new settlers: their first efforts were assisted by a gift of CHAP.

LII. horses and cattle; and the hardy exiles, who breathed revenge against the Saracens, swore to live and die under the standard of St. Peter. The nations of the West and North who visited the threshold of the apostles had gradually formed the large and populous suburb of the Vatican, and their various habitations were distinguished, in the language of the times, as the schools of the Greeks and Goths, of the Lombards and Saxons. But this venerable spot, was still open to sacrilegious insult: the design of inclosing it with walls and towers exhausted all that authority could command, or charity would supply: and the pious labour of four years was animated in every season, and at every hour, by the presence of the indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous but worldly passion, may be detected in the name of the Leonine city, which he bestowed on the Vatican, yet Foundation

of the Leothe pride of the dedication was tempered with Christian pe- nine city, nance and humility. The boundary was trod by the bishop A. D. 852. and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and ashes; the songs of triumph were modulated to psalms and litanies; the walls were besprinkled with holy water; and the ceremony was concluded with a prayer, that under the guardian care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the old and the new Rome might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and impregnable.90

The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, The Amowas one of the most active and high-spirited princes who ran war reigned at Constantinople during the middle age. In offen- Theophilus

auto. sive or defensive war, he marched in person five times agninst the Saracens, formidable in his attack, esteemed by A. D. 8.33. the enemy in his losses and defeats. In the last of these expeditions he penetrated into Syria, and besieged the obscure town of Sozopetra; the casual birth-place of the caliph Notassem, whose father Harun was attended in peace or war by the most favourite of his wives and concubines. The re

LII.

CHAP. volt of a Persian impostor employed at that moment the

arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in favour of a place for which he felt and acknowledged some degree of filial affection. These solicitations determined the emperor to wound his pride in so sensible a part. Sozopetra was levelled with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were marked or mutilated with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female captives were forced away from the adjacent territory. Among these a matron of the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of despair, the name of Motassem ; and the insults of the Greeks engaged the honour of her kinsman to avenge his indignity, and to answer her appeal. Under the reign of the two elder brothers, the inheritance of the youngest had been confined to 'Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, and Circassia; this frontier station had exercised his military talents; and among his accidental claims to the name of Octonary,øl the most meritorious are the eight battles which he gained or fought against the enemies of the Koran. In this personal quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and Egypt, were recruited from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hords: his cavalry might be numerous, though we should deduct some myriads from the hundred and thirty thousand horses of the royal stables; and the expense of the armament was computed at four millions sterling, or one hundred thousand pounds of gold. From Tarsus, the place of assembly, the Saracens advanced in three divisions along the high road of Constantinople: Notassem himself commanded the centre, and the vanguard was given to his son Abbas, who, in the trial of the first adventures,might succeed with the more glory, or fail with the least reproach. In the revenge of his in. jury, the caliph prepared to retaliate a similar affront. The father of Theophilus was a native of Amorium"2 in Phrygia: the original seat of the Imperial house had been adorned with privileges and monuments; and whatever might be the

91 The same number was applied to the following circumstance in the life of Mctassem ; he was the eighth of the Abbassides; he reigned eight years, eight months, and eight days; left eight sons, eight daughters, eight thousand slaves, eight millions of gold.

92 Amorium is seldoin mentioned by the old geographers, and totally forgotten in the Roman itineraries. After the sixth century, it became an episcopal see, and a length the metropolis of the new Galatia (Carol. Scto Paulo, Geograph. Sacra, p. 234). The city rose again from its ruins, if we should Itad immuria, not anguria, in the text of the Nubian geographer (p. 236.)

LII.

indifference of the people, Constantinople itself was scarcely CHAP. of more value in the eyes of the sovereign and his court. The name of AMORIUM was inscribed on the shields of the Saracens; and their three armies were again united under the walls of the devoted city. It had been proposed by the wisest counsellors, to evacuate Amorium, to remove the inhabitants, and to abandon the empty structures to the vain resentment of the Barbarians. The

emperor embraced the more generous resolution of defending, in a siege and battle, the country of his ancestors. When the armies drew near, the front of the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more closely planted with spears and javelins; but the event of the action was not glorious on either side to the national troops. The Arabs were broken, but it was by the swords of thirty thousand Persians, who had obtained service and settlement in the Byzantine empire. The Greeks were repulsed and vanquished, but it was by the arrows of the Turkish cavalry; and had not their bow-strings been damped and relaxed by the evening rain, very few of the Christians could have escaped with the emperor from the field of battle. They breathed at Dorylæum, at the distance of three days; and Theophilus, reviewing his trembling squadrons, forgave the common flight both of the prince and people. After this discovery of his weakness, he vainly hoped to deprecate the fate of Amorium : the inexorable caliph rejected with contempt his prayers and promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be the witnesses of his great revenge. They had nearly been the witnesses of his shame. The vigorous assaults of fifty-five days were encountered by a faithful governor, a veteran garrison, and a desperate people; and the Saracens must have raised the siege, if a domestic traitor had not pointed to the weakest part of the wall, a place which was decorated with the statues of a lion and a bull. The vow of Motassem was accomplished with unrelenting rigour: tired, rather than satiated, with destruction, he returned to his new palace of Samara, in the neighbourhood of Bagdad, while the unfortunate93 Theophilus implored the

93 In the East he was styled Avsugns (Continuator Theophan. 1.jïi. p. 84); but such was the ignorance of the West, that his anibassadurs, in public discourse, might boldiy narrate, de victoriis, quas adversus exteras bellando gentes calitus fuerat assecutus. (Annalist. Bertinian, apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 720):

CHAP. tardy and doubtful aid of his Western rival the emperor of
LII.

the Franks. Yet in the siege of Amorium above seventy
thousand Moslems had perished: their loss had been re-
venged by the slaughter of thirty thousand Christians, and
the sufferings of an equal number of captives, who were
treated as the most atrocious criminals. Mutual necessity
could sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of prison-
ers ;94 but in the national and religious conflict of the two
empires, peace was without confidence, and war without
mercy. Quarter was seldom given in the field; those who
escaped the edge of the sword were condemned to hopeless
servitude, or exquisite torture ; and a Catholic emperor re-
lates, with visible satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens
of Crete, who were flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of
boiling oil.95 To a point of honour Motassem had sacrificed
a flourishing city, two hundred thousand lives, and the pro-
perty of millions. The same caliph descended from his
horse, and dirtied his robe to relieve the distress of a decre-
pid old man, who, with his laden ass had tumbled into a
ditch. On which of these actions did he reflect with the most

pleasure, when he was summoned by the angel of death.96
Disorders With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory
Turkish
of his family and nation expired. When the Arabian con-

. guards,

querors had spread themselves over the East, and were &41...870, mingled with the servile crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt,

they insensibly lost the freeborn and martial virtues of the
desart. The courage of the South is the artificial fruit of
discipline and prejudice; the active power of enthusiasm
had decayed, and the mercenary forces of the caliphs were

a

of the

A. D.

&c.

94 Abulpharagias (Dynast. p. 167, 168.) relates one of these singular trans. actions on ihe bridge of the river Lanus in Cilicia, th: limit of the two empires, and one day's journey westward of Tarsus (d'Anville, Geographie An. cienne, tom. ii. p. 91). Four thousand four hundred and sixty Moslems, e gli hundred women and children, one hundred confederats, were exchangia lor an equal number of Greeks. They passed each other in the middle of the bridge, and when they reached their respective friends, they shouted Illah Acbar, and Kyric Eleison. Marly of the prisoners cf Amerium were probably among them, but in the same year (A. H. 931), the incost illustrious of them, the forty-two martyrs, were behcawed by the calinli's order.

95 Constantin. Porphyr geniitis, in Vit. Basil. c. 61 p. 135. These Saracens were indeed treate i with peculiar su ver' as pirates and rene adres.

96 For Thcophilus, Mo gaen, aide Amor an war, see the Continuator of The phanes (ildi. p 77... 84), Gt 5.1s (!ii p.24,4),6 mei 2.528.. 592), Elimin (Ilist. Sarcin.p.191), Abilkuragi (":1? ....1,6), Abulfeda (Annal. Moslen p. 101), d'Fierbulut (Rikt. Orientale, p. 059, 6-10).

recruited in those climates of the North, of which valour is CHAP.

LII. the hardy and spontaneous production. Of the Turkso? who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths, either taken in war, or purchased in trade, were educated in the exercises of the field, and the profession of the Mahometan faith. The Turkish guards stood in arms round the throne of their benefactor, and their chiefs usurped the dominion of the palace and the provinces. Motassem, the first author of this dangerous example, introduced into the capital above fifty thousand Turks: their licentious conduct provoked the public indignation, and the quarrels of the soldiers and people induced the caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish his own residence and the camp of his Barbarian favourites at Samara on the Tigris, about twelve leagues above the city of Peace. His son Motawakkel was a jealous and cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he cast himself on the fidelity of the strangers, and these strangers, ambitious and apprehensive, were tempted by the rich promise of a revolution. At the instigation, or at least in the cause of his son, they burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, and the caliph was cut into seven pieces by the same swords which he had recently distributed among the guards of his life and throne. To this throne, yet streaming with a father's blood, Montaffer was triumphantly led; but in a reign of six months, he found only the pangs of a guilty conscience. If.

a he wept at the sight of an old tapestry which represented the crime and punishment of the son of Chosroes; if his days were abridged by grief and remorse, we may allow some pity to a parricide, who exclaimed in the bitterness of death, that he had lost both this world, and the world to come. After this act of treason, the ensigns of royalty, the garment and walking-staff of Mahomet, were given and torn away by the foreign mercenaries, who in four years created, deposed, and murdered three commanders of the faithful. As often