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tirpation of the Affaffins, or Ifmaelians + of Perfia, CHAP. may be confidered as a service to mankind. Among the hills to the fouth of the Cafpian, these odious fectaries had reigned with impunity above an hundred and fixty years; and their prince, or Imam, established his lieutenant to lead and govern the colony of mount Libanus, fo famous and formidable in the hiftory of the crufades 25. With the fanaticifm of the Koran, the Ifmaelians had blended the Indian tranfmigration, and the vifions of their own prophets and it was their firft duty to devote their fouls and bodies in blind obedience to the vicar of God. The daggers of his miffionaries were felt both in the Eaft and Weft: the Christians and the Moflems enumerate, and perhaps multiply, the illustrious victims that were facrificed to the zeal, avarice, or refentment of the old man (as he was corruptly ftyled) of the mountain. But thefe daggers, his only arms, were broken by the fword of Holagou, and not a veftige is left of the enemies of mankind, except the word affaffin, which, in the moft odious fenfe, has been adopted in the languages of Europe. The extinction of the Abbaffides cannot be indifferent. to the spectators of their greatnefs and decline. Since the fall of their Seljukian tyrants, the ca

24 All that can be known of the Affaffins of Perfia and Syria, is poured from the copious, and even profufe, erudition of M. Fál conet, in two memoires read before the Academy of Infcriptions (tom. xvii. p. 127-170.).

25 The Ifmaelians of Syria, 40,000 Affaffins, had acquired or founded ten caftles in the hills above Tortofa. About the year 1280, they were extirpated by the Mamalukes.

VOL. XI.

E e

liphs

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"next.

CHA P. liphs had recovered their lawful dominion of Bag dad and the Arabian Irak; but the city was diftracted by theological factions, and the commander of the faithful was loft in a haram of feven hundred concubines. The invafion of the Moguls he encountered with feeble arms and haughty embaffies. "On the divine decree," faid the caliph Moftafem, " is founded the throne "of the fons of Abbas: and their foes fhall furely be destroyed in this world and in the Who is this Holagou that dares to "arife against them? If he be defirous of peace, "let him inftantly depart from the facred terriઃઃ tory; and perhaps he may obtain from our "clemency the pardon of his fault." This prefumption was cherished by a perfidious vizir, who affured his master, that, even if the Barbarians had entered the city, the women and children, from the terraces, would be fufficient to overwhelm them with ftones. But when Holagou touched the phantom, it inftantly vanished into smoke. After a fiege of two months, Bagdad was ftormed and facked by the Moguls: and their favage commander pronounced the death of the caliph Moftafem, the last of the temporal fucceffors of Mahomet; whose noble kinfmen, of the race of Abbas, had reigned in Afia above five hundred years. Whatever might be the defigns of the conqueror, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina were protected by the Arabian de

26

26 As a proof of the ignorance of the Chinese in foreign tranf actions, I muft obferve, that fome of their hiftorians extend the conquefts of Zingis himself to Medina, the country of Mahomet (Gaubil, p. 42.).

fert;

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fert; but the Moguls fpread beyond the Tigris CHAP. and Euphrates, pillaged Aleppo and Damafcus, and threatened to join the Franks in the deliverance of Jerufalem. Egypt was loft, had the been defended only by her feeble offspring: but the Mamalukes had breathed in their infancy the keennefs of a Scythian air: equal in valour, fuperior in difcipline, they met the Moguls in many a well-fought field; and drove back the ftream of hoftility to the eastward of the Euphrates. But it overflowed with refistless violence the kingdoms of Armenia and Anatolia, of which the former was poffeffed by the Chriftians, and the latter by the Turks. The fultans of Iconium oppofed fome refiftance to the Mogul arms, till Azzadin fought a refuge among the Greeks of Conftantinople, and his feeble fucceffors, the last of the Seljukian dynasty, were finally extirpated by the khans of Perfia.

III. No fooner had Octai fubverted the northern empire of China, than he refolved to vifit with his arms the moft remote countries of the Weft. Fifteen hundred thoufand Moguls and Tartars were inscribed on the military roll; of these the great khan felected a third, which he entrusted to the command of his nephew Batou, the fon of Tuli; who reigned over his father's conquests to the north of the Caspian Sea. After a festival of forty days, Batou fet forwards on this great expe dition; and fuch was the fpeed and ardour of his innumerable fquadrons, that in less than fix years they had measured a line of ninety degrees of longitude, a fourth part of the circumference E e 2

of

Of Ana tolia,

A. D.

1242

1272.

Of Kip

zak, Ruf

fia, Po land,Hun

gary, &c.

AD.

12351245

LXIV.

27

CHAP. of the globe. The great rivers of Afia and Europe, the Volga and Kama, the Don and Borysthenes, the Vistula and Danube, they either fwam with their horfes, or paffed on the ice, or traverfed in leathern boats, which followed the camp, and transported their waggons and artillery. By the first victories of Batou, the remains of national freedom were eradicated in the immense plains of Turkeftan and Kipzak ". In his rapid progress, he overran the kingdoms, as they are now ftyled, of Aftracan and Cazan i and the troops which he detached towards mount Caucafus, explored the moft fecret receffes of Georgia and Circaffia. The civil difcord of the great dukes, or princes, of Ruffia, betrayed their country to the Tartars. They fpread from Livonia to the Black Sea, and both Moscow and Kiow, the modern and the ancient capitals, were reduced to ashes; a temporary ruin, less fatal than the deep, and perhaps indelible, mark, which a fervitude of two hundred years has imprinted, on the character of the Ruffians. The Tartars ravaged with equal fury the countries which they hoped to poffefs, and those which they were hastening to leave. From the permanent conquest of Ruffia, they made a deadly, though transient, inroad into the heart of Poland, and as far as the borders of Germany. The cities of Lublin and Cracow were obliterated: they approached

27 The Dafbté Kipzak, or plain of Kipzak, extends on either fide of the Volga, in a boundless space towards the Jaik and Boryfthenes, and is fuppofed to contain the primitive name and nation of the Cofacks.

the

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the fhores of the Baltic; and in the battle of CHA P. Lignitz, they defeated the dukes of Silefia, the Polish palatines, and the great master of the Teutonic order, and filled nine facks with the rightears of the flain. From Lignitz, the extreme point of their western march, they turned afide to the invafion of Hungary; and the prefence or fpirit of Batou infpired the hoft of five hundred thousand men: the Carpathian hills could not be long impervious to their divided columns; and their approach had been fondly disbelieved till it was irrefiftibly felt. The king, Bela the fourth, affembled the military force of his counts and bishops: but he had alienated the nation by adopting a vagrant hord of forty thousand families of Comans, and these favage guests were provoked to revolt by the fufpicion of treachery and the murder of their prince. The whole country north of the Danube was loft in a day, and depopulated in a fummer; and the ruins of cities and churches were overfpread with the bones of the natives, who expiated the fins of their Turkifh ancestors. An ecclefiaftic, who fled from the fack of Waradin, defcribes the calamities which he had feen or fuffered; and the fanguinary rage of fieges and battles is far lefs atrocious than the treatment of the fugitives, who had been allured from the woods under a promise of peace and pardon, and who were coolly flaughtered as soon as they had performed the labours of the harveft and vintage. In the winter, the Tartars paffed the Danube on the ice, and advanced to Gran or Strigonium, a German colony, and the metro