XLVIII. the whole country north of the Danube was depopu- CHAP. lated, and the river was passed on the ice. Beld fled to the islands of the Adriatic; and Batou, after laying waste the kingdoms of Servia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria, slowly returned from the Danube to the Volga, to enjoy the rewards of his victory in the city and palace of Serai, which started at his command from the midst of the desert. Even the frozen regions of the North attracted the arms of the Moguls. Sheiboni, the brother of Batou, advanced to the Icy Sea, to the neighbourhood of the Samoyedes; and his descendants reigned at Tabolskay during three centuries, till the Russian conquest. Constan empire from A.D. 1240 In this shipwreck of nations, some surprise may be Escape of excited by the escape of the Roman empire, whose tinople and relics, at the time of the Mogul invasion, were dis- the Greek membered by the Greeks and Latins. Less potent the Moguls, than Alexander, they were pressed, like the Mace-1304. donian, both in Europe and Asia, by the shepherds of Scythia; and had the Tartars undertaken the siege, Constantinople must have yielded to the fate of Pekin, Samarcand, and Bagdad. The glorious and voluntary retreat of Batou from the Danube was insulted by the vain triumph of the Franks and Greeks*; and in a second expedition death surprised him in full march to attack the capital of the Cæsars. His brother Borga carried the Tartar arms into Bulgaria and Thrace; but he was diverted from the Byzantine war by a visit to Novogorod, in the fiftyseventh degree of latitude, where he numbered the inhabitants and regulated the tributes of Russia. The Mogul khan formed an alliance with the Mamalukes against his brethren of Persia: three hundred thousand horse penetrated through the gates of Der * Some repulse of the Moguls in Hungary (Matthew Paris, p. 545, 546) might propagate and colour the report of the union and victory of the kings of the Franks on the confines of Bulgaria. Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 310), after forty years, beyond the Tigris, might be easily deceived. XLVIII. CHAP. bend; and the Greeks might rejoice in the first example of domestic war. After the After the recovery of Constantinople, Michael Palæologus *, at a distance from his court and army, was surprised and surrounded, in a Thracian castle, by twenty thousand Tartars. But the object of their march was a private interest: they came to the deliverance of Azadin, the Turkish sultan; and were content with his person and the treasure of the emperor. Their general Noga, whose name is perpetuated in the hordes of Astracan, raised a formidable rebellion against Mengo Timour, the third of the khans of Kipzak; obtained in marriage Maria, the natural daughter of Palæologus; and guarded the dominions of his friend and father. The subsequent invasions of a Scythian cast were those of outlaws and fugitives; and some thousands of Alani and Comans, who had been driven from their native seats, were reclaimed from a vagrant life, and inlisted in the service of the empire. Such was the influence in Europe of the invasion of the Moguls. The first terror of their arms secured, rather than disturbed, the peace of the Roman Asia. The sultan of Iconium. solicited a personal interview with John Vataces; and his artful policy encouraged the Turks to defend their barrier against the common enemy t. That barrier indeed was soon overthrown; and the servitude and ruin of the Seljukians exposed the nakedness of the Greeks. The formidable Holagou threatened to. march to Constantinople at the head of four hundred thousand men; and the groundless panic of the citizens of Nice will present an image of the terror which he had inspired. The accident of a procession, and the sound of a doleful litany, "From the fury of "the Tartars, good Lord, deliver us," had scattered * See Pachymer, 1. iii. c. 25, and 1. ix. c. 26, 27: and the false alarm at Nice, 1. iii. c. 27. Nicephorus Gregoras, 1. iv. c. 6. † G. Acropolita, p. 36, 37. Nic. Greg. l. ii. c. 6. 4. iv. c. 5. In the CHAP. XLVIII. the hasty report of an assault and massacre. blind credulity of fear, the streets of Nice were crowded with thousands of both sexes, who knew not from what or to whom they fled; and some hours elapsed before the firmness of the military officers could relieve the city from this imaginary foe. But the ambition of Holagou and his successors was fortunately diverted by the conquest of Bagdad, and a long vicissitude of Syrian wars: their hostility to the Moslems inclined them to unite with the Greeks and Franks*; and their generosity or contempt had offered the kingdom of Anatolia as the reward of an Armenian vassal. The fragments of the Seljukian monarchy were disputed by the emirs who had occupied the cities or the mountains; but they all confessed the supremacy of the khans of Persia; and he often interposed his authority, and sometimes his arms, to check their depredations, and to preserve the peace and balance of his Turkish frontier. The death of Cazan †, Decline of the Mogul one of the greatest and most accomplished princes of khans of the house of Zingis, removed this salutary control; A.D.'1304, and the decline of the Moguls gave a freee scope to May 11. the rise and progress of the OTTOMAN EMPIRE ‡. Persia, the Otto A.D. 1240, After the retreat of Zingis, the sultan Gelaleddin Origin of of Carizme had returned from India to the possession mans, and defence of his Persian kingdoms. In the space &c. of eleven years, that hero fought in person fourteen battles; and such was his activity, that he led his cavalry in seventeen days from Teflis to Kerman, a march of a thousand miles. Yet he was oppressed • Abulpharagius, who wrote in the year 1284, declares that the Moguls, since the fabulous defeat of Batou, had not attacked either the Franks or Greeks; and of this he is a competent witness. Hayton, likewise, the Armenian prince, celebrates their friendship for himself and his nation. + Pachmer gives a splendid character of Cazan Khan, the rival of Cyrus and Alexander (1. xii. c. 1). In the conclusion of his history (l. xviii. c. 36), he hopes much from the arrival of 30,000 Tochars or Tartars, who were ordered by the successor of Cazan to restrain the Turks of Bithynia, A.D. 1308. The origin of the Ottoman dynasty is illustrated by the critical learning of M M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. p. 329-337) and D'Anville (Empire Turc. p. 14-22), two inhabitants of Paris, from whom the Orientals may learn the history and geography of their own country. XLVIII. CHAP. by the jealousy of the Moslem princes, and the innumerable armies of the Moguls; and after his last defeat, Gelaleddin perished ignobly in the mountains of Curdistan. His death dissolved a veteran and adventurous army, which included, under the name. of Carizmians or Corasmins, many Turkman hordes, that had attached themselves to the sultan's fortune. The bolder and more powerful chiefs invaded Syria, and violated the holy sepulchre of Jerusalem: the more humble engaged in the service of Aladin, sultan of Iconium; and among these were the obscure fathers of the Ottoman line. They had formerly pitched their tents near the southern banks of the Oxus, in the plains of Mahan and Nesa; and it is somewhat remarkable, that the same spot should have produced the first authors of the Parthian and Turkish empires. At the head, or in the rear, of a Karismian army, Soliman Shah was drowned in the passage of the Euphrates: his son Orthogrul became the soldier and subject of Aladin, and established at Surgut, on the banks of the Sangar, a camp of four hundred families or tents, whom he governed fifty two years both in peace and war. He was the father of Thaman, or Athman, whose Turkish name has been melted into the appellation of the caliph Othman; and if we describe that pastoral chief as a shepherd and a robber, we must separate from those characters all idea of ignominy and baseness. Othman possessed, and perhaps surpassed, the ordinary virtues of a soldier; and the circumstances of time and place were propitious to his independence and success. The Seljukian dynasty was no more; and the distance and decline of the Mogul khans soon enfranchised him from the control of a superior. He was situate on the verge of the Greek empire: the Koran sanctified his gazi, or holy war, against the infidels; and their political errors unlocked the Reign of A. D. 1299 -1326. passes of Mount Olympus, and invited him to descend into the plains of Bithynia. Till the reign of Palæologus, these passes had been vigilantly guarded by the militia of the country, who were repaid by their own safety and an exemption from taxes. The emperor abolished their privilege and assumed their office; but the tribute was rigorously collected, the custody of the passes was neglected, and the hardy mountaineers degenerated into a trembling crowd of peasants, without spirit or discipline. It was on the twenty-seventh of July, in the year twelve hundred and ninety-nine of the Christian æra, that Othman first invaded the territory of Nicomedia*; and the singular accuracy of the date seems to disclose some foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster. The annals of the twenty-seven years of his reign would exhibit a repetition of the same inroads; and his hereditary troops were multiplied in each campaign by the accession of captives and volunteers. Instead of retreating to the hills, he maintained the most useful and defensible posts; fortified the towns and castles which he had first pillaged; and renounced the pastoral life for the baths and palaces of his infant capitals. But it was not till Othman was oppressed by age and infirmities, that he received the welcome news of the conquest of Prusa, which had been surrendered by famine or treachery to the arms of his son Orchan. The glory of Othman is chiefly founded on that of his descendants; but the Turks have transcribed or composed a royal testament of his last counsels of justice and moderation t. XLVIII. From the conquest of Prusa, we may date the Reign of * See Pachymer, 1. x. c. 25, 26. 1. xiii. c. 33, 34, 36. † I am ignorant whether the Turks have any writers older than Mahomet II. nor can I reach beyond a meagre chronicle (Annales Turcici ad Annum 1550), translated by John Gaudier, and published by Leunclavius (ad calcem Laonic. Chalcond. p. 311-350), with copious pandects, or commentaries. Orchan, |