XLVII.

with the

empire, May 6.

CHAP. to the doge and senate, Petrarch employs his eloquence to reconcile the maritime powers, the two luminaries of Italy. The orator celebrates the valour and victory of the Genoese, the first of men in the exercise of naval war: he drops a tear on the misfortunes of their Venetian brethren; but he exhorts them to pursue with fire and sword the base and perfidious Greeks; to purge the metropolis of the East Their treaty from the heresy with which it was infected. Deserted by their friends, the Greeks were incapable of resistance; and, three months after the battle, the emperor Cantacuzene solicited and subscribed a treaty, which for ever banished the Venetians and Catalans, and granted to the Venetians a monopoly of trade, and almost a right of dominion. The Roman empire (I smile in transcribing the name) might soon have sunk into a province of Genoa, if the ambition of the republic had not been checked by the ruin of her freedom and naval power. A long contest of one hundred and thirty years was determined by the triumph of Venice; and the factions of the Genoese compelled them to seek for domestic peace under the protection of a foreign lord, the duke of Milan, or the French king. Yet the spirit of commerce survived that of conquest; and the colony of Pera still awed the capital and navigated the Euxine, till it was involved by the Turks in the final servitude of Constantinople itself.

CHAP. XLVIII.

Conquests of Zingis Khan and the Moguls, from China to Poland.-Escape of Constantinople and the Greeks.— Origin of the Ottoman Turks in Bithynia.-Reigns and Victories of Othman, Orchan, Amurath the first, and Bajazet the first.-Foundation and Progress of the Turkish Monarchy in Asia and Europe.-Danger of Constantinople and the Greek Empire.-Elevation of Timour or Tamerlane to the Throne of Samarcand.- His extensive Conquests.-His Turkish War.-Defeat and Captivity of Bajazet.-The Iron Cage.-Death of Timour.-Civil War of the Sons of Bajazet.-Restoration of the Turkish Monarchy by Mahomet the first.-Siege of Constantinople by Amurath the second.

XLVIII.

THE rise and progress of the Ottomans, the CHAP. present sovereigns of Constantinople, are connected with the most important series of modern history, but they are founded on a previous knowledge of the great irruption of the Moguls and Tartars. From the spacious highlands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea, the tide of emigration and war has repeatedly been poured. These ancient seats of the Huns and Turks were occupied in the twelfth century by many pastoral tribes, of the same descent and similar manners; which were united and led to conquest by the formidable Zingis. In his ascent to greatness that Barbarian, whose private appellation was Temugin, had trampled on the necks of his equals. His birth was noble, and in his fortieth year he had established his fame and dominion over the circumjacent tribes. He then accepted the title of Zingis, The Most Great; and was solemnly proclaimed Great Khan, or emperor of the Moguls and

XLVIII.

CHAP. Tartars *. The reason of Zingis was not informed by books. The Khan could neither read nor write; and except the tribe of the Igours, the greatest part of the Moguls and Tartars were as illiterate as their sovereign. The memory of their exploits was preserved by tradition. Sixty-eight years after the death of Zingis, these traditions were collected and transcribed t. The brevity of their domestic annals may be supplied by the Chinese, Persians, Armenians, Syrians, Arabians, Greeks, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, and Latins; and each nation will deserve credit in the relation of their own disasters and defeats. The conquest of China was the great object of the ambition of Zingis. Pekin § was taken after a long siege, and the five northern provinces of that empire were subdued by his arms.

In the West he touched the dominions of Mahommed, sultan of Carizme, who reigned from the Persian Gulf to the borders of India and Turkestan. Seven hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched under the standards of Zingis, and his four sons. In the vast plains to the north of the Sihon or Iaxartes, they were encountered by 400,000 soldiers of the sultan, and in one battle 160,000 Carizmians are said to have been slain. The

* Since the history and tragedy of Voltaire, Gengis (at least in French) seems to be the more fashionable spelling; but Abulghazi Khan must have known the true name of his ancestor. His etymology appears just. Zin in the Mogul tongue signifies great, and gis is the superlative termination (Hist. Genealogique des Tartars). From the same idea of magnitude, the appellation of Zingis is bestowed on the ocean. The name of Moguls has prevailed among the Orientals, and still adheres to the titular sovereign, the Great Mogul of Hindostan. The Tartars (more properly Tatars) were descended from Tatar Khan, the brother of Mogul Khan (see Abulghazi); and once formed a horde of 70,000 families on the borders of Kitay.

In the year 1294, by the command of Cazan, Khan of Persia, the fourth in descent from Zingis. From these traditions, his Vizir Fadlallah composed a Mogul History in the Persian language, which has been used by Petit de la Croix (Hist. de Ghenghizcan).

In his great History of the Huns, M. De Guignes has most amply treated of Zingis Khan and his successors.

More properly Yeu-Ring, an ancient city, whose ruins still appear some furlongs to the south-east of the modern Pekin, which was built by Cublai Khan (Gaubel). Peking and Nanking are vague titles, the Courts of the North and of the South.

XLVIII.

Persian historians relate the sieges and reduction of CHAP. many cities, and the conquests of the rich and populous countries of Transoxiana, Carizme, and Chorasan. Mahommed expired unpitied in an island of the Caspian Sea; but if the Carizmian empire could have been saved by a single hero, it would have been by his son Gelaleddin, whose valour repeatedly checked the Moguls, but who was at last oppressed by their innumerable host. Two of the generals of Zingis, whom he sent to subdue the western provinces of Persia, penetrated through the gates of Derbend, traversed the Volga, and accomplished the circuit of the Caspian Sea, by an expedition which had never been attempted, and has never been repeated.

Zingis died in the fulness of years and glory, in 1227, exhorting his sons to complete the conquest of China. Those sons were not more distinguished for their high birth, than for their prudent conduct. They seconded their father in all his undertakings, and they possessed a merit very unusual in that age, and in those climes. The four brothers continued to act in unison: Tonchi, Tagatai, and Tuli, were content with dependent sceptres, proclaiming Octai Great Khan of the Moguls and Tartars. In sixtyeight years, the Moguls, under the successors of Zingis, subdued almost all Asia, and a large portion of Europe. Cublai, one of his grandsons, completed the conquest of China. The invasion of Japan was prevented by his fleet being twice shipwrecked; but the circumjacent kingdoms of Corea, Tonkin, Cochinchina, Peju, Bengal, and Thibet, were reduced in different degrees of tribute and obedience.

The conquest of Indostan was reserved for the house of Timour, but that of Persia was achieved by Holagou, another of the grandsons of Zingis. The extinction of the Abbassides, which soon followed,

XLVIII.

CHAP. cannot be indifferent to the spectators of their greatness and decline. Since the fall of their Seljukian tyrant, the caliphs had recovered the dominion of Bagdad, and the Arabian Irak; but when Holagou touched this phantom of power, it vanished into smoke. Bagdad was stormed by the Moguls, and their commander pronounced the death of the caliph Motassem; the last of the temporal successors of Mahommed, whose kinsmen of the race of Abbas had reigned above five hundred years. The Moguls pillaged Aleppo and Damascus. Egypt was successfully defended by the Mamelukes, but Armenia and Anatolia were subdued, Iconium was taken, and the last remains of the Seljukian dynasty were extirpated.

Another of the grandsons of Zingis, Batou the son of Tuli, who ruled his father's conquests to the north of the Caspian, at the head of 500,000 Moguls and Tartars, in less than six years measured a line of ninety degrees of longitude, a fourth part of the circumference of the globe. The Volga and Rama, the Don and Borysthenes, the Vistula and Danube, were passed on the ice or in leathern boats, or swam with their horses. Every thing in Asia sank beneath the arms of Batou. The civil discord of the great dukes of Russia betrayed their country to the Tartars. They spread from Livonia to the Black Sea; Moscow and Kiow were reduced to ashes. They made a deadly, though a transient inroad, into the heart of Poland, and as far as the borders of Germany. The cities of Lublin and Cracow were obliterated, and they approached the shores of the Baltic. In the battle of Lignitz they defeated the dukes of Siberia, the Polish palatines, and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, and filled nine sacks with the right ears of the slain. From Lignitz, the extreme boundary of their Western march, they turned to the invasion of Hungary. The king, Beld, was defeated,