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THE

HISTORY

OF

THE DECLINE AND
AND FALL

OF THE

ROMAN EMPIRE.

CHAPTER LXIV.

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.

FROM the petty quarrels of a city and her suburbs, from the cowardice and discord of the falling Greeks, I shall now ascend to the victorious Turks; whose domestic slavery was ennobled by martial discipline, religious enthusiasm, and the energy of the national character. The rise and progress of the Ottomans, the present sovereigns of Constantinople, are connected with the most important scenes of modern history; but they are founded on a previous knowledge of the great eruption of the Moguls and Tartars, whose rapid conquests may be compared with the primitive convulsions of nature, which have agitated and altered the surface of the globe. I have long since asserted my claim to introduce the nations, the immediate or remote authors of the fall of the Roman empire; nor can I refuse myself to those events which, from their uncommon magnitude, will interest a philosophic mind in the history of blood.1 a

a

1 The reader is invited to review chapters xxii. to xxvi., and xxiii. to xxxviii., tho manners of pastoral nations, the conquests of Attila and the Huns, which were composed at a time when I entertained the wish, rather than the hope, of concluding my history.

The names of Mongols, Tartars, and nately, but it has been already shown Turks are frequently used indiscrimi- that the Mongols and Turks are two dis

VOL. VIII.

Zingis Khan,

of the

Moguls and

Tartars,

A.D. 1206-1227.

From the spacious highlands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea the tide of emigration and war has repeatedly first emperor 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; but it was in the pride of victory that the prince or people deduced his seventh ancestor from the immaculate conception of a virgin. His father had reigned over thirteen hordes, which composed about thirty or forty thousand families: above two-thirds refused to pay tithes or obedience to his infant son; and at the age of thirteen 'Temugin fought a battle against his rebellious subjects. The future conqueror of Asia was reduced to fly and to obey; but he rose superior to his fortune, and in his fortieth year he had established his fame and dominion over the circumjacent tribes. In a state of society in which policy is rude and valour is universal, the ascendant of one

tinct races (Editor's note, vol. iii. p. 302, 303), and that the Tartars, more properly called Tatars, were probably a Mongolian tribe, who occupied so conspicuous a place in the army of Zingis Khan, that their name became synonymnous with that of the Mongols (vol. iii. p. 294, 295, note). The Turks are one of the most considerable of the families of the world; and almost all the nomad Asiatic tribes that devastated Europe from the fourth to the twelfth century belonged to this race. The Huns, Avars, Chazars, Bulgarians, Petcheneges, and Comanians, were all Turks. The only Asiatic invaders of Europe during this period who did not belong to the Turkish race were the Hungarians or Magyars, and they were a Finnish or Tschudish people. The Mongols, on the contrary, are not mentioned in European history till the time of their national hero Zingis Khan. Unlike the Turks, the Mongols were not a numerous people. The armies of Zingis Khan and his successors were principally composed of Turks whom the Mongols had subdued; and they contained a comparatively small number of Mongols proper. The real Mongolian tribes are still found, with a few outlying exceptions, in the same seats which they occupied in the time of Zingis Khan. They inhabit the country northward of the great wall of China, and westward of the Mandshú country; and they extend northward as far as the northern extremity of the lake

Baikal, and westward to the frontier o. the Turkish Ouigours. The principal outlying exceptions are the Mongolian tribes in Thibet, and the Kalmuks of the Don, the Volga, and the Jaik. The tribes with which Zingis Khan was more immediately connected were called, after his conquests, Niroun or genuine Mongols. The Niroun Mongols dwelt between lake Baikal and the desert of Shamo.

With respect to the orthography of the name, Mongol is more correct than Mogul. The latter is only a Persian and Indian corruption of the true pronunciation. The Chinese write the name Meng-kou, and the Mandshús Monggo, or Mongou. See D'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols; Rémusat, Recherches sur les Langues Tartares; Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, vol. iv. p. 329, seq. S.

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On the traditions of the early life of Zingis, see D'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols; Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost-Mon golen, p. 66, &c., and notes.-M.

The proper orthography of the name, which is variously written by Europeans, is Tchinggis. It is so written in a letter addressed by one of his successors to the king of France; and this orthography is confirmed by his Chinese contemporaries, who wrote it Tchhing-ki-sse. Khan is only a corruption of the Mongolian title Khakan. See Remusat, Recherches sur les Langues Tartares, p. 170.-S.

man must be founded on his power and resolution to punish his enemies and recompense his friends. His first military league was ratified by the simple rites of sacrificing an horse and tasting of a running stream: Temugin pledged himself to divide with his followers the sweets and the bitters of life; and when he had shared among them his horses and apparel, he was rich in their gratitude and his own hopes. After his first victory he placed seventy caldrons on the fire, and seventy of the most guilty rebels were cast headlong into the boiling water. The sphere of his attraction was continually enlarged by the ruin of the proud and the submission of the prudent; and the boldest chieftains might tremble when they beheld, enchased in silver, the skull of the khan of the Keraites; 2 who, under the name of Prester John, had corresponded with the Roman pontiff and the princes of Europe. The ambition of Temugin condescended to employ the arts of superstition; and it was from a naked prophet, who could ascend to heaven on a white horse, that he accepted the title of Zingis, the most great; and a divine right to the conquest and dominion of the earth. In a general couroultai, or diet, he was seated on a felt, which was long afterwards revered as a relic, and solemnly proclaimed great khan or emperor of the Moguls and Tartars. Of these kindred, though rival, names, the former had

3

4

The khans of the Keraites were most probably incapable of reading the pompous epistles composed in their name by the Nestorian missionaries, who endowed them with the fabulous wonders of an Indian kingdom. Perhaps these Tartars (the Pres byter or Priest John) had submitted to the rites of baptism and ordination (Asseman. Biblioth. Orient. tom. iii. p. ii. p. 487-503).

* 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. Généalogique des Tatars, part iii. p. 194, 195). 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.b

The Tartars (more properly Tatars) were descended from Tatar Khan, the brother of Mogul Khan (see Abulghazi, parts i. and ii.), and once formed a horde of 70,000 families on the borders of Kitay (p. 103-112). In the great invasion of Europe (A.D. 1238) they seem to have led the vanguard; and the similitude of the name of Tartarei recommended that of Tartars to the Latins (Matt. Paris, p. 398 [p. 546, ed. Lond. 1640], &c.).

• The Keraites were a numerous people, consisting of several tribes, who inhabited the mountains of Karakorum. They appear to have been a very powerful nation before the rise of the Mongols proper under Zingis Khan. They are said to have been converted to Christianity in the early part of the eleventh century, and their sovereigns, called Unch-khans, or Great Monarchs, were, as Gibbon states, the princes celebrated in Europe under

the famous title of Prester John. See Prichard, Physical History, vol. iii. p. 334.-S.

b M. Rémusat (sur les Langues Tartares, p. 233) justly observes that Timour was a Turk, not a Mongul, and that probably there was not a Mongul in the army of Baber, who established the Indian throne of the "Great Mogul."-M.

This relationship, according to M. Klaproth, is fabulous, and invented by

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