the neighborhood
of Otrar, where he was expected by the angel of death. Fatigue,
and the indiscreet use of iced water, accelerated the progress of
his fever; and the conqueror of Asia expired in the seventieth
year of his age, thirty-five years after he had ascended the
throne of Zagatai. His designs were lost; his armies were
disbanded; China was saved; and fourteen years after his decease,
the most powerful of his children sent an embassy of friendship
and commerce to the court of Pekin. 65

63 (return) [ For the return, triumph, and death of Timour, see
Sherefeddin (l. vi. c. 1—30) and Arabshah, (tom. ii. c. 36—47.)]

64 (return) [ Sherefeddin (l. vi. c. 24) mentions the ambassadors
of one of the most potent sovereigns of Europe. We know that it
was Henry III. king of Castile; and the curious relation of his
two embassies is still extant, (Mariana, Hist. Hispan. l. xix. c.
11, tom. ii. p. 329, 330. Avertissement à l’Hist. de Timur Bec,
p. 28—33.) There appears likewise to have been some
correspondence between the Mogul emperor and the court of Charles
VII. king of France, (Histoire de France, par Velly et Villaret,
tom. xii. p. 336.)]

65 (return) [ See the translation of the Persian account of their
embassy, a curious and original piece, (in the ivth part of the
Relations de Thevenot.) They presented the emperor of China with
an old horse which Timour had formerly rode. It was in the year
1419 that they departed from the court of Herat, to which place
they returned in 1422 from Pekin.]

The fame of Timour has pervaded the East and West: his posterity
is still invested with the Imperial _title_; and the admiration
of his subjects, who revered him almost as a deity, may be
justified in some degree by the praise or confession of his
bitterest enemies. 66 Although he was lame of a hand and foot,
his form and stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his
vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was
corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar
discourse he was grave and modest, and if he was ignorant of the
Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian
and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the
learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of
his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or
corrupted with new refinements. 67 In his religion he was a
zealous, though not perhaps an orthodox, Mussulman; 68 but his
sound understanding may tempt us to believe, that a superstitious
reverence for omens and prophecies, for saints and astrologers,
was only affected as an instrument of policy. In the government
of a vast empire, he stood alone and absolute, without a rebel to
oppose his power, a favorite to seduce his affections, or a
minister to mislead his judgment. It was his firmest maxim, that
whatever might be the consequence, the word of the prince should
never be disputed or recalled; but his foes have maliciously
observed, that the commands of anger and destruction were more
strictly executed than those of beneficence and favor. His sons
and grandsons, of whom Timour left six-and-thirty at his decease,
were his first and most submissive subjects; and whenever they
deviated from their duty, they were corrected, according to the
laws of Zingis, with the bastinade, and afterwards restored to
honor and command. Perhaps his heart was not devoid of the social
virtues; perhaps he was not incapable of loving his friends and
pardoning his enemies; but the rules of morality are founded on
the public interest; and it may be sufficient to applaud the
_wisdom_ of a monarch, for the liberality by which he is not
impoverished, and for the justice by which he is strengthened and
enriched. To maintain the harmony of authority and obedience, to
chastise the proud, to protect the weak, to reward the deserving,
to banish vice and idleness from his dominions, to secure the
traveller and merchant, to restrain the depredations of the
soldier, to cherish the labors of the husbandman, to encourage
industry and learning, and, by an equal and moderate assessment,
to increase the revenue, without increasing the taxes, are indeed
the duties of a prince; but, in the discharge of these duties, he
finds an ample and immediate recompense. Timour might boast,
that, at his accession to the throne, Asia was the prey of
anarchy and rapine, whilst under his prosperous monarchy a child,
fearless and unhurt, might carry a purse of gold from the East to
the West. Such was his confidence of merit, that from this
reformation he derived an excuse for his victories, and a title
to universal dominion. The four following observations will serve
to appreciate his claim to the public gratitude; and perhaps we
shall conclude, that the Mogul emperor was rather the scourge
than the benefactor of mankind. _1._ If some partial disorders,
some local oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timour, the
remedy was far more pernicious than the disease. By their rapine,
cruelty, and discord, the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict
their subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the
footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by
flourishing cities was often marked by his abominable trophies,
by columns, or pyramids, of human heads. Astracan, Carizme,
Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Boursa, Smyrna, and a
thousand others, were sacked, or burnt, or utterly destroyed, in
his presence, and by his troops: and perhaps his conscience would
have been startled, if a priest or philosopher had dared to
number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the
establishment of peace and order. 69 _2._ His most destructive
wars were rather inroads than conquests. He invaded Turkestan,
Kipzak, Russia, Hindostan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia,
without a hope or a desire of preserving those distant provinces.
From thence he departed laden with spoil; but he left behind him
neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor magistrates to
protect the obedient, natives. When he had broken the fabric of
their ancient government, he abandoned them to the evils which
his invasion had aggravated or caused; nor were these evils
compensated by any present or possible benefits. _3._ The
kingdoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he
labored to cultivate and adorn, as the perpetual inheritance of
his family. But his peaceful labors were often interrupted, and
sometimes blasted, by the absence of the conqueror. While he
triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his servants, and even his
sons, forgot their master and their duty. The public and private
injuries were poorly redressed by the tardy rigor of inquiry and
punishment; and we must be content to praise the _Institutions_
of Timour, as the specious idea of a perfect monarchy. _4._
Whatsoever might be the blessings of his administration, they
evaporated with his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was
the ambition of his children and grandchildren; 70 the enemies of
each other and of the people. A fragment of the empire was upheld
with some glory by Sharokh, his youngest son; but after _his_
decease, the scene was again involved in darkness and blood; and
before the end of a century, Transoxiana and Persia were trampled
by the Uzbeks from the north, and the Turkmans of the black and
white sheep. The race of Timour would have been extinct, if a
hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the
Uzbek arms to the conquest of Hindostan. His successors (the
great Moguls 71) extended their sway from the mountains of
Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the Gulf of Bengal.
Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire had been dissolved;
their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber;
and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company
of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the Northern Ocean.

66 (return) [ From Arabshah, tom. ii. c. 96. The bright or softer
colors are borrowed from Sherefeddin, D’Herbelot, and the
Institutions.]

67 (return) [ His new system was multiplied from 32 pieces and 64
squares to 56 pieces and 110 or 130 squares; but, except in his
court, the old game has been thought sufficiently elaborate. The
Mogul emperor was rather pleased than hurt with the victory of a
subject: a chess player will feel the value of this encomium!]

68 (return) [ See Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 15, 25. Arabshah tom.
ii. c. 96, p. 801, 803) approves the impiety of Timour and the
Moguls, who almost preferred to the Koran the _Yacsa_, or Law of
Zingis, (cui Deus maledicat;) nor will he believe that Sharokh
had abolished the use and authority of that Pagan code.]

69 (return) [ Besides the bloody passages of this narrative, I
must refer to an anticipation in the third volume of the Decline
and Fall, which in a single note (p. 234, note 25) accumulates
nearly 300,000 heads of the monuments of his cruelty. Except in
Rowe’s play on the fifth of November, I did not expect to hear of
Timour’s amiable moderation (White’s preface, p. 7.) Yet I can
excuse a generous enthusiasm in the reader, and still more in the
editor, of the _Institutions_.]

70 (return) [ Consult the last chapters of Sherefeddin and
Arabshah, and M. De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. l. xx.)
Fraser’s History of Nadir Shah, (p. 1—62.) The story of Timour’s
descendants is imperfectly told; and the second and third parts
of Sherefeddin are unknown.]

71 (return) [ Shah Allum, the present Mogul, is in the fourteenth
degree from Timour, by Miran Shah, his third son. See the second
volume of Dow’s History of Hindostan.]

Far different was the fate of the Ottoman monarchy. The massy
trunk was bent to the ground, but no sooner did the hurricane
pass away, than it again rose with fresh vigor and more lively
vegetation. When Timour, in every sense, had evacuated Anatolia,
he left the cities without a palace, a treasure, or a king. The
open country was overspread with hordes of shepherds and robbers
of Tartar or Turkman origin; the recent conquests of Bajazet were
restored to the emirs, one of whom, in base revenge, demolished
his sepulchre; and his five sons were eager, by civil discord, to
consume the remnant of their patrimony. I shall enumerate their
names in the order of their age and actions. 72 _1._ It is
doubtful, whether I relate the story of the true _Mustapha_, or
of an impostor who personated that lost prince. He fought by his
father’s side in the battle of Angora: but when the captive
sultan was permitted to inquire for his children, Mousa alone
could be found; and the Turkish historians, the slaves of the
triumphant faction, are persuaded that his brother was confounded
among the slain. If Mustapha escaped from that disastrous field,
he was concealed twelve years from his friends and enemies; till
he emerged in Thessaly, and was hailed by a numerous party, as
the son and successor of Bajazet. His first defeat would have
been his last, had not the true, or false, Mustapha been saved by
the Greeks, and restored, after the decease of his brother
Mahomet, to liberty and empire. A degenerate mind seemed to argue
his spurious birth; and if, on the throne of Adrianople, he was
adored as the Ottoman sultan, his flight, his fetters, and an
ignominious gibbet, delivered the impostor to popular contempt. A
similar character and claim was asserted by several rival
pretenders: thirty persons are said to have suffered under the
name of Mustapha; and these frequent executions may perhaps
insinuate, that the Turkish court was not perfectly secure of the
death of the lawful prince. _2._ After his father’s captivity,
Isa 73 reigned for some time in the neighborhood of Angora,
Sinope, and the Black Sea; and his ambassadors were dismissed
from the presence of Timour with fair promises and honorable
gifts. But their master was soon deprived of his province and
life, by a jealous brother, the sovereign of Amasia; and the
final event suggested a pious allusion, that the law of Moses and
Jesus, of _Isa_ and _Mousa_, had been abrogated by the greater
Mahomet. _3._ _Soliman_ is not numbered in the list of the
Turkish emperors: yet he checked the victorious progress of the
Moguls; and after their departure, united for a while the thrones
of Adrianople and Boursa. In war he was brave, active, and
fortunate; his courage was softened by clemency; but it was
likewise inflamed by presumption, and corrupted by intemperance
and idleness. He relaxed the nerves of discipline, in a
government where either the subject or the sovereign must
continually tremble: his vices alienated the chiefs of the army
and the law; and his daily drunkenness, so contemptible in a
prince and a man, was doubly odious in a disciple of the prophet.
In the slumber of intoxication he was surprised by his brother
Mousa; and as he fled from Adrianople towards the Byzantine
capital, Soliman was overtaken and slain in a bath, 731 after a
reign of seven years and ten months. _4._ The investiture of
Mousa degraded him as the slave of the Moguls: his tributary
kingdom of Anatolia was confined within a narrow limit, nor could
his broken militia and empty treasury contend with the hardy and
veteran bands of the sovereign of Romania. Mousa fled in disguise
from the palace of Boursa; traversed the Propontis in an open
boat; wandered over the Walachian and Servian hills; and after
some vain attempts, ascended the throne of Adrianople, so
recently stained with the blood of Soliman. In a reign of three
years and a half, his troops were victorious against the
Christians of Hungary and the Morea; but Mousa was ruined by his
timorous disposition and unseasonable clemency. After resigning
the sovereignty of Anatolia, he fell a victim to the perfidy of
his ministers, and the superior ascendant of his brother Mahomet.
_5._The final victory of Mahomet was the just recompense of his
prudence and moderation. Before his father’s captivity, the royal
youth had been intrusted with the government of Amasia, thirty
days’ journey from Constantinople, and the Turkish frontier
against the Christians of Trebizond and Georgia. The castle, in
Asiatic warfare, was esteemed impregnable; and the city of
Amasia, 74 which is equally divided by the River Iris, rises on
either side in the form of an amphitheatre, and represents on a
smaller scale the image of Bagdad. In his rapid career, Timour
appears to have overlooked this obscure and contumacious angle of
Anatolia; and Mahomet, without provoking the conqueror,
maintained his silent independence, and chased from the province
the last stragglers of the Tartar host. 741 He relieved himself
from the dangerous neighborhood of Isa; but in the contests of
their more powerful brethren his firm neutrality was respected;
till, after the triumph of Mousa, he stood forth the heir and
avenger of the unfortunate Soliman. Mahomet obtained Anatolia by
treaty, and Romania by arms; and the soldier who presented him
with the head of Mousa was rewarded as the benefactor of his king
and country. The eight years of his sole and peaceful reign were
usefully employed in banishing the vices of civil discord, and
restoring on a firmer basis the fabric of the Ottoman monarchy.
His last care was the choice of two viziers, Bajazet and Ibrahim,
75 who might guide the youth of his son Amurath; and such was
their union and prudence, that they concealed above forty days
the emperor’s death, till the arrival of his successor in the
palace of Boursa. A new war was kindled in Europe by the prince,
or impostor, Mustapha; the first vizier lost his army and his
head; but the more fortunate Ibrahim, whose name and family are
still revered, extinguished the last pretender to the throne of
Bajazet, and closed the scene of domestic hostility.

72 (return) [ The civil wars, from the death of Bajazet to that
of Mustapha, are related, according to the Turks, by Demetrius
Cantemir, (p. 58—82.) Of the Greeks, Chalcondyles, (l. iv. and
v.,) Phranza, (l. i. c. 30—32,) and Ducas, (c. 18—27,) the last
is the most copious and best informed.]

73 (return) [ Arabshah, (tom. ii. c. 26,) whose testimony on this
occasion is weighty and valuable. The existence of Isa (unknown
to the Turks) is likewise confirmed by Sherefeddin, (l. v. c.
57.)]

731 (return) [ He escaped from the bath, and fled towards
Constantinople. Five mothers from a village, Dugundschi, whose
inhabitants had suffered severely from the exactions of his
officers, recognized and followed him. Soliman shot two of them,
the others discharged their arrows in their turn the sultan fell
and his head was cut off. V. Hammer, vol. i. p. 349.—M.]

74 (return) [ Arabshah, loc. citat. Abulfeda, Geograph. tab.
xvii. p. 302. Busbequius, epist. i. p. 96, 97, in Itinere C. P.
et Amasiano.]

741 (return) [ See his nine battles. V. Hammer, p. 339.—M.]

75 (return) [ The virtues of Ibrahim are praised by a
contemporary Greek, (Ducas, c. 25.) His descendants are the sole
nobles in Turkey: they content themselves with the administration
of his pious foundations, are excused from public offices, and
receive two annual visits from the sultan, (Cantemir, p. 76.)]

In these conflicts, the wisest Turks, and indeed the body of the
nation, were strongly attached to the unity of the empire; and
Romania and Anatolia, so often torn asunder by private ambition,
were animated by a strong and invincible tendency of cohesion.
Their efforts might have instructed the Christian powers; and had
they occupied, with a confederate fleet, the Straits of
Gallipoli, the Ottomans, at least in Europe, must have been
speedily annihilated. But the schism of the West, and the
factions and wars of France and England, diverted the Latins from
this generous enterprise: they enjoyed the present respite,
without a thought of futurity; and were often tempted by a
momentary interest to serve the common enemy of their religion. A
colony of Genoese, 76 which had been planted at Phocæa 77 on the
Ionian coast, was enriched by the lucrative monopoly of alum; 78
and their tranquillity, under the Turkish empire, was secured by
the annual payment of tribute. In the last civil war of the
Ottomans, the Genoese governor, Adorno, a bold and ambitious
youth, embraced the party of Amurath; and undertook, with seven
stout galleys, to transport him from Asia to Europe. The sultan
and five hundred guards embarked on board the admiral’s ship;
which was manned by eight hundred of the bravest Franks. His life
and liberty were in their hands; nor can we, without reluctance,
applaud the fidelity of Adorno, who, in the midst of the passage,
knelt before him, and gratefully accepted a discharge of his
arrears of tribute. They landed in sight of Mustapha and
Gallipoli; two thousand Italians, armed with lances and
battle-axes, attended Amurath to the conquest of Adrianople; and
this venal service was soon repaid by the ruin of the commerce
and colony of Phocæa.

76 (return) [ See Pachymer, (l. v. c. 29,) Nicephorus Gregoras,
(l. ii. c. 1,) Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 57,) and Ducas, (c. 25.)
The last of these, a curious and careful observer, is entitled,
from his birth and station, to particular credit in all that
concerns Ionia and the islands. Among the nations that resorted
to New Phocæa, he mentions the English; ('Igglhnoi;) an early
evidence of Mediterranean trade.]

77 (return) [ For the spirit of navigation, and freedom of
ancient Phocæa, or rather the Phocæans, consult the first book of
Herodotus, and the Geographical Index of his last and learned
French translator, M. Larcher (tom. vii. p. 299.)]

78 (return) [ Phocæa is not enumerated by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxv.
52) among the places productive of alum: he reckons Egypt as the
first, and for the second the Isle of Melos, whose alum mines are
described by Tournefort, (tom. i. lettre iv.,) a traveller and a
naturalist. After the loss of Phocæa, the Genoese, in 1459, found
that useful mineral in the Isle of Ischia, (Ismael. Bouillaud, ad
Ducam, c. 25.)]

If Timour had generously marched at the request, and to the
relief, of the Greek emperor, he might be entitled to the praise
and gratitude of the Christians. 79 But a Mussulman, who carried
into Georgia the sword of persecution, and respected the holy
warfare of Bajazet, was not disposed to pity or succor the
_idolaters_ of Europe. The Tartar followed the impulse of
ambition; and the deliverance of Constantinople was the
accidental consequence. When Manuel abdicated the government, it
was his prayer, rather than his hope, that the ruin of the church
and state might be delayed beyond his unhappy days; and after his
return from a western pilgrimage, he expected every hour the news
of the sad catastrophe. On a sudden, he was astonished and
rejoiced by the intelligence of the retreat, the overthrow, and
the captivity of the Ottoman. Manuel 80 immediately sailed from
Modon in the Morea; ascended the throne of Constantinople, and
dismissed his blind competitor to an easy exile in the Isle of
Lesbos. The ambassadors of the son of Bajazet were soon
introduced to his presence; but their pride was fallen, their
tone was modest: they were awed by the just apprehension, lest
the Greeks should open to the Moguls the gates of Europe. Soliman
saluted the emperor by the name of father; solicited at his hands
the government or gift of Romania; and promised to deserve his
favor by inviolable friendship, and the restitution of
Thessalonica, with the most important places along the Strymon,
the Propontis, and the Black Sea. The alliance of Soliman exposed
the emperor to the enmity and revenge of Mousa: the Turks
appeared in arms before the gates of Constantinople; but they
were repulsed by sea and land; and unless the city was guarded by
some foreign mercenaries, the Greeks must have wondered at their
own triumph. But, instead of prolonging the division of the
Ottoman powers, the policy or passion of Manuel was tempted to
assist the most formidable of the sons of Bajazet. He concluded a
treaty with Mahomet, whose progress was checked by the
insuperable barrier of Gallipoli: the sultan and his troops were
transported over the Bosphorus; he was hospitably entertained in
the capital; and his successful sally was the first step to the
conquest of Romania. The ruin was suspended by the prudence and
moderation of the conqueror: he faithfully discharged his own
obligations and those of Soliman, respected the laws of gratitude
and peace; and left the emperor guardian of his two younger sons,
in the vain hope of saving them from the jealous cruelty of their
brother Amurath. But the execution of his last testament would
have offended the national honor and religion; and the divan
unanimously pronounced, that the royal youths should never be
abandoned to the custody and education of a Christian dog. On
this refusal, the Byzantine councils were divided; but the age
and caution of Manuel yielded to the presumption of his son John;
and they unsheathed a dangerous weapon of revenge, by dismissing
the true or false Mustapha, who had long been detained as a
captive and hostage, and for whose maintenance they received an
annual pension of three hundred thousand aspers. 81 At the door
of his prison, Mustapha subscribed to every proposal; and the
keys of Gallipoli, or rather of Europe, were stipulated as the
price of his deliverance. But no sooner was he seated on the
throne of Romania, than he dismissed the Greek ambassadors with a
smile of contempt, declaring, in a pious tone, that, at the day
of judgment, he would rather answer for the violation of an oath,
than for the surrender of a Mussulman city into the hands of the
infidels. The emperor was at once the enemy of the two rivals;
from whom he had sustained, and to whom he had offered, an
injury; and the victory of Amurath was followed, in the ensuing
spring, by the siege of Constantinople. 82

79 (return) [ The writer who has the most abused this fabulous
generosity, is our ingenious Sir William Temple, (his Works, vol.
iii. p. 349, 350, octavo edition,) that lover of exotic virtue.
After the conquest of Russia, &c., and the passage of the Danube,
his Tartar hero relieves, visits, admires, and refuses the city
of Constantine. His flattering pencil deviates in every line from
the truth of history; yet his pleasing fictions are more
excusable than the gross errors of Cantemir.]

80 (return) [ For the reigns of Manuel and John, of Mahomet I.
and Amurath II., see the Othman history of Cantemir, (p. 70—95,)
and the three Greeks, Chalcondyles, Phranza, and Ducas, who is
still superior to his rivals.]

81 (return) [ The Turkish asper (from the Greek asproV) is, or
was, a piece of _white_ or silver money, at present much debased,
but which was formerly equivalent to the 54th part, at least, of
a Venetian ducat or sequin; and the 300,000 aspers, a princely
allowance or royal tribute, may be computed at 2500_l_. sterling,
(Leunclav. Pandect. Turc. p. 406—408.) * Note: According to Von
Hammer, this calculation is much too low. The asper was a century
before the time of which writes, the tenth part of a ducat; for
the same tribute which the Byzantine writers state at 300,000
aspers the Ottomans state at 30,000 ducats, about 15000l Note,
vol. p. 636.—M.]

82 (return) [ For the siege of Constantinople in 1422, see the
particular and contemporary narrative of John Cananus, published
by Leo Allatius, at the end of his edition of Acropolita, (p.
188—199.)]

The religious merit of subduing the city of the Cæsars attracted
from Asia a crowd of volunteers, who aspired to the crown of
martyrdom: their military ardor was inflamed by the promise of
rich spoils and beautiful females; and the sultan’s ambition was
consecrated by the presence and prediction of Seid Bechar, a
descendant of the prophet, 83 who arrived in the camp, on a mule,
with a venerable train of five hundred disciples. But he might
blush, if a fanatic could blush, at the failure of his
assurances. The strength of the walls resisted an army of two
hundred thousand Turks; their assaults were repelled by the
sallies of the Greeks and their foreign mercenaries; the old
resources of defence were opposed to the new engines of attack;
and the enthusiasm of the dervis, who was snatched to heaven in
visionary converse with Mahomet, was answered by the credulity of
the Christians, who _beheld_ the Virgin Mary, in a violet
garment, walking on the rampart and animating their courage. 84
After a siege of two months, Amurath was recalled to Boursa by a
domestic revolt, which had been kindled by Greek treachery, and
was soon extinguished by the death of a guiltless brother. While
he led his Janizaries to new conquests in Europe and Asia, the
Byzantine empire was indulged in a servile and precarious respite
of thirty years. Manuel sank into the grave; and John Palæologus
was permitted to reign, for an annual tribute of three hundred
thousand aspers, and the dereliction of almost all that he held
beyond the suburbs of Constantinople.

83 (return) [ Cantemir, p. 80. Cananus, who describes Seid
Bechar, without naming him, supposes that the friend of Mahomet
assumed in his amours the privilege of a prophet, and that the
fairest of the Greek nuns were promised to the saint and his
disciples.]

84 (return) [ For this miraculous apparition, Cananus appeals to
the Mussulman saint; but who will bear testimony for Seid
Bechar?]

In the establishment and restoration of the Turkish empire, the
first merit must doubtless be assigned to the personal qualities
of the sultans; since, in human life, the most important scenes
will depend on the character of a single actor. By some shades of
wisdom and virtue, they may be discriminated from each other;
but, except in a single instance, a period of nine reigns, and
two hundred and sixty-five years, is occupied, from the elevation
of Othman to the death of Soliman, by a rare series of warlike
and active princes, who impressed their subjects with obedience
and their enemies with terror. Instead of the slothful luxury of
the seraglio, the heirs of royalty were educated in the council
and the field: from early youth they were intrusted by their
fathers with the command of provinces and armies; and this manly
institution, which was often productive of civil war, must have
essentially contributed to the discipline and vigor of the
monarchy. The Ottomans cannot style themselves, like the Arabian
caliphs, the descendants or successors of the apostle of God; and
the kindred which they claim with the Tartar khans of the house
of Zingis appears to be founded in flattery rather than in truth.
85 Their origin is obscure; but their sacred and indefeasible
right, which no time can erase, and no violence can infringe, was
soon and unalterably implanted in the minds of their subjects. A
weak or vicious sultan may be deposed and strangled; but his
inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot: nor has the most
daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful
sovereign. 86

85 (return) [ See Ricaut, (l. i. c. 13.) The Turkish sultans
assume the title of khan. Yet Abulghazi is ignorant of his
Ottoman cousins.]

86 (return) [ The third grand vizier of the name of Kiuperli, who
was slain at the battle of Salankanen in 1691, (Cantemir, p.
382,) presumed to say that all the successors of Soliman had been
fools or tyrants, and that it was time to abolish the race,
(Marsigli Stato Militaire, &c., p. 28.) This political heretic
was a good Whig, and justified against the French ambassador the
revolution of England, (Mignot, Hist. des Ottomans, tom. iii. p.
434.) His presumption condemns the singular exception of
continuing offices in the same family.]

While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually
subverted by a crafty vizier in the palace, or a victorious
general in the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by
the practice of five centuries, and is now incorporated with the
vital principle of the Turkish nation.

To the spirit and constitution of that nation, a strong and
singular influence may, however, be ascribed. The primitive
subjects of Othman were the four hundred families of wandering
Turkmans, who had followed his ancestors from the Oxus to the
Sangar; and the plains of Anatolia are still covered with the
white and black tents of their rustic brethren. But this original
drop was dissolved in the mass of voluntary and vanquished
subjects, who, under the name of Turks, are united by the common
ties of religion, language, and manners. In the cities, from
Erzeroum to Belgrade, that national appellation is common to all
the Moslems, the first and most honorable inhabitants; but they
have abandoned, at least in Romania, the villages, and the
cultivation of the land, to the Christian peasants. In the
vigorous age of the Ottoman government, the Turks were themselves
excluded from all civil and military honors; and a servile class,
an artificial people, was raised by the discipline of education
to obey, to conquer, and to command. 87 From the time of Orchan
and the first Amurath, the sultans were persuaded that a
government of the sword must be renewed in each generation with
new soldiers; and that such soldiers must be sought, not in
effeminate Asia, but among the hardy and warlike natives of
Europe. The provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria,
and Servia, became the perpetual seminary of the Turkish army;
and when the royal fifth of the captives was diminished by
conquest, an inhuman tax of the fifth child, or of every fifth
year, was rigorously levied on the Christian families. At the age
of twelve or fourteen years, the most robust youths were torn
from their parents; their names were enrolled in a book; and from
that moment they were clothed, taught, and maintained, for the
public service. According to the promise of their appearance,
they were selected for the royal schools of Boursa, Pera, and
Adrianople, intrusted to the care of the bashaws, or dispersed in
the houses of the Anatolian peasantry. It was the first care of
their masters to instruct them in the Turkish language: their
bodies were exercised by every labor that could fortify their
strength; they learned to wrestle, to leap, to run, to shoot with
the bow, and afterwards with the musket; till they were drafted
into the chambers and companies of the Janizaries, and severely
trained in the military or monastic discipline of the order. The
youths most conspicuous for birth, talents, and beauty, were
admitted into the inferior class of _Agiamoglans_, or the more
liberal rank of _Ichoglans_, of whom the former were attached to
the palace, and the latter to the person, of the prince. In four
successive schools, under the rod of the white eunuchs, the arts
of horsemanship and of darting the javelin were their daily
exercise, while those of a more studious cast applied themselves
to the study of the Koran, and the knowledge of the Arabic and
Persian tongues. As they advanced in seniority and merit, they
were gradually dismissed to military, civil, and even
ecclesiastical employments: the longer their stay, the higher was
their expectation; till, at a mature period, they were admitted
into the number of the forty agas, who stood before the sultan,
and were promoted by his choice to the government of provinces
and the first honors of the empire. 88 Such a mode of institution
was admirably adapted to the form and spirit of a despotic
monarchy. The ministers and generals were, in the strictest
sense, the slaves of the emperor, to whose bounty they were
indebted for their instruction and support. When they left the
seraglio, and suffered their beards to grow as the symbol of
enfranchisement, they found themselves in an important office,
without faction or friendship, without parents and without heirs,
dependent on the hand which had raised them from the dust, and
which, on the slightest displeasure, could break in pieces these
statues of glass, as they were aptly termed by the Turkish
proverb. 89 In the slow and painful steps of education, their
characters and talents were unfolded to a discerning eye: the
_man_, naked and alone, was reduced to the standard of his
personal merit; and, if the sovereign had wisdom to choose, he
possessed a pure and boundless liberty of choice. The Ottoman
candidates were trained by the virtues of abstinence to those of
action; by the habits of submission to those of command. A
similar spirit was diffused among the troops; and their silence
and sobriety, their patience and modesty, have extorted the
reluctant praise of their Christian enemies. 90 Nor can the
victory appear doubtful, if we compare the discipline and
exercise of the Janizaries with the pride of birth, the
independence of chivalry, the ignorance of the new levies, the
mutinous temper of the veterans, and the vices of intemperance
and disorder, which so long contaminated the armies of Europe.

87 (return) [ Chalcondyles (l. v.) and Ducas (c. 23) exhibit the
rude lineament of the Ottoman policy, and the transmutation of
Christian children into Turkish soldiers.]

88 (return) [ This sketch of the Turkish education and discipline
is chiefly borrowed from Ricaut’s State of the Ottoman Empire,
the Stato Militaire del’ Imperio Ottomano of Count Marsigli, (in
Haya, 1732, in folio,) and a description of the Seraglio,
approved by Mr. Greaves himself, a curious traveller, and
inserted in the second volume of his works.]

89 (return) [ From the series of cxv. viziers, till the siege of
Vienna, (Marsigli, p. 13,) their place may be valued at three
years and a half purchase.]

90 (return) [ See the entertaining and judicious letters of
Busbequius.]

The only hope of salvation for the Greek empire, and the adjacent
kingdoms, would have been some more powerful weapon, some
discovery in the art of war, that would give them a decisive
superiority over their Turkish foes. Such a weapon was in their
hands; such a discovery had been made in the critical moment of
their fate. The chemists of China or Europe had found, by casual
or elaborate experiments, that a mixture of saltpetre, sulphur,
and charcoal, produces, with a spark of fire, a tremendous
explosion. It was soon observed, that if the expansive force were
compressed in a strong tube, a ball of stone or iron might be
expelled with irresistible and destructive velocity. The precise
æra of the invention and application of gunpowder 91 is involved
in doubtful traditions and equivocal language; yet we may clearly
discern, that it was known before the middle of the fourteenth
century; and that before the end of the same, the use of
artillery in battles and sieges, by sea and land, was familiar to
the states of Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and England. 92 The
priority of nations is of small account; none could derive any
exclusive benefit from their previous or superior knowledge; and
in the common improvement, they stood on the same level of
relative power and military science. Nor was it possible to
circumscribe the secret within the pale of the church; it was
disclosed to the Turks by the treachery of apostates and the
selfish policy of rivals; and the sultans had sense to adopt, and
wealth to reward, the talents of a Christian engineer. The
Genoese, who transported Amurath into Europe, must be accused as
his preceptors; and it was probably by their hands that his
cannon was cast and directed at the siege of Constantinople. 93
The first attempt was indeed unsuccessful; but in the general
warfare of the age, the advantage was on _their_ side, who were
most commonly the assailants: for a while the proportion of the
attack and defence was suspended; and this thundering artillery
was pointed against the walls and towers which had been erected
only to resist the less potent engines of antiquity. By the
Venetians, the use of gunpowder was communicated without reproach
to the sultans of Egypt and Persia, their allies against the
Ottoman power; the secret was soon propagated to the extremities
of Asia; and the advantage of the European was confined to his
easy victories over the savages of the new world. If we contrast
the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow
and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace,
a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the
folly of mankind.

91 (return) [ The first and second volumes of Dr. Watson’s
Chemical Essays contain two valuable discourses on the discovery
and composition of gunpowder.]

92 (return) [ On this subject modern testimonies cannot be
trusted. The original passages are collected by Ducange, (Gloss.
Latin. tom. i. p. 675, _Bombarda_.) But in the early doubtful
twilight, the name, sound, fire, and effect, that seem to express
_our_ artillery, may be fairly interpreted of the old engines and
the Greek fire. For the English cannon at Crecy, the authority of
John Villani (Chron. l. xii. c. 65) must be weighed against the
silence of Froissard. Yet Muratori (Antiquit. Italiæ Medii Ævi,
tom. ii. Dissert. xxvi. p. 514, 515) has produced a decisive
passage from Petrarch, (De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ Dialog.,)
who, before the year 1344, execrates this terrestrial thunder,
_nuper_ rara, _nunc_ communis. * Note: Mr. Hallam makes the
following observation on the objection thrown our by Gibbon: “The
positive testimony of Villani, who died within two years
afterwards, and had manifestly obtained much information as to
the great events passing in France, cannot be rejected. He
ascribes a material effect to the cannon of Edward, Colpi delle
bombarde, which I suspect, from his strong expressions, had not
been employed before, except against stone walls. It seems, he
says, as if God thundered con grande uccisione di genti e
efondamento di cavalli.” Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 510.—M.]

93 (return) [ The Turkish cannon, which Ducas (c. 30) first
introduces before Belgrade, (A.D. 1436,) is mentioned by
Chalcondyles (l. v. p. 123) in 1422, at the siege of
Constantinople.]