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LXV.

CHAP. most submissive subjects; and whenever they de viated from their duty, they were corrected, according to the laws of Zingis, with the bastonade, and afterwards restored to honour 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 labours of the husbandman, to encourage industry and learning, and, by an equal and modern 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 recompence. 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 excuse for his victo ries, 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 ra

ther

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ther the scourge than the benefactor of mankind. CHAP. 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 abo minable 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 start, led, if a priest or philosopher had dared to number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and order *... 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

Besides the bloody passages of this narrative, I must refer to an anticipation in the sixth volume of the Decline and Fall, which, in a single note, (p. 56. Note 25.), accumulates near 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.

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CHAP. the fabric of their ancient government, he aban doned them to the evils which his invasion had ag'gravated 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 laboured to cultivate and adorn, as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labours were often interrupted, and some times 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 rigour 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 administrations, they evapo rated with his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was the ambition of his children and grandchildren; 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 an hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not

fled

*Consult the last chapters of Sherefeddin and Arabshah, and M. de Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. iv. 1. 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.

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#led before the Uzbek arms to the conquest of Hin- CHAP. dostan. His successors (the Great Moguls *) 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 has been dissolved; their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber; and the riches of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the Northern ocean.

Far different was the fate of the Ottoman mo

narchy. The trunk was bent to the ground,
massy
but no sooner did the hurricane pass away, than it
again rose with fresh vigour and more lively vege-
tation. When Timour, in every sense, had eva-
cuated Anatolia, he left the cities without a palace,
a treasure, or a king. The open country was over-
spread with hords of shepherds and robbers of Tar-,
tar 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 t.
1. It is doubtful, whether I relate the story of the
true Mustapha, or of an impostor, who personated

that

* Shah Allum, the present Mogul, is in the fourteenth degree from Timour by Miran Shah, his third son. See the 24 volume of Dow's History of Hindostan.

+ 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 (1. iv. and v.), Phranza (1. i. c. 30-32.), and Ducas (c. 18-27.), the last is the most copious and best informed.

Civil wars

of the sons

of Bajazet,

A. D.

1403

142X

. Musta

pha;

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CHAP. 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* reigned for some time in the neighbourhood of Angora, Sinope, and the Black Sea; and his ambassadors were dismissed from the presence of Timour with fair promises and honourable gifts. But their master was soon deprived of his province and life, by a jealous brother,

2. İsa ;

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, (1. v. c. 57.).

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