Origin and monarchy of Asia, &c. duce the number, and qualify the nature, of these horrid acts; and they might sometimes be excused by the cruel laws of retaliation. In the siege of Topirus (21), whose obstinate defence had enraged the Sclavonians, they massacred fifteen thousand males; but they spared the women and children; the most valuable captives were always reserved for labour or ransom; the servitude was not rigorous, and the terms of their deliverance were speedy and moderate. But the subject, or the historian of Justinian, exhaled his just indignation in the language of complaint and reproach; and Procopius has confidently affirmed, that in a reign of thirty-two years, each annual inroad of the Barbarians consumed two hundred thousand of the inhabitants of the Roman empire. The entire population of Turkish Europe, which nearly corresponds with the provinces of Justinian, would perhaps be incapable of supplying six millions of persons, the result of this incredible estimate (22). In the midst of these obscure calamities, Europe felt the shock of the Turks in a revolution, which first revealed to the world the name and nation A. D. 545, of the TURKS.* Like Romulus, the founder of that martial people was suckled by a she-wolf, who afterwards made him the father of a numerous progeny; and the representation of that animal in the banners of the Turks preserved the memory, or rather suggested the idea, of a fable, which was invented, without any mutual intercourse, by the shepherds of Latium and those of Scythia. At the equal distance of two thousand miles from the Caspian, the Icy, the Chinese, and the Bengal seas, a ridge of mountains is conspicuous, the centre, and perhaps the summit, of Asia; which, in the language of different nations, has been styled Imaus, and Caf (23), and Altai, and the Golden Mountains, ‡ and the Girdle of the Earth. The sides of the hills were productive of minerals; and the iron forges (24), for the purpose of war, were exercised by the Turks, 38.). For their mild and liberal behaviour to their prisoners, we may appeal to the authority, somewhat more recent, of the emperor Maurice (Stratagem. 1. ii. c. 5.). (21) Topirus was situate near Philippi in Thrace, or Macedonia, opposite to the isle of Thasos, twelve days' journey from Constantinople (Cellarius, tom. i. p. 676. 840.). (22) According to the malevolent testimony of the Anecdotes (c. 18.) these inroads had reduced the provinces south of the Danube to the state of a Scythian wilderness. (23) From Caf to Caf; which a more rational geography would interpret, from Imaus, perhaps, to Mount Atlas. According to the religious philosophy of the Mahometans, the basis of Mount Caf is an emerald, whose reflection produces the azure of the sky. The mountain is endowed with a sensitive action in its roots or nerves; and their vibration, at the command of God, is the cause of earthquakes (D'Herbelot, p. 230, 231.). (24) The Siberian iron is the best and most plentiful in the world; and in the southern parts, above sixty mines are now worked by the industry of the Russians (Strahlenberg, Hist. of Siberia, p. 342. 387. Voyage en Sibérie, par l'Abbé Chappe d'Auteroche, p. 603–608. edit. in 12mo. Amsterdam, 1770). The Turks offered iron for sale; yet the Roman ambassadors, with strange obstinacy, persisted in believing that it was all a trick, and that their country produced none (Menander in Excerpt. Leg. p. 152.). *It must be remembered that the name of Turks is extended to a whole family of the Asiatic races, and not confined to the Assena, or Turks of the Altai.-M. + Assena (the wolf) was the name of this chief. Klaproth, Tabl. Histor. de l'Asie, p. 114.-M. Altai, i. e. Altun Tagh, the Golden Mountain. Von Hammer. Osman. Geschichte, vol. i. p. 2.-M. * the most despised portion of the slaves of the great khan of the Geougen. But their servitude could only last till a leader, bold and eloquent, should arise to persuade his countrymen that the same arms which they forged for their masters, might become, in their own hands, the instruments of freedom and victory. They sallied from the mountain (25); a sceptre was the reward of his advice; and the annual ceremony, in which a piece of iron was heated in the fire, and the smith's hammer was successively handled by the prince and his nobles, recorded for ages the humble profession and rational pride of the Turkish nation. Bertezena,† their first leader, signalised their valour and his own in successful combats against the neighbouring tribes; but when he presumed to ask in marriage the daughter of the great khan, the insolent demand of a slave and a mechanic was contemptuously rejected. The disgrace was expiated by a more noble alliance with a princess of China; and the decisive battle which almost extirpated the nation of the Geougen, established in Tartary the new and more powerful empire of the Turks. They reigned over the north; but they confessed the vanity of conquest, by their faithful attachment to the mountain of their fathers. The royal encampment seldom lost sight of Mount Altai, from whence the river Irtish descends to water the rich pastures of the Calmucks (26), which nourish the largest sheep and oxen in the world. The soil is fruitful and the climate mild and temperate: the happy region was ignorant of earthquake and pestilence; the emperor's throne was turned towards the East, and a golden wolf on the top of a spear seemed to guard the entrance of his tent. One of the successors of Bertezena was tempted by the luxury and superstition of China; but his design of building cities and temples was defeated by the simple wisdom of a Barbarian counsellor." The Turks," he said, "are not equal in number to "one hundredth part of the inhabitants of China. If we balance (25) Of Irgana-kon (Abulghazi Khan, Hist. Généalogique des Tatars, P. ii. c. 5. p. 71–77. c. 15. p. 155.). The tradition of the Moguls, of the 450 years which they passed in the mountains, agrees with the Chinese periods of the history of the Huns and Turks (De Guignes, tom. i. part. ii. p. 376.), and the twenty generations, from their restoration to Zingis. (26) The country of the Turks, now of the Calmucks, is well described in the Genealogical History, p. 521-562. The curious notes of the French translator are enlarged and digested in the second volume of the English version. *The Mongol Temugin is also, though erroneously, explained by Rubruquis, a smith. Schmidt, p. 376.-M. † There appears the same confusion here. Bertezena (Bertè-Scheno) is claimed as the founder of the Mongol race. The name means the grey (blauliche) wolf. In fact, the same tradition of the origin from a wolf seems common to the Mongols and the Turks. The Mongol BertèScheno, of the very curious Mongol History, published and translated by M. Schmidt of Peters burg, is brought from Thibet. M. Schmidt con siders this tradition of the Thibetane descent of the royal race of the Mongols, to be much earlier than their conversion to Lamaism; yet it seems very suspicious. See Klaproth, Tabl. de l'Asie, p. 159. The Turkish Bertezena is called Thoumen by Klaproth, p. 115. In 552 Thou-men took the title of Kha-Khan, and was called Il Khan. -M. Great Bucharia is called Turkistan, see Hammer, 2. It includes all the vast steppes at the foot of the Altai. The name is the same with that of the Turan of Persian poetic legend.-M. 66 "their power, and elude their armies, it is because we wander "without any fixed habitations, in the exercise of war and hunting. "Are we strong? we advance and. conquer: are we feeble? we re"tire and are concealed. Should the Turks confine themselves "within the walls of cities, the loss of a battle would be the des"truction of their empire. The bonzes preach only patience, humility, and the renunciation of the world. Such, O king! is not "the religion of heroes." They entertained, with less reluctance, the doctrines of Zoroaster; but the greatest part of the nation acquiesced, without inquiry, in the opinions, or rather in the practice, of their ancestors. The honours of sacrifice were reserved for the supreme deity; they acknowledged, in rude hymns, their obligations to the air, the fire, the water, and the earth; and their priests derived some profit from the art of divination. Their unwritten laws were rigorous and impartial: theft was punished by a tenfold restitution; adultery, treason, and murder, with death; and no chastisement could be inflicted too severe for the rare and inexpiable guilt of cowardice. As the subject nations marched under the standard of the Turks, their cavalry, both men and horses, were proudly computed by millions; one of their effective armies consisted of four hundred thousand soldiers, and in less than fifty years they were connected in peace and war with the Romans, the Persians, and the Chinese. In their northern limits, some vestige may be discovered of the form and situation of Kamtchatka, of a people of hunters and fishermen, whose sledges were drawn by dogs, and whose habitations were buried in the earth. The Turks were ignorant of astronomy; but the observation taken by some learned Chinese, with a gnomon of eight feet, fixes the royal camp in the latitude of forty-nine degrees, and marks their extreme progress within three, or at least ten degrees, of the polar circle (27). Among their southern conquests the most splendid was that of the Nephthalites or white Huns, a polite and warlike people, who possessed the commercial cities of Bochara and Samarcand, who had vanquished the Persian monarch, and carried their victorious arms along the banks, and perhaps to the mouth of the Indus. On the side of the west, the Turkish cavalry advanced to the lake Mæotis. They passed that lake on the ice. The khan who dwelt at the foot of Mount Altai issued his commands for the siege of Bosphorus (28), a city, the voluntary subject of Rome, and whose princes had formerly been the friends of Athens (29). To the east, the Turks in (27) Visdelou, p. 141. 151. The fact, though it strictly belongs to a subordinate and successive tribe, may be introduced here. (28) Procopius, Persic, l. i. c. 12. l. ii. c. 3. Peyssonel (Observations sur les Peuples Barbares, p. 99, 100.) defines the distance between Caffa and the old Bosphorus at xvi long Tartar leagues. (29) See, in a Mémoire of M. de Boze (Mém. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. vi. p. 549-565.), the ancient kings and medals of the Cimmerian Bosphorus; and the gratitude of Athens, in the Oration of Demosthenes against Leptines (in Reiske, Orator. Græc. tom. i. p. 466, 467.). vaded China, as often as the vigour of the government was relaxed: and I am taught to read in the history of the times, that they mowed down their patient enemies like hemp or grass; and that the mandarins applauded the wisdom of an emperor who repulsed these Barbarians with golden lances. This extent of savage empire compelled the Turkish monarch to establish three subordinate princes of his own blood, who soon forgot their gratitude and allegiance. The conquerors were enervated by luxury, which is always fatal except to an industrious people; the policy of China solicited the vanquished nations to resume their independence; and the power of the Turks was limited to a period of two hundred years. The revival of their name and dominion in the southern countries of Asia are the events of a later age; and the dynasties, which succeeded to their native realms, may sleep in oblivion; since their history bears no relation to the decline and fall of the Roman empire (30). before the Turks, and approach the empire. In the rapid career of conquest, the Turks attacked and subdued The Avars fly the nation of the Ogors or Varchonites* on the banks of the river Til, which derived the epithet of Black from its dark water or gloomy forests (31). The khan of the Ogors was slain with three hundred thousand of his subjects, and their bodies were scattered over the space of four days' journey: their surviving countrymen acknowledged the strength and mercy of the Turks; and a small portion, about twenty thousand warriors, preferred exile to servitude. They followed the well-known road of the Volga, cherished the error of the nations who confounded them with the AVARS, and spread the terror of that false though famous appellation, which had not, however, saved its lawful proprietors from the yoke of the Turks (32). After a long and victorious march, the new Avars (30) For the origin and revolutions of the first Turkish empire, the Chinese details are borrowed from De Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. P. ii. p. 367-462.) and Visdelou (Supplément à la Bibliothèque Orient. d'Herbelot, p. 82—114.). The Greek or Roman hints are gathered in Menander (p. 108-164.) and Theophylact Simocatta (1. vii. c. 7, 8.). (31) The river Til, or Tula, according to the geography of De Guignes (tom. i. part ii. p. lviii. and 352.), is a small, though grateful, stream of the desert, that falls into the Orhon, Selinga, &c. See Bell, Journey from Petersburgh to Pekin (vol. ii. p. 124.); yet his own description of the Keat, down which he sailed into the Oby, represents the name and attributes of the black river (p. 139.).† (32) Theophylact, 1. vii. c. 7, 8. And yet his true Avars are invisible even to the eyes of M. de *The Ogors or Varchonites, from Var a river M. Klaproth (Tableaux Historiques de l'Asie, (obviously connected with the name Avar), must p. 274.) supposes this river to be an eastern not be confounded with the Uigours, the eastern affluent of the Volga, the Kama, which, from the Turks (v. Hammer, Osmanische Geschichte, vol. i. colour of its waters, might be called black. M. p.3.), who speak a language, the parent of the more Abel Remusat (Recherches sur les Langues Tarmodern Turkish dialects. Compare Klaproth, tares, vol. i. p. 320.) and M. St. Martin (vol. ix. page 121. They are the ancestors of the Usbeck p. 373.) consider it the Volga, which is called Atel Turks. These Ogors were of the same Finnish or Etel by all the Turkish tribes. It is called race with the Huns; and the 20,000 families which fled towards the west, after the Turkish invasion, were of the same race with those which remained to the east of the Volga, the true Avars of Theophylact.-M. Attilas by Menander and Ettilia by the monk Their embassy to Constanti nople. A. D. 558. arrived at the foot of Mount Caucasus, in the country of the Alani (33) and Circassians, where they first heard of the splendour and weakness of the Roman empire. They humbly requested their confederate, the prince of the Alani, to lead them to this source of riches; and their ambassador, with the permission of the governor of Lazica, was transported by the Euxine sea to Constantinople. The whole city was poured forth to behold with curiosity and terror the aspect of a strange people: their long hair, which hung in tresses down their backs, was gracefully bound with ribands, but the rest of their habit appeared to imitate the fashion of the Huns. When they were admitted to the audience of Justinian, Candish, the first of the ambassadors, addressed the Roman emperor in these terms: "You see before you, O mighty prince, the representatives "of the strongest and most populous of nations, the invincible, the "irresistible Avars. We are willing to devote ourselves to your "service: we are able to vanquish and destroy all the enemies who "now disturb your repose. But we expect, as the price of our "alliance, as the reward of our valour, precious gifts, annual sub"sidies, and fruitful possessions." At the time of this embassy, Justinian had reigned above thirty, he had lived above seventyfive years: his mind, as well as his body, was feeble and languid; and the conqueror of Africa and Italy, careless of the permanent interest of his people, aspired only to end his days in the bosom even of inglorious peace. In a studied oration, he imparted to the senate his resolution to dissemble the insult, and to purchase the friendship of the Avars; and the whole senate, like the mandarins of China, applauded the incomparable wisdom and foresight of their sovereign. The instruments of luxury were immediately prepared to captivate the Barbarians; silken garments, soft and splendid beds, and chains and collars incrusted with gold. The ambassadors, content with such liberal reception, departed from Constantinople, and Valentin, one of the emperor's guards, was sent with a similar character to their camp at the foot of Mount Caucasus. As their destruction or their success must be alike advantageous to the empire, he persuaded them to invade the enemies of Rome; and they were easily tempted, by gifts and promises, to gratify their ruling inclinations. These fugitives, who fled before the Turkish arms, passed the Tanais and Borysthenes, and boldly advanced into the heart of Poland and Germany, violating the law of nations, and abusing the rights of victory. Before ten years had elapsed, their camps were seated on the Danube and the Elbe, many Bulgarian and Sclavonian names were obliterated from the earth, and the remainder Guignes; and what can be more illustrious than the false? The right of the fugitive Ogors to that national appellation is confessed by the Turks themselves (Menander, p. 108.). (33) The Alani are still found in the Genealogical History of the Tartars (p. 617.), and in D'Anville's maps. They opposed the march of the generals of Zingis round the Caspian sea, and were overthrown in a great battle (Hist. de Gengiscan, I. iv. c. 9. p. 447.). |