Volume 6 Part 20 (2/2)
_3._ At the time when Poggius flourished at Rome, Ahmed Ebn Arabshah composed at Damascus the florid and malevolent history of Timour, for which he had collected materials in his journeys over Turkey and Tartary. [54] Without any possible correspondence between the Latin and the Arabian writer, they agree in the fact of the iron cage; and their agreement is a striking proof of their common veracity. Ahmed Arabshah likewise relates another outrage, which Bajazet endured, of a more domestic and tender nature. His indiscreet mention of women and divorces was deeply resented by the jealous Tartar: in the feast of victory the wine was served by female cupbearers, and the sultan beheld his own concubines and wives confounded among the slaves, and exposed without a veil to the eyes of intemperance. To escape a similar indignity, it is said that his successors, except in a single instance, have abstained from legitimate nuptials; and the Ottoman practice and belief, at least in the sixteenth century, is a.s.serted by the observing Busbequius, [55]
amba.s.sador from the court of Vienna to the great Soliman. _4._ Such is the separation of language, that the testimony of a Greek is not less independent than that of a Latin or an Arab. I suppress the names of Chalcondyles and Ducas, who flourished in the latter period, and who speak in a less positive tone; but more attention is due to George Phranza, [56] protovestiare of the last emperors, and who was born a year before the battle of Angora. Twenty-two years after that event, he was sent amba.s.sador to Amurath the Second; and the historian might converse with some veteran Janizaries, who had been made prisoners with the sultan, and had themselves seen him in his iron cage. 5. The last evidence, in every sense, is that of the Turkish annals, which have been consulted or transcribed by Leunclavius, Poc.o.c.k, and Cantemir. [57] They unanimously deplore the captivity of the iron cage; and some credit may be allowed to national historians, who cannot stigmatize the Tartar without uncovering the shame of their king and country.
[Footnote 47: See the History of Sherefeddin, (l. v. c. 49, 52, 53, 59, 60.) This work was finished at s.h.i.+raz, in the year 1424, and dedicated to Sultan Ibrahim, the son of Sharokh, the son of Timour, who reigned in Farsistan in his father's lifetime.]
[Footnote 48: After the perusal of Khondemir, Ebn Schounah, &c., the learned D'Herbelot (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 882) may affirm, that this fable is not mentioned in the most authentic histories; but his denial of the visible testimony of Arabshah leaves some room to suspect his accuracy.]
[Footnote 49: Et fut lui-meme (Bajazet) pris, et mene en prison, en laquelle mourut de _dure mort!_ Memoires de Boucicault, P. i. c. 37.
These Memoirs were composed while the marshal was still governor of Genoa, from whence he was expelled in the year 1409, by a popular insurrection, (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. xii. p. 473, 474.)]
[Footnote 50: The reader will find a satisfactory account of the life and writings of Poggius in the Poggiana, an entertaining work of M. Lenfant, and in the Bibliotheca Latina Mediae et Infimae aetatis of Fabricius, (tom. v. p. 305--308.) Poggius was born in the year 1380, and died in 1459.]
[Footnote 51: The dialogue de Varietate Fortunae, (of which a complete and elegant edition has been published at Paris in 1723, in 4to.,) was composed a short time before the death of Pope Martin V., (p. 5,) and consequently about the end of the year 1430.]
[Footnote 52: See a splendid and eloquent encomium of Tamerlane, p.
36--39 ipse enim novi (says Poggius) qui fuere in ejus castris.... Regem vivum cepit, caveaque in modum ferae inclusum per omnem Asian circ.u.mtulit egregium admirandumque spectaculum fortunae.]
[Footnote 53: The Chronicon Tarvisianum, (in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum tom. xix. p. 800,) and the Annales Estenses, (tom. xviii.
p. 974.) The two authors, Andrea de Redusiis de Quero, and James de Delayto, were both contemporaries, and both chancellors, the one of Trevigi, the other of Ferrara. The evidence of the former is the most positive.]
[Footnote 54: See Arabshah, tom. ii. c. 28, 34. He travelled in regiones Rumaeas, A. H. 839, (A.D. 1435, July 27,) tom. i. c. 2, p. 13.]
[Footnote 55: Busbequius in Legatione Turcica, epist. i. p. 52. Yet his respectable authority is somewhat shaken by the subsequent marriages of Amurath II. with a Servian, and of Mahomet II. with an Asiatic, princess, (Cantemir, p. 83, 93.)]
[Footnote 56: See the testimony of George Phranza, (l. i. c. 29,) and his life in Hanckius (de Script. Byzant. P. i. c. 40.) Chalcondyles and Ducas speak in general terms of Bajazet's _chains_.]
[Footnote 57: Annales Leunclav. p. 321. Poc.o.c.k, Prolegomen. ad Abulpharag Dynast. Cantemir, p. 55. * Note: Von Hammer, p. 318, cites several authorities unknown to Gibbon.--M.]
From these opposite premises, a fair and moderate conclusion may be deduced. I am satisfied that Sherefeddin Ali has faithfully described the first ostentatious interview, in which the conqueror, whose spirits were harmonized by success, affected the character of generosity. But his mind was insensibly alienated by the unseasonable arrogance of Bajazet; the complaints of his enemies, the Anatolian princes, were just and vehement; and Timour betrayed a design of leading his royal captive in triumph to Samarcand. An attempt to facilitate his escape, by digging a mine under the tent, provoked the Mogul emperor to impose a harsher restraint; and in his perpetual marches, an iron cage on a wagon might be invented, not as a wanton insult, but as a rigorous precaution.
Timour had read in some fabulous history a similar treatment of one of his predecessors, a king of Persia; and Bajazet was condemned to represent the person, and expiate the guilt, of the Roman Caesar [58] [581]
But the strength of his mind and body fainted under the trial, and his premature death might, without injustice, be ascribed to the severity of Timour. He warred not with the dead: a tear and a sepulchre were all that he could bestow on a captive who was delivered from his power; and if Mousa, the son of Bajazet, was permitted to reign over the ruins of Boursa, the greatest part of the province of Anatolia had been restored by the conqueror to their lawful sovereigns.
[Footnote 58: Sapor, king of Persia, had been made prisoner, and enclosed in the figure of a cow's hide by Maximian or Galerius Caesar.
Such is the fable related by Eutychius, (Annal. tom. i. p. 421, vers.
Poc.o.c.k). The recollection of the true history (Decline and Fall, &c., vol. ii. p 140--152) will teach us to appreciate the knowledge of the Orientals of the ages which precede the Hegira.]
[Footnote 581: Von Hammer's explanation of this contested point is both simple and satisfactory. It originates in a mistake in the meaning of the Turkish word kafe, which means a covered litter or palanquin drawn by two horses, and is generally used to convey the harem of an Eastern monarch. In such a litter, with the lattice-work made of iron, Bajazet either chose or was constrained to travel. This was either mistaken for, or transformed by, ignorant relaters into a cage. The European Schiltberger, the two oldest of the Turkish historians, and the most valuable of the later compilers, Seadeddin, describe this litter.
Seadeddin discusses the question with some degree of historical criticism, and ascribes the choice of such a vehicle to the indignant state of Bajazet's mind, which would not brook the sight of his Tartar conquerors. Von Hammer, p. 320.--M.]
From the Irtish and Volga to the Persian Gulf, and from the Ganges to Damascus and the Archipelago, Asia was in the hand of Timour: his armies were invincible, his ambition was boundless, and his zeal might aspire to conquer and convert the Christian kingdoms of the West, which already trembled at his name. He touched the utmost verge of the land; but an insuperable, though narrow, sea rolled between the two continents of Europe and Asia; [59] and the lord of so many _tomans_, or myriads, of horse, was not master of a single galley. The two pa.s.sages of the Bosphorus and h.e.l.lespont, of Constantinople and Gallipoli, were possessed, the one by the Christians, the other by the Turks. On this great occasion, they forgot the difference of religion, to act with union and firmness in the common cause: the double straits were guarded with s.h.i.+ps and fortifications; and they separately withheld the transports which Timour demanded of either nation, under the pretence of attacking their enemy. At the same time, they soothed his pride with tributary gifts and suppliant emba.s.sies, and prudently tempted him to retreat with the honors of victory. Soliman, the son of Bajazet, implored his clemency for his father and himself; accepted, by a red patent, the invest.i.ture of the kingdom of Romania, which he already held by the sword; and reiterated his ardent wish, of casting himself in person at the feet of the king of the world. The Greek emperor [60]
(either John or Manuel) submitted to pay the same tribute which he had stipulated with the Turkish sultan, and ratified the treaty by an oath of allegiance, from which he could absolve his conscience so soon as the Mogul arms had retired from Anatolia. But the fears and fancy of nations ascribed to the ambitious Tamerlane a new design of vast and romantic compa.s.s; a design of subduing Egypt and Africa, marching from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, entering Europe by the Straits of Gibraltar, and, after imposing his yoke on the kingdoms of Christendom, of returning home by the deserts of Russia and Tartary. This remote, and perhaps imaginary, danger was averted by the submission of the sultan of Egypt: the honors of the prayer and the coin attested at Cairo the supremacy of Timour; and a rare gift of a _giraffe_, or camelopard, and nine ostriches, represented at Samarcand the tribute of the African world.
Our imagination is not less astonished by the portrait of a Mogul, who, in his camp before Smyrna, meditates, and almost accomplishes, the invasion of the Chinese empire. [61] Timour was urged to this enterprise by national honor and religious zeal. The torrents which he had shed of Mussulman blood could be expiated only by an equal destruction of the infidels; and as he now stood at the gates of paradise, he might best secure his glorious entrance by demolis.h.i.+ng the idols of China, founding mosques in every city, and establis.h.i.+ng the profession of faith in one G.o.d, and his prophet Mahomet. The recent expulsion of the house of Zingis was an insult on the Mogul name; and the disorders of the empire afforded the fairest opportunity for revenge. The ill.u.s.trious Hongvou, founder of the dynasty of _Ming_, died four years before the battle of Angora; and his grandson, a weak and unfortunate youth, was burnt in his palace, after a million of Chinese had perished in the civil war. [62]
Before he evacuated Anatolia, Timour despatched beyond the Sihoon a numerous army, or rather colony, of his old and new subjects, to open the road, to subdue the Pagan Calmucks and Mungals, and to found cities and magazines in the desert; and, by the diligence of his lieutenant, he soon received a perfect map and description of the unknown regions, from the source of the Irtish to the wall of China. During these preparations, the emperor achieved the final conquest of Georgia; pa.s.sed the winter on the banks of the Araxes; appeased the troubles of Persia; and slowly returned to his capital, after a campaign of four years and nine months.
[Footnote 59: Arabshah (tom. ii. c. 25) describes, like a curious traveller, the Straits of Gallipoli and Constantinople. To acquire a just idea of these events, I have compared the narratives and prejudices of the Moguls, Turks, Greeks, and Arabians. The Spanish amba.s.sador mentions this hostile union of the Christians and Ottomans, (Vie de Timour, p. 96.)]
[Footnote 60: Since the name of Caesar had been transferred to the sultans of Roum, the Greek princes of Constantinople (Sherefeddin, l.
v. c. 54) were confounded with the Christian _lords_ of Gallipoli, Thessalonica, &c. under the t.i.tle of _Tekkur_, which is derived by corruption from the genitive tou kuriou, (Cantemir, p. 51.)]
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