their forces in the plain. But these forces were not cemented by virtue and union; and some powerful emirs had been seduced to desert or betray their more loyal companions. Timour's front was covered with a line of Indian elephants, whose turrets were filled with archers and Greek fire; the rapid evolutions of his cavalry completed the dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on each. other; many thousands were stifled or slaughtered in the entrance of the great street; the Moguls entered with the fugitives; and, after a short defence, the citadel, the impregnable citadel of Aleppo, was surrendered by cowardice or treachery. Among the suppliants and captives, Timour distinguished the doctors of the law, whom he invited to the dangerous honour of a personal conference.* Mogul prince was a zealous Mussulman; but his Persian schools had taught him to revere the memory of Ali and Hosein; and he had imbibed a deep prejudice against the Syrians, as the enemies of the son of the daughter of the apostle of God. To these doctors he proposed a captious question, which the casuists of Bochara, Samarcand, and Herat were incapable of resolving. "Who are the true

The

martyrs, of those who are slain on my side, or on that of my enemies ?" But he was silenced, or satisfied, by the dexterity of one of the cadhis of Aleppo, who replied in the words of Mahomet himself, that the motive, not the ensign, constitutes the martyr; and that the Moslems of either party, who fight only for the glory of God, may deserve that sacred appellation. The true succession of the caliphs was a controversy of a still more delicate nature; and the frankness of a doctor, too honest for his situation, provoked the emperor to exclaim, "Ye are as false as those of Damascus Moawiyah was a usurper, Yezid a tyrant, and Ali alone is the lawful successor of the prophet.' A prudent explanation restored his tranquillity, and he passed to a more familiar topic of conversation. "What is your age ?" said he to the cadhi. "Fifty years.". -"It would be the age of my eldest son; you see me here (continued would have obliged him, in some measure, to respect his enemy and himself. His bitters may correct the luscious sweets of Sherefeddin (1. 5. c. 17-29). * These interesting conversations appear to have been copied by Arabshah (tom. i. c. 68, p. 625-645) from the cadhi and historian Ebn Schounah, a principal actor. how could he be alive seventy-five years afterwards? (D'Herbelot. p. 792.)

Yet

Timour) a poor, lame, decrepit mortal. Yet by my arm has the Almighty been pleased to subdue the kingdoms of Iran, Tauran, and the Indies. I am not a man of blood; and God is my witness, that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity." During this peaceful conversation, the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood, and re-echoed with the cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks of violated virgins. The rich plunder that was abandoned to his soldiers might stimulate their avarice, but their cruelty was enforced by the peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom were curiously piled in columns and pyramids; the Moguls celebrated the feast of victory, while the surviving Moslems passed the night in tears and in chains. I shall not dwell on the march of the destroyer from Aleppo to Damascus, where he was rudely encountered and almost overthrown by the armies of Egypt. A retrograde motion was imputed to his distress and despair; one of his nephews deserted to the enemy; and Syria rejoiced in the tale of his defeat, when the sultan was driven by the revolt of the Mamelukes to escape with precipitation and shame to his palace of Cairo. Abandoned by their prince, the inhabitants of Damascus still defended their walls; and Timour consented to raise the siege if they would adorn his retreat with a gift or ransom; each article of nine pieces. But no sooner had he introduced himself into the city, under colour of a truce, than he perfidiously violated the treaty, imposed a contribution of ten millions of gold, and animated his troops to chastise the posterity of those Syrians who had executed or approved the murder of the grandson of Mahomet. A family which had given honourable burial to the head of Hosein, and a colony of artificers whom he sent to labour at Samarcand, were alone reserved in the general massacre; and, after a period of seven centuries, Damascus was reduced to ashes, because a Tartar was moved by religious zeal to avenge the blood of an Arab. The losses and fatigues of the campaign obliged Timour to renounce the conquest of Palestine and Egypt; but in his return to the Euparates, he delivered Aleppo to the flames; and justified his pious motive by the pardon and reward of two thousand sectaries of Ali, who were desirous to visit the tomb of his son. I have expatiated on the personal anecdotes which

mark the character of the Mogul hero; but I shall briefly mention that he erected on the ruins of Bagdad a pyramid of ninety thousand heads; again visited Georgia; encamped on the banks of Araxes, and proclaimed his resolution of marching against the Ottoman emperor. Conscious of the importance of the war, he collected his forces from every province; eight hundred thousand men were enrolled on his military list;+ but the splendid commands of five and ten thousand horse may be rather expressive of the rank and pension of the chiefs, than of the genuine number of effective soldiers. In the pillage of Syria, the Moguls had acquired immense riches; but the delivery of their pay and arrears for seven years more firmly attached them to the imperial standard.

During this diversion of the Mogul arms, Bajazet had two years to collect his forces for a more serious encounter. They consisted of four hundred thousand horse and foot,§

* The marches and occupations of Timour between the Syrian and Ottoman wars, are represented by Sherefeddin (l. 5, c. 29-43) and Arabshah (tom. ii. c. 15-18). + This number of eight hundred thousand was extracted by Arabshah, or rather by Ebn Schounah, ex rationario Timuri, on the faith of a Carizmian officer (tom. i. c. 68, p. 617); and it is remarkable enough, that a Greek historian (Phranza, 1. 1, c. 29) adds no more than twenty thousand men. Poggius reckons one million; another Latin contemporary (Chron. Tarvisianum, apud Muratori, tom. xix. p. 800), one million one hundred thousand; and the enormous sum of one million six hundred thousand, is attested by a German soldier, who was present at the battle of Angora. (Leunclav. ad Chalcocondyl. 1. 3, p. 82.) Timour, in his Institutions, has not deigned to calculate his troops, his subjects, or his revenues. A wide latitude of

non-effectives, was allowed by the Great Mogul for his own pride and the benefit of his officers. Bernier's patron was Penge-Hazari, commander of five thousand horse; of which he maintained no more than five hundred. (Voyages, tom. i. p. 288, 289.)

§ Timour himself fixes at four hundred thousand men the Ottoman army (Institutions, p. 153), which is reduced to one hundred and fifty thousand by Phranza (1. 1, c. 29), and swelled by the German soldier to one million four hundred thousand. It is evident that the Moguls were the more numerous. [Finlay (ii. 601) complains of the wild fables which exaggerated the armies of Bajazet and Timour to "such numbers, that it would have been impossible to feed them for a day, without a month's preparation at every station." Bajazet's Servian contingent, he says, was only two thousand men at the opening of the campaign; yet, after all its losses, it was stated to be twenty thousand at Angora, and every number seems to have been augmented in the same manner. Timour (Memoirs, p. 17) does not speak historically of the numbers of Bajazet's army; but rather hyperbolically (it is in

whose merit and fidelity were of an unequal complexion. We may discriminate the janizaries, who have been gradually raised to an establishment of forty thousand men; a national cavalry, the Spahis of modern times; twenty thousand cuirassiers of Europe, clad in black and impenetrable armour; the troops of Anatolia, whose princes had taken refuge in the camp of Timour, and a colony of Tartars, whom he had driven from Kipzak, and to whom Bajazet had assigned a settlement in the plains of Adrianople. The fearless confidence of the sultan urged him to meet his antagonist; and, as if he had chosen that spot for revenge, he displayed his banners near the ruins of the unfortunate Suvas. In the meanwhile, Timour moved from the Araxes through the countries of Armenia and Anatolia; his boldness was secured by the wisest precautions; his speed was guided by order and discipline; and the woods, the mountains, and the rivers, were diligently explored by the flying squadrons, who marked his road and preceded his standard. Firm in his plan of fighting in the heart of the Ottoman kingdom, he avoided their camp, dexterously inclined to the left, occupied Cæsarea, traversed the salt desert and the river Halys, and invested Angora; while the sultan, immoveable and ignorant in his post, compared the Tartar swiftness to the crawling of a snail;* he returned on the wings of indignation to the relief of Angora; and as both generals were alike impatient for action, the plains round that city were the scene of a memorable battle, which has immor

his chapter of Omens), to magnify the importance of the dream, "in consequence of which he was enabled to take from the Kyser the kingdom of Rûm." The tone in which he attributes his success to this dream, seems to imply the numerical inferiority of his own forces to those of the Ottomans.-ED.] It may not be useless to

mark the distances between Angora and the neighbouring cities, by the journeys of the caravans, each of twenty or twenty-five miles; to Smyrna twenty, to Kiotahia ten, to Boursa ten, to Cæsarea eight, to Sinope ten, to Nicomedia nine, to Constantinople twelve or thirteen. (See Tournefort, Voyage au Levant, tom. ii. lettre 21.) [Gibbon forgot here his conjecture, that Amorium had revived and was misnamed Anguria by the Nubian geographer. For this and the notice

of Ancyra and Angora, see note, ch. 52, vol. vi. p. 163. During the division of the Byzantine empire made by Heraclius, Galatia was the Thema Bukellarion, and Ancyra its capital. After the Ottoman conquest, it formed part of the emirate of Karaman. Finlay, Hist. Byzant. i. 14. Koeppen, p. 72. 208.-ED.]

talized the glory of Timour and the shame of Bajazet. For this signal victory, the Mogul emperor was indebted to himself, to the genius of the moment, and the discipline of thirty years. He had improved the tactics, without violating the manners, of his nation,* whose force still consisted in the missile weapons, and rapid evolutions, of a numerous cavalry. From a single troop to a great army, the mode of attack was the same; a foremost line first advanced to the charge, and was supported in a just order by the squadrons of the great vanguard. The general's eye watched over the field, and at his command the front and rear of the right and left wings successively moved forwards in their several divisions, and in a direct or oblique line; the enemy was pressed by eighteen or twenty attacks, and each attack afforded a chance of victory. If they all proved fruitless, or unsuccessful, the occasion was worthy of the emperor himself, who gave the signal of advancing to the standard. and main body, which he led in person. But in the battle of Angora, the main body itself was supported, on the flanks and in the rear, by the bravest squadrons of the reserve, commanded by the sons and grandsons of Timour. The conqueror of Hindostan ostentatiously shewed a line of elephants, the trophies, rather than the instruments, of victory; the use of the Greek fire was familiar to the Moguls and Ottomans; but had they borrowed from Europe the recent invention of gunpowder and cannon, the artificial thunder, in the hands of either nation, must have turned the fortune of the day. In that day, Bajazet displayed the qualities of a soldier and a chief; but his genius sank under a stronger ascendant; and, from various motives, the greatest part of his troops failed him in the decisive moment. His rigour and avarice had provoked a mutiny among the Turks; and even his son Soliman too hastily withdrew from the field. The forces of Anatolia, loyal in their revolt, were

* See the Systems of Tactics in the Institutions, which the English editors have illustrated with elaborate plans (p. 373-407).

The sultan himself (says Timour) must then put the foot of courage into the stirrup of patience; a Tartar metaphor, which is lost in the English, but preserved in the French, version of the Institutes (p. 156, 157). The Greek fire, on Timour's side, is attested by Sherefeddin (1. 5, c. 47); but Voltaire's strange suspicion, that some cannon, inscribed with strange characters, must have been