History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0177/01773.txt

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$Unique_ID{how01773}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Part II.}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Gibbon, Edward}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{footnote
moguls
hundred
zingis
chinese
china
thousand
khan
years
arms}
$Date{1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Book:        Chapter LXIV: Moguls, Ottoman Turkds.
Author:      Gibbon, Edward
Date:        1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)

Part II.

     The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced the hordes of
the desert, who pitched their tents between the wall of China and the Volga;
and the Mogul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world, the lord of
many millions of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their united strength, and
were impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy climates of the south.  His
ancestors had been the tributaries of the Chinese emperors; and Temugin
himself had been disgraced by a title of honor and servitude.  The court of
Pekin was astonished by an embassy from its former vassal, who, in the tone of
the king of nations, exacted the tribute and obedience which he had paid, and
who affected to treat the son of heaven as the most contemptible of mankind.
A haughty answer disguised their secret apprehensions; and their fears were
soon justified by the march of innumerable squadrons, who pierced on all sides
the feeble rampart of the great wall.  Ninety cities were stormed, or starved,
by the Moguls; ten only escaped; and Zingis, from a knowledge of the filial
piety of the Chinese, covered his vanguard with their captive parents; an
unworthy, and by degrees a fruitless, abuse of the virtue of his enemies.  His
invasion was supported by the revolt of a hundred thousand Khitans, who
guarded the frontier: yet he listened to a treaty; and a princess of China,
three thousand horses, five hundred youths, and as many virgins, and a tribute
of gold and silk, were the price of his retreat.  In his second expedition, he
compelled the Chinese emperor to retire beyond the yellow river to a more
southern residence.  The siege of Pekin ^19 was long and laborious: the
inhabitants were reduced by famine to decimate and devour their
fellow-citizens; when their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of
gold and silver from their engines; but the Moguls introduced a mine to the
centre of the capital; and the conflagration of the palace burnt above thirty
days.  China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction; and the five
northern provinces were added to the empire of Zingis.

[Footnote 19: More properly Yen-king, an ancient city, whose ruins still
appear some furlongs to the south-east of the modern Pekin, which was built by
Cublai Khan, (Gaubel, p. 146.) Pe-king and Nan-king are vague titles, the
courts of the north and of the south.  The identity and change of names
perplex the most skilful readers of the Chinese geography, (p. 177.)

     Note: And likewise in Chinese history - see Abel Remusat, Mel. Asiat. 2d
tom. ii. p. 5. - M.]

     In the West, he touched the dominions of Mohammed, sultan of Carizime,
who reigned from the Persian Gulf to the borders of India and Turkestan; and
who, in the proud imitation of Alexander the Great, forgot the servitude and
ingratitude of his fathers to the house of Seljuk.  It was the wish of Zingis
to establish a friendly and commercial intercourse with the most powerful of
the Moslem princes: nor could he be tempted by the secret solicitations of the
caliph of Bagdad, who sacrificed to his personal wrongs the safety of the
church and state.  A rash and inhuman deed provoked and justified the Tartar
arms in the invasion of the southern Asia. ^! A caravan of three ambassadors
and one hundred and fifty merchants were arrested and murdered at Otrar, by
the command of Mohammed; nor was it till after a demand and denial of justice,
till he had prayed and fasted three nights on a mountain, that the Mogul
emperor appealed to the judgment of God and his sword.  Our European battles,
says a philosophic writer, ^20 are petty skirmishes, if compared to the
numbers that have fought and fallen in the fields of Asia. Seven hundred
thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched under the standard of
Zingis and his four sons.  In the vast plains that extend to the north of the
Sihon or Jaxartes, they were encountered by four hundred thousand soldiers of
the sultan; and in the first battle, which was suspended by the night, one
hundred and sixty thousand Carizmians were slain.  Mohammed was astonished by
the multitude and valor of his enemies: he withdrew from the scene of danger,
and distributed his troops in the frontier towns; trusting that the
Barbarians, invincible in the field, would be repulsed by the length and
difficulty of so many regular sieges.  But the prudence of Zingis had formed a
body of Chinese engineers, skilled in the mechanic arts; informed perhaps of
the secret of gunpowder, and capable, under his discipline, of attacking a
foreign country with more vigor and success than they had defended their own.
The Persian historians will relate the sieges and reduction of Otrar, Cogende,
Bochara, Samarcand, Carizme, Herat, Merou, Nisabour, Balch, and Candahar; and
the conquest of the rich and populous countries of Transoxiana, Carizme, and
Chorazan. ^* The destructive hostilities of Attila and the Huns have long
since been elucidated by the example of Zingis and the Moguls; and in this
more proper place I shall be content to observe, that, from the Caspian to the
Indus, they ruined a tract of many hundred miles, which was adorned with the
habitations and labors of mankind, and that five centuries have not been
sufficient to repair the ravages of four years.  The Mogul emperor encouraged
or indulged the fury of his troops: the hope of future possession was lost in
the ardor of rapine and slaughter; and the cause of the war exasperated their
native fierceness by the pretence of justice and revenge.  The downfall and
death of the sultan Mohammed, who expired, unpitied and alone, in a desert
island of the Caspian Sea, is a poor atonement for the calamities of which he
was the author. Could the Carizmian empire have been saved by a single hero,
it would have been saved by his son Gelaleddin, whose active valor repeatedly
checked the Moguls in the career of victory.  Retreating, as he fought, to the
banks of the Indus, he was oppressed by their innumerable host, till, in the
last moment of despair, Gelaleddin spurred his horse into the waves, swam one
of the broadest and most rapid rivers of Asia, and extorted the admiration and
applause of Zingis himself.  It was in this camp that the Mogul conqueror
yielded with reluctance to the murmurs of his weary and wealthy troops, who
sighed for the enjoyment of their native land.  Eucumbered with the spoils of
Asia, he slowly measured back his footsteps, betrayed some pity for the misery
of the vanquished, and declared his intention of rebuilding the cities which
had been swept away by the tempest of his arms.  After he had repassed the
Oxus and Jaxartes, he was joined by two generals, whom he had detached with
thirty thousand horse, to subdue the western provinces of Persia.  They had
trampled on the nations which opposed their passage, penetrated through the
gates of Derbent, traversed the Volga and the desert, and accomplished the
circuit of the Caspian Sea, by an expedition which had never been attempted,
and has never been repeated.  The return of Zingis was signalized by the
overthrow of the rebellious or independent kingdoms of Tartary; and he died in
the fulness of years and glory, with his last breath exhorting and instructing
his sons to achieve the conquest of the Chinese empire. ^*

[Footnote !: See the particular account of this transaction, from the
Kholauesut Akbaur, in Price, vol. ii. p. 402. - M.]

[Footnote 20: M. de Voltaire, Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, tom. iii. c. 60,
p. 8.  His account of Zingis and the Moguls contains, as usual, much general
sense and truth, with some particular errors.]

[Footnote *: Every where they massacred all classes, except the artisans, whom
they made slaves.  Hist. des Mongols. - M.]

[Footnote *: Their first duty, which he bequeathed to them, was to massacre
the king of Tangcoute and all the inhabitants of Ninhia, the surrender of the
city being already agreed upon, Hist. des Mongols. vol. i. p. 286. - M.]

     The harem of Zingis was composed of five hundred wives and concubines;
and of his numerous progeny, four sons, illustrious by their birth and merit,
exercised under their father the principal offices of peace and war.  Toushi
was his great huntsman, Zagatai ^21 his judge, Octai his minister, and Tuli
his general; and their names and actions are often conspicuous in the history
of his conquests.  Firmly united for their own and the public interest, the
three brothers and their families were content with dependent sceptres; and
Octai, by general consent, was proclaimed great khan, or emperor of the Moguls
and Tartars.  He was succeeded by his son Gayuk, after whose death the empire
devolved to his cousins Mangou and Cublai, the sons of Tuli, and the grandsons
of Zingis.  In the sixty-eight years of his four first successors, the Mogul
subdued almost all Asia, and a large portion of Europe.  Without confining
myself to the order of time, without expatiating on the detail of events, I
shall present a general picture of the progress of their arms; I. In the East;
II. In the South; III. In the West; and IV.  In the North.

[Footnote 21: Zagatai gave his name to his dominions of Maurenahar, or
Transoxiana; and the Moguls of Hindostan, who emigrated from that country, are
styled Zagatais by the Persians.  This certain etymology, and the similar
example of Uzbek, Nogai, &c., may warn us not absolutely to reject the
derivations of a national, from a personal, name.

     Note: See a curious anecdote of Tschagatai. Hist. des Mongols, p. 370. M]

     I.  Before the invasion of Zingis, China was divided into two empires or
dynasties of the North and South; ^22 and the difference of origin and
interest was smoothed by a general conformity of laws, language, and national
manners.  The Northern empire, which had been dismembered by Zingis, was
finally subdued seven years after his death.  After the loss of Pekin, the
emperor had fixed his residence at Kaifong, a city many leagues in
circumference, and which contained, according to the Chinese annals, fourteen
hundred thousand families of inhabitants and fugitives.  He escaped from
thence with only seven horsemen, and made his last stand in a third capital,
till at length the hopeless monarch, protesting his innocence and accusing his
fortune, ascended a funeral pile, and gave orders, that, as soon as he had
stabbed himself, the fire should be kindled by his attendants.  The dynasty of
the Song, the native and ancient sovereigns of the whole empire, survived
about forty-five years the fall of the Northern usurpers; and the perfect
conquest was reserved for the arms of Cublai.  During this interval, the
Moguls were often diverted by foreign wars; and, if the Chinese seldom dared
to meet their victors in the field, their passive courage presented and
endless succession of cities to storm and of millions to slaughter.  In the
attack and defence of places, the engines of antiquity and the Greek fire were
alternately employed: the use of gunpowder in cannon and bombs appears as a
familiar practice; ^23 and the sieges were conducted by the Mahometans and
Franks, who had been liberally invited into the service of Cublai.  After
passing the great river, the troops and artillery were conveyed along a series
of canals, till they invested the royal residence of Hamcheu, or Quinsay, in
the country of silk, the most delicious climate of China.  The emperor, a
defenceless youth, surrendered his person and sceptre; and before he was sent
in exile into Tartary, he struck nine times the ground with his forehead, to
adore in prayer or thanksgiving the mercy of the great khan. Yet the war (it
was now styled a rebellion) was still maintained in the southern provinces
from Hamcheu to Canton; and the obstinate remnant of independence and
hostility was transported from the land to the sea.  But when the fleet of the
Song was surrounded and oppressed by a superior armament, their last champion
leaped into the waves with his infant emperor in his arms.  "It is more
glorious," he cried, "to die a prince, than to live a slave." A hundred
thousand Chinese imitated his example; and the whole empire, from Tonkin to
the great wall, submitted to the dominion of Cublai. His boundless ambition
aspired to the conquest of Japan: his fleet was twice shipwrecked; and the
lives of a hundred thousand Moguls and Chinese were sacrificed in the
fruitless expedition.  But the circumjacent kingdoms, Corea, Tonkin,
Cochinchina, Pegu, Bengal, and Thibet, were reduced in different degrees of
tribute and obedience by the effort or terror of his arms.  He explored the
Indian Ocean with a fleet of a thousand ships: they sailed in sixty-eight
days, most probably to the Isle of Borneo, under the equinoctial line; and
though they returned not without spoil or glory, the emperor was dissatisfied
that the savage king had escaped from their hands.

[Footnote 22: In Marco Polo, and the Oriental geographers, the names of Cathay
and Mangi distinguish the northern and southern empires, which, from A.D. 1234
to 1279, were those of the great khan, and of the Chinese.  The search of
Cathay, after China had been found, excited and misled our navigators of the
sixteenth century, in their attempts to discover the north- east passage.]

[Footnote 23: I depend on the knowledge and fidelity of the Pere Gaubil, who
translates the Chinese text of the annals of the Moguls or Yuen, (p. 71, 93,
153;) but I am ignorant at what time these annals were composed and published.
The two uncles of Marco Polo, who served as engineers at the siege of
Siengyangfou, (l. ii. 61, in Ramusio, tom. ii. See Gaubil, p. 155, 157) must
have felt and related the effects of this destructive powder, and their
silence is a weighty, and almost decisive objection.  I entertain a suspicion,
that their recent discovery was carried from Europe to China by the caravans
of the xvth century and falsely adopted as an old national discovery before
the arrival of the Portuguese and Jesuits in the xvith.  Yet the Pere Gaubil
affirms, that the use of gunpowder has been known to the Chinese above 1600
years.

     Note: Sou-houng-kian-lon.  Abel Remusat. - M.

     Note: La poudre a canon et d'autres compositions inflammantes, dont ils
se servent pour construire des pieces d'artifice d'un effet suprenant, leur
etaient connues depuis tres long-temps, et l'on croit que des bombardes et des
pierriers, dont ils avaient enseigne l'usage aux Tartares, ont pu donner en
Europe l'idee d'artillerie, quoique la forme des fusils et des canons dont ils
se servent actuellement, leur ait ete apportee par les Francs, ainsi que
l'attestent les noms memes qu'ils donnent a ces sortes d'armes.  Abel Remusat,
Melanges Asiat. 2d ser tom. i. p. 23. - M.]

     II.  The conquest of Hindostan by the Moguls was reserved in a later
period for the house of Timour; but that of Iran, or Persia, was achieved by
Holagou Khan, ^* the grandson of Zingis, the brother and lieutenant of the two
successive emperors, Mangou and Cublai.  I shall not enumerate the crowd of
sultans, emirs, and atabeks, whom he trampled into dust; but the extirpation
of the Assassins, or Ismaelians ^24 of Persia, may be considered as a service
to mankind.  Among the hills to the south of the Caspian, these odious
sectaries had reigned with impunity above a hundred and sixty years; and their
prince, or Imam, established his lieutenant to lead and govern the colony of
Mount Libanus, so famous and formidable in the history of the crusades. ^25
With the fanaticism of the Koran the Ismaelians had blended the Indian
transmigration, and the visions of their own prophets; and it was their first
duty to devote their souls and bodies in blind obedience to the vicar of God.
The daggers of his missionaries were felt both in the East and West: the
Christians and the Moslems enumerate, and persons multiply, the illustrious
victims that were sacrificed to the zeal, avarice, or resentment of the old
man (as he was corruptly styled) of the mountain.  But these daggers, his only
arms, were broken by the sword of Holagou, and not a vestige is left of the
enemies of mankind, except the word assassin, which, in the most odious sense,
has been adopted in the languages of Europe.  The extinction of the Abbassides
cannot be indifferent to the spectators of their greatness and decline.  Since
the fall of their Seljukian tyrants the caliphs had recovered their lawful
dominion of Bagdad and the Arabian Irak; but the city was distracted by
theological factions, and the commander of the faithful was lost in a harem of
seven hundred conubines.  The invasion of the Moguls he encountered with
feeble arms and haughty embassies.  "On the divine decree," said the caliph
Mostasem, "is founded the throne of the sons of Abbas: and their foes shall
surely be destroyed in this world and in the next.  Who is this Holagou that
dares to rise against them?  If he be desirous of peace, let him instantly
depart from the sacred territory; and perhaps he may obtain from our clemency
the pardon of his fault." This presumption was cherished by a perfidious
vizier, who assured his master, that, even if the Barbarians had entered the
city, the women and children, from the terraces, would be sufficient to
overwhelm them with stones.  But when Holagou touched the phantom, it
instantly vanished into smoke.  After a siege of two months, Bagdad was
stormed and sacked by the Moguls; ^* and their savage commander pronounced the
death of the caliph Mostasem, the last of the temporal successors of Mahomet;
whose noble kinsmen, of the race of Abbas, had reigned in Asia above five
hundred years.  Whatever might be the designs of the conqueror, the holy
cities of Mecca and Medina ^26 were protected by the Arabian desert; but the
Moguls spread beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, pillaged Aleppo and Damascus,
and threatened to join the Franks in the deliverance of Jerusalem.  Egypt was
lost, had she been defended only by her feeble offspring; but the Mamalukes
had breathed in their infancy the keenness of a Scythian air: equal in valor,
superior in discipline, they met the Moguls in many a well-fought field; and
drove back the stream of hostility to the eastward of the Euphrates. ^! But it
overflowed with resistless violence the kingdoms of Armenia ^!! and Anatolia,
of which the former was possessed by the Christians, and the latter by the
Turks.  The sultans of Iconium opposed some resistance to the Mogul arms, till
Azzadin sought a refuge among the Greeks of Constantinople, and his feeble
successors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty, were finally extirpated by the
khans of Persia. ^*

[Footnote *: See the curious account of the expedition of Holagou, translated
from the Chinese, by M. Abel Remusat, Melanges Asiat. 2d ser. tom. i. p. 171.
- M.]

[Footnote 24: All that can be known of the Assassins of Persia and Syria is
poured from the copious, and even profuse, erudition of M. Falconet, in two
Memoires read before the Academy of Inscriptions, (tom. xvii. p. 127 - 170.)

     Note: Von Hammer's History of the Assassins has now thrown Falconet's
Dissertation into the shade. - M.]

[Footnote 25: The Ismaelians of Syria, 40,000 Assassins, had acquired or
founded ten castles in the hills above Tortosa.  About the year 1280, they
were extirpated by the Mamalukes.]

[Footnote *: Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 283, 307.
Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzuge, vol. vii. p. 406.  Price, Chronological
Retrospect, vol. ii. p. 217 - 223. - M.]

[Footnote 26: As a proof of the ignorance of the Chinese in foreign
transactions, I must observe, that some of their historians extend the
conquest of Zingis himself to Medina, the country of Mahomet, (Gaubil p. 42.)]

[Footnote !: Compare Wilken, vol. vii. p. 410  - M.]

[Footnote !!: On the friendly relations of the Armenians with the Mongols see
Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzuge, vol. vii. p. 402.  They eagerly desired an
alliance against the Mahometan powers. - M.]

[Footnote *: Trebizond escaped, apparently by the dexterous politics of the
sovereign, but it acknowledged the Mogul supremacy. Falmerayer, p. 172 - M.]

     III.  No sooner had Octai subverted the northern empire of China, than he
resolved to visit with his arms the most remote countries of the West. Fifteen
hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars were inscribed on the military roll: of
these the great khan selected a third, which he intrusted to the command of
his nephew Batou, the son of Tuli; who reigned over his father's conquests to
the north of the Caspian Sea. ^! After a festival of forty days, Batou set
forwards on this great expedition; and such was the speed and ardor of his
innumerable squadrons, than in less 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. ^27 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 obliterated: ^* 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 labors 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 Bata hid his head among the islands of the Adriatic.

[Footnote !: See the curious extracts from the Mahometan writers, Hist. des
Mongols, p. 707. - M.]

[Footnote 27: 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.]

[Footnote *: Olmutz was gallantly and successfully defended by Stenberg, Hist.
des Mongols, p. 396. - M.]

     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, ^28 whom their fear and
ignorance 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. ^29 The Tartars
themselves were awed by the fame and valor of the Franks; the town of Newstadt
in Austria was bravely defended against them by fifty knights and twenty
crossbows; and they raised the siege on the appearance of a German army.
After wasting the adjacent kingdoms of Servia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria, Batou
slowly retreated from the Danube to the Volga to enjoyed the rewards of
victory in the city and palace of Serai, which started at his command from the
midst of the desert.*

[Footnote 28: 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 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.]

[Footnote 29: I shall copy his characteristic or flattering epithets of the
different countries of Europe: Furens ac fervens ad arma Germania, strenuae
militiae 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 Graeci, Adriatici et Tyrrheni insulis pyraticis et invictis,
Creta, Cypro, Sicilia, cum Oceano conterminis insulis, et regionibus, cruenta
Hybernia, cum agili Wallia palustris Scotia, glacialis Norwegia, suam electam
militiam sub vexillo Crucis destinabunt, &c. (Matthew Paris, p. 498.)]

[Footnote *: He was recalled by the death of Octai - M.]

     IV.  Even the poor and frozen regions of the north attracted 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 neighborhood of the polar circle, who dwelt in
subterraneous huts, and derived their furs and their food from the sole
occupation of hunting. ^30

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

     Note: See the account of the Mongol library in Bergman, Nomadische
Strensreyen, vol. iii. p. 185, 205, and Remusat, Hist. des Langues Tartares,
p. 327, and preface to Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen. - M.]

     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
knowledge 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 wagons 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 ^31 was gradually ennobled 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 princes 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. ^32 Caracorum contained two streets, the one of Chinese
mechanics, the other of Mahometan traders; and the places of religious
worship, one Nestorian church, two mosques, 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 labored 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 the restoration of civil magistrates; and to instil the love of
peace and justice into the minds of the Moguls.  He struggled with the
barbarism of the first conquerors; but his salutary lessons produced a rich
harvest in the second generation. ^* The northern, and by degrees the
southern, empire acquiesced in the government of Cublai, the lieutenant, and
afterwards the successor, of Mangou; and the nation was loyal to a prince who
had been educated in the manners of China. He restored the forms of her
venerable constitution; and the victors submitted to the laws, the fashions,
and even the prejudices, of the vanquished people.  This peaceful triumph,
which has been more than once repeated, may be ascribed, in a great measure,
to the numbers and servitude of the Chinese.  The Mogul army was dissolved in
a vast and populous country; and their emperors adopted with pleasure a
political system, which gives to the prince the solid substance of despotism,
and leaves to the subject the empty names of philosophy, freedom, and filial
obedience. ^* Under the reign of Cublai, letters and commerce, peace and
justice, were restored; the great canal, of five hundred miles, was opened
from Nankin to the capital: he fixed his residence at Pekin; and displayed in
his court the magnificence of the greatest monarch of Asia.  Yet this learned
prince declined from the pure and simple religion of his great ancestor: he
sacrificed to the idol Fo; and his blind attachment to the lamas of Thibet and
the bonzes of China ^33 provoked the censure of the disciples of Confucius.
His successors polluted the palace with a crowd of eunuchs, physicians, and
astrologers, while thirteen millions of their subjects were consumed in the
provinces by famine.  One hundred and forty years after the death of Zingis,
his degenerate race, the dynasty of the Yuen, was expelled by a revolt of the
native Chinese; and the Mogul emperors were lost in the oblivion of the
desert.  Before this revolution, they had forfeited their supremacy over the
dependent branches of their house, the khans of Kipzak and Russia, the khans
of Zagatai, or Transoxiana, and the khans of Iran or Persia.  By their
distance and power, these royal lieutenants had soon been released from the
duties of obedience; and after the death of Cublai, they scorned to accept a
sceptre or a title from his unworthy successors.  According to their
respective situations, they maintained the simplicity of the pastoral life, or
assumed the luxury of the cities of Asia; but the princes and their hordes
were alike disposed for the reception of a foreign worship.  After some
hesitation between the Gospel and the Koran, they conformed to the religion of
Mahomet; and while they adopted for their brethren the Arabs and Persians,
they renounced all intercourse with the ancient Moguls, the idolaters of
China.

[Footnote 31: The Map of D'Anville and the Chinese Itineraries (De Guignes,
tom. i. part ii. 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 2000 Russian versts, between 1300 and 1400
English miles, (Bell's Travels, vol. ii. p. 67.)]

[Footnote 32: Rubruquis found at Caracorum his countryman Guillaume Boucher,
orfevre de Paris, who had executed for the khan a silver tree supported by
four lions, and ejecting four different liquors.  Abulghazi (part iv. p. 366)
mentions the painters of Kitay or China.]

[Footnote *: See the interesting sketch of the life of this minister (Yelin-
Thsouthsai) in the second volume of the second series of Recherches
Asiatiques, par A Remusat, p. 64. - M.]

[Footnote *: Compare Hist. des Mongols, p. 616. - M.]

[Footnote 33: The attachment of the khans, and the hatred of the mandarins, to
the bonzes and lamas (Duhalde, Hist. de la Chine, tom. i. p. 502, 503) seems
to represent them as the priests of the same god, of the Indian Fo, whose
worship prevails among the sects of Hindostan Siam, Thibet, China, and Japan.
But this mysterious subject is still lost in a cloud, which the researchers of
our Asiatic Society may gradually dispel.]