С Н А Р. His invafion The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants fucceffively reduced the hords of the defert, who pitched their tents between the wall of China and the Volga; and the Moof China, gul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world, A. D. the lord of many millions of fhepherds and foldiers, who 1210-1214. felt their united strength, and were impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy climates of the fouth. His anceftors had been the tributaries of the Chinese emperors; and Temugin himself had been difgraced by a title of honour and fervitude. The court of Pekin was astonished by an embaffy from its former vaffal, 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. An haughty answer difguifed their fecret apprehenfions; and their fears were foon juftified by the march of innumerable fquadrons, who pierced on all fides 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 invafion was fupported by the revolt of an hundred thousand Khitans, who guarded the frontier: yet he liftened to a treaty; and 2 princefs of China, three thoufand horfes, five hundred youths and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and filk, were the price of his retreat. In his fecond expedition, he compelled the Chinese emperor to retire beyond the yellow river to a more fouthern refidence. The fiege of Pekin (19) was long and laborious: the inhabitants were reduced by famine to decimate and devour their fellow citizens; when their ammunition was fpent, they discharged ingots of gold and filver from their engines; but the Mo guls the collateral articles of the Seljukians of Roum, tom. ii. 1. xi. the Carizmians, 1. xiv. and the Mamalukes, tom. iv. 1. xxi.: confult likewife the tables of the ift volume. He is ever learned and accurate; yet I am only indebted to him for a general view, and fome paffages of Abulfeda, which are ftill latent in the Arabic text. (19) More properly Ten-king, an ancient city, whofe ruins ftill appear fome furlongs to the fouth-eaft 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 fouth. The identity and change of names perplex the most skilful readers of the Chinese geography (p. 177.). LXIV. guls introduced a mine to the centre of the capital; and C H A P. the conflagration of the palace burnt above thirty days. China was defolated by Tartar war and domeftic faction; and the five northern provinces were added to the empire of Zingis. Tranfoxia na, and In the Weft, he touched the dominions of Mohammed of Carizme, fultan of Carizme, who reigned from the Perfian Gulf to the borders of India and Turkeftan; and who, in the Perfia, proud imitation of Alexander the Great, forgot the fer- A. D. vitude and ingratitude of his fathers to the houfe of Sel- 1218-1224. juk. It was the wifh of Zingis to establish a friendly and commercial intercourfe with the most powerful of the Moflem princes; nor could he be tempted by the fecret folicitations of the caliph of Bagdad, who facrificed to his perfonal wrongs the fafety of the church and state. A rafh and inhuman deed provoked and juftified the Tartar arms in the invafion of the southern Afia. A caravan of three ambaffadors and one hundred and fifty merchants, was arrested and murdered at Otrar, by the command of Mohammed; nor was it till after a demand and denial of juftice, till he had prayed and fafted three nights on a mountain, that the Mogul emperor appealed to the judgment of God and his fword. Our European battles, fays a philofophic writer (20), are petty fkirmishes, if compared to the numbers that have fought and fallen in the fields of Afia. Seven hundred thoufand Moguls and Tartars are faid to have marched under the standard of Zingis and his four fons. In the vast plains that extend to the north of the Sihon or Jaxartes, they were encountered by four hundred thousand foldiers of the fultan; and in the firft battle, which was fufpended by the night, one hundred and fixty thousand Carizmians were flain. Mohammed was aftonished by the multitude and valour 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 repulfed by the length and difficulty of fo many regular fieges. But the prudence of Zingis had formed a body of Chinese engineers, fkilled in VOL. VI. the T (20) M. de Voltaire, Effai fur l'Hiftoire Générale, tom. iii. c. 6o. p. 8. His account of Zingis and the Moguls contains, as usual, much general fenfe and truth, with fome particular errors. CHA P. the mechanic arts, informed perhaps of the fecret of gunLXIV. powder, and capable, under his difcipline, of attacking a foreign country with more vigour and fuccefs than they had defended their own. The Perfian hiftorians will relate the fieges and reduction of Otrar, Cogende, Bochara, Samarcand, Carizine, Herat, Merou, Nifabour, Balch, and Candahar; and the conqueft of the rich and populous countries of Tranfoxiana, Carizme, and Chorafan. The deftructive hoftilities of Attila and the Huns have long fince been elucidated by the example of Zingis and the Moguls; and in this more proper place I fhall be content to obferve, that, from the Cafpian to the Indus, they ruined a tract of many hundred miles, which was adorned with the habitations and labours of mankind, and that five centuries have not been fufficient to repair the ravages of four years. The Mogul emperor encouraged or indulged the fury of his troops: the hope of future poffeffion was loft in the ardour of rapine and flaughter; and the cause of the war exafperated their native fierceness by the pretence of juftice and revenge. The downfal and death of the fultan Mohammed, who expired unpitied and alone, in a defert ifland of the Cafpian Sea, is a poor atonement for the calamities of which he was the author. Could the Carizmian empire have been faved by a fingle hero, it would have been faved by his fon Gelaleddin, whofe active valour repeatedly checked the Moguls in the career of victory. Retreating, as he fought, to the banks of the Indus, he was oppreffed by their innumerable host, till, in the last moment of defpair, Gelaleddin spurred his horfe into the waves, fwam one of the broadest and most rapid rivers of Afia, and extorted the admiration and applaufe of Zingis himfelf. It was in this camp that the Mogul conqueror yielded with reluctance to the murmurs of his weary and wealthy troops, who fighed for the enjoyment of their native land. Incumbered with the spoils of Afia, he flowly measured back his footsteps, betrayed fome pity for the mifery of the vanquished, and declared his intention of rebuilding the cities which had been swept away by the tempeft of his arms. After he had repaffed the Oxus and Jaxartes, he was joined by two generals, whom he had detached with thirty thoufand horse, to fubdue the western provinces of Pertia. They had tramp led LXIV. ted on the nations which oppofed their paffage, penetrated CHA P. through the gates of Derbend, traverfed the Volga and the Defert, and accomplished the circuit of the Cafpian Sea, by an expedition which had never been attempted, and has never been repeated. The return of Zingis was fignalized by the overthrow of the rebellious or independent kingdoms of Tartary; and he died in the fulness of His death, years and glory, with his laft breath exhorting and inftruct- A. D. 1227. ing his fons to atchieve the conqueft of the Chinese empire. the fuccef A. D. 1227-1295. The haram of Zingis was compofed of five hundred Conquefts wives and concubines; and of his numerous progeny, four of the Mofons, illuftrious by their birth and merit, exercifed under guls under their father the principal offices of peace and war. Toufhi fors of Zinwas his great huntsman, Zagatai (21) his judge, Octai his gis, minifter, and Tuli his general; and their names and actions are often confpicuous in the hiftory of his conquefts. Firmly united for their own and the public intereft, the three brothers and their families were content with dependent fceptres; and Octai, by general confent was proclaimed great khan, or emperor of the Moguls and Tartars. He was fucceeded by his fon Gayuk, after whose death the empire devolved to his coufins Mangou and Cublai, the fons of Tuli, and the grandfons of Zingis. In the fixty-eight years of his four first fucceffors, the Moguls fubdued almost all Afia, and a large portion of Europe. Without confining myself to the order of time, without expatiating on the detail of events, I fhall present a general picture of the progrefs of their arms; I. In the Eaft, II. In the South; III. In the Weft; and IV. In the North. I. Before the invafion of Zingis, China was divided into of the two empires or dynasties of the North and South (22); northern and the difference of origin and intereft was fmoothed by empire of a general A. D. 1234: T 2 (21) Zagatai gave his name to his dominions of Maurenahar, or Tranfoxiana; and the Moguls of Hindoftan, who emigrated from that country, are ftyled Zagatais by the Perfians. This certain etymology, and the fimilar example of Uzbek, Nogai, &c. may warn us not abfolutely to reject the derivations of a national, from a perfonal, name. (22) In Marco Polo, and the Oriental geographers, the names of Cathay and Mangi distinguish the northern and fouthern empires, which, from A. D. 1234 to 1279, were thofe of the Great Khan, and of the Chinese. The fearch of Cathay, after China had been found, excited and mifled our navigators of the fixteenth century, in their attempts to discover the northenit paffage. China, LXIV. ners. CHA P. a general conformity of laws, language, and national nianThe northern empire, which had been difmembered by Zingis, was finally fubdued feven years after his death. After the lofs of Pekin, the emperor had fixed his refidence at Kaifong, a city many leagues in circumference, and which contained, according to the Chinese annals, fourteen hundred thoufand families of inhabitants and fugitives. He escaped from thence with only feven horfemen, and made his last ftand in a third capital, till at length the hopeless monarch, protefting his innocence and accufing his fortune, afcended a funeral pile, and gave orders, that, as foon as he had ftabbed himself, the fire fhould be kindled by his attendants. The dynafty of the Song, the native and ancient fovereigns of the whole empire, furvived about forty-five years the fall of the northern ufurpers; and the perfect conqueft was referved for the arms of Cublai. During this interval, the Moguls were often diverted by foreign wars; and, if the Chinese feldom dared to meet their victors in the field, their paffive courage prefented an endlefs fucceffion of cities to ftorm and of millions to flaughter. In the attack and defence of places, the engines of antiquity and the Greek fire were alternately employed: the ufe of gunpowder in cannon and bombs appears as a familiar practice (23); and the fieges were conducted by the Mahometans and Franks, who had been liberally invited into the fervice of Cublai. After paffing the great river, the troops and artillery were conveyed along a feries of canals, till they invefted the royal refidence of Hamcheu, or Quinfay, in the country of filk, the most delicious climate in China. The emperor, a defenceless youth, furrendered his perfon and fceptre; and before he was fent in exile into Tartary he ftruck nine times the ground with (23) I depend on the knowledge and fidelity of the Pere Gaubil, whe tranflates 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 compofed and publifhed. The two uncles of Marco Polo, who ferved as engineers at the fiege of Siengyangfou (1. ii, c. 61. in Ramufio, tonr. ii. See Gaubil, p. 155. 157.), must have felt and related the effects of this deftructive powder, and their filence is a weighty, and almoft decifive, objection. 1 enters tain a fufpicion, that the recent difcovery was carried from Europe to China by the caravans of the 15th century, and falfely adopted as an old national difcovery before the arrival of the Portuguese and Jefuits in the 16th. Yet the Pere Gaubil affirmus, that the use of gunpowder has been known to the Chinese above 1600 years. |