than six years, they had measured a line of ninety degrees of longitude, a fourth part of the circumference of the globe. The great rivers of Asia and Europe, the Volga and Kama, the Don and Borysthenes, the Vistula and Danube, they either swam with their horses, or passed on the ice, or traversed in leathern boats, which followed the camp, and transported their wagons and artillery. By the first victories of Batou, the remains of national freedom were eradicated in the immense plains of Turkestan and Kipzak.* In his rapid progress, he overran the kingdoms, as they are now styled, of Astracan and Cazan; and the troops which he detached towards mount Caucasus explored the most secret recesses of Georgia and Circassia. The civil discord of the great dukes, or princes, of Russia, betrayed their country to the Tartars. They spread from Livonia to the Black Sea, and both Moscow and Kiow, the modern and the ancient capitals, were reduced to ashes; a temporary ruin less fatal than the deep, and perhaps indelible, mark, which a servitude of two hundred years has imprinted on the character of the Russians. The Tartars ravaged, with equal fury, the countries which they hoped to possess, and those which they were hastening to leave. From the permanent conquest of Russia, they made a deadly, though transient, inroad into the heart of Poland, and as far as the borders of Germany. The cities of Lublin and Cracow were obli

* The Dashte Kipzak, or plain of Kipzak, extends on either side of the Volga in a boundless space towards the Jaik and Borysthenes, and is supposed to contain the primitive name and nation of the Cossacks, [The Cossacks are Circassian emigrants (Adelung, Mithridates, 1. 441). Their original country, among the western steppes of Caucasus, was called Kasachia in the time of Constantine Porphyrog. (de Administ. Imp. c. 42). It has the name of Kasaga in Nestor's Chronicles, and that of Kasach among the neighbouring tribes. These authorities have been overlooked by the writers, who adopted the corrupted names of Kiptchak and Kaptchak, as designations of a people-the Golden Horde -instead of the country which was the best known part of the tract occupied by that Mongol tribe. No later opinion on this subject appears to be so well founded or attentively considered as Adelung's. It derives confirmation from the fact, that the city built for themselves by the Cossacks of the Don they call Tcherkaskoy. See the descriptions given of this people in 1799 by Dr. Clarke (Travels, i. 224-303), and in 1816 by Sir R. K. Porter (i. 31-40). The sumptuous entertainment of both these travellers at the table of the Ataman, or Hetman, contrasts strikingly with our ideas of a still uncivilized state.—ED.]

VOL. VII.

K

terated; they approached the shores of the Baltic; and, in the battle of Lignitz, they defeated the dukes of Silesia, the Polish palatines, and the great master of the Teutonic order, and filled nine sacks with the right ears of the slain. From Lignitz, the extreme point of their western march, they turned aside to the invasion of Hungary; and the presence or spirit of Batou inspired the host of five hundred thousand men; the Carpathian hills could not be long impervious to their divided columns; and their approach had been fondly disbelieved till it was irresistibly felt. The king, Bela the Fourth, assembled the military force of his counts and bishops; but he had alienated the nation by adopting a vagrant horde of forty thousand families of Comans; and these savage guests were provoked to revolt by the suspicion of treachery, and the murder of their prince. The whole country, north of the Danube, was lost in a day, and depopulated in a summer; and the ruins of cities and churches were overspread with the bones of the natives who expiated the sins of their Turkish ancestors. An ecclesiastic, who fled from the sack of Waradin, describes the calamities which he had seen or suffered; and the sanguinary rage of sieges and battles is far less atrocious than the treatment of the fugitives, who had been allured from the woods under a promise of peace and pardon, and who were coolly slaughtered as soon as they had performed the labours of the harvest and vintage. In the winter, the Tartars passed the Danube on the ice, and advanced to Gran or Strigonium, a German colony, and the metropolis of the kingdom. Thirty engines were planted against the walls; the ditches were filled with sacks of earth and dead bodies; and after a promiscuous massacre, three hundred noble matrons were slain in the presence of the khan. Of all the cities and fortresses of Hungary, three alone survived the Tartar invasion, and the unfortunate Bela hid his head among the islands of the Adriatic.

The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of savage hostility; a Russian fugitive carried the alarm to Sweden; and the remote nations of the Baltic and the ocean trembled at the approach of the Tartars,* whom their fear and igno

* In the year 1238, the inhabitants of Gothia (Sweden) and Frise were prevented, by their fear of the Tartars, from sending, as usual, their ships to the herring fishery on the coast of England; and as

rance were inclined to separate from the human species. Since the invasion of the Arabs in the eighth century, Europe had never been exposed to a similar calamity; and if the disciples of Mahomet would have oppressed her religion and liberty, it might be apprehended that the shepherds of Scythia would extinguish her cities, her arts, and all the institutions of civil society. The Roman pontiff attempted to appease and convert these invincible Pagans by a mission of Franciscan and Dominican friars; but he was astonished by the reply of the khan, that the sons of God and of Zingis were invested with a divine power to subdue or extirpate the nations; and that the pope would be involved in the universal destruction, unless he visited in person, and as a suppliant, the royal horde. The emperor Frederic the Second embraced a more generous mode of defence; and his letters to the kings of France and England, and the princes of Germany, represented the common danger, and urged them to arm their vassals in this just and rational crusade.* The Tartars themselves were awed by the fame and valour of the Franks; the town of Neustadt in Austria was bravely defended against them by fifty knights and twenty crossbows; and they raised the siege on the appearance of German army. After wasting the adjacent kingdoms of Servia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria, Batou slowly retreated from the Danube to the Volga, to enjoy the rewards of victory in the city and palace of Serai, which started at his command from the midst of the desert.

IV. Even the poor and frozen regions of the North at

there was no exportation, forty or fifty of these fish were sold for a shilling. (Matthew Paris, p. 396.) It is whimsical enough, that the orders of a Mogul khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should have lowered the price of herrings in the English market.

* I shall copy his characteristic or flattering epithets of the different countries of Europe: Furens ac fervens ad arma Germania, strenuæ militiæ genitrix et alumna Francia, bellicosa et audax Hispania, virtuosa viris et classe munita fertilis Anglia, impetuosis bellatoribus referta Alemannia, navalis Dacia, indomita Italia, pacis ignara Burgundia, inquieta Apulia, cum maris Græci, Adriatici et Tyrrheni insulis piraticis et invictis, Cretâ, Cypro, Sicilia, cum oceano conterminis insulis et regionibus, cruenta Hybernia, cum agili Wallia, palustris Scotia, glacialis Norwegia, suain electam militiam sub vexillo crucis destinabunt, &c. (Matthew Paris, p. 498.) [Dacia, which is here used for Dania (Denmark) is a corruption, frequently found in writers of that age. Koeppen, p. 23.—ED.]

tracted the arms of the Moguls; Sheibani Khan, the brother of the great Batou, led a horde of fifteen thousand families into the wilds of Siberia; and his descendants reigned at Tobolskoi above three centuries, till the Russian conquest. The spirit of enterprise which pursued the course of the Oby and Yenisei must have led to the discovery of the Icy Sea. After brushing away the monstrous fables, of men with dogs' heads and cloven feet, we shall find that, fifteen years after the death of Zingis, the Moguls were informed of the name and manners of the Samoyedes in the neighbourhood of the polar circle, who dwelt in subterraneous huts, and derived their furs and their food from the sole occupation of hunting.*

While China, Syria, and Poland, were invaded at the same time by the Moguls and Tartars, the authors of the mighty mischief were content with the kvowledge and declaration, that their word was the sword of death. Like the first caliphs, the first successors of Zingis seldom appeared in person at the head of their victorious armies. On the banks of the Onon and Selinga, the royal or golden horde exhibited the contrast of simplicity and greatness; of the roasted sheep and mare's milk which composed their banquets; and of a distribution in one day of five hundred waggons of gold and silver. The ambassadors and princes of Europe and Asia were compelled to undertake this distant and laborious pilgrimage; and the life and reign of the great dukes of Russia, the kings of Georgia and Armenia, the sultans of Iconium, and the emirs of Persia, were decided by the frown or smile of the great khan. The sons and grandsons of Zingis had been accustomed to the pastoral life; but the village of Caracorum † was gradually ennobled

* See Carpin's relation in Hakluyt, vol. i. p. 30. The pedigree of the khans of Siberia is given by Abulghazi (part 8, p. 485-495). Have the Russians found no Tartar chronicles at Tobolskoi?

The map of D'Anville, and the Chinese Itineraries (De Guignes, tom. i. part 2, p. 57) seem to mark the position of Holin, or Caracorum, about six hundred miles to the north-west of Pekin. The distance between Selinginsky and Pekin is near two thousand Russian versts, between thirteen and fourteen hundred English miles. (Bell's Travels, vol. ii. p. 67.) [The situation assigned to Caracorum, by modern writers, approaches more towards the centre of Asia. Klaproth is cited by Malte Brun and Balbi (p. 770), as their authority for placing it in the country of the Ourianghai, near the desert of Gobi, now

by their election and residence. A change of manners is implied in the removal of Octai and Mangou from a tent to a house; and their example was imitated by the princess of their family and the great officers of the empire. Instead of the boundless forest, the enclosure of a park afforded the more indolent pleasures of the chase: their new habitations were decorated with painting and sculpture; their superfluous treasures were cast in fountains and basins, and statues of massy silver; and the artists of China and Paris vied with each other in the service of the great khan.* Caracorum contained two streets, the one of Chinese mechanics, the other of Mahometan traders; and the places of religious worship, one Nestorian church, two moschs, and twelve temples of various idols, may represent in some degree the number and division of inhabitants.

Yet a

French missionary declares, that the town of St. Denys, near Paris, was more considerable than the Tartar capital; and that the whole palace of Mangou was scarcely equal to a tenth part of that Benedictine abbey. The conquests of Russia and Syria might amuse the vanity of the great khans; but they were seated on the borders of China; the acquisition of that empire was the nearest and most interesting object; and they might learn from their pastoral economy, that it is for the advantage of the shepherd to protect and propagate his flock. I have already celebrated the wisdom and virtue of a mandarin, who prevented the desolation of five populous and cultivated provinces. In a spotless administration of thirty years, this friend of his country and of mankind continually laboured to mitigate or suspend the havoc of war; to save the monuments, and to rekindle the flame, of science; to restrain the military commander by generally overrun by hordes of Kalmucks. Koeppen (p. 127) says that it stood on the southern slope of Mount Altai. Marco Polo visited the place; but, in his brief description, does not say where it stood. The precise spot has not been ascertained, although the Mongols of the present day pretend to point out the several places of their great khan's residence. For the Altai Mountains, see ch. 42, vol. iii. p. 451, 452.-ED.]

* Rubruquis found at Caracorum his countryman Guillaume Boucher orfèvre de Paris, who had executed for the khan a silver tree, supported by four lions, and ejecting four different liquors. Abulghazi (part 4, p. 366) mentions the painters of Kitay or China. [Kublai's favourite residence was at his palace of Kanbalu, in Cathay. Marco Polo has described its painting, gilding, and various decorations (p. 175 -180, edit. Bohn).-ED.]