former had given birth to the imperial race; and the latter had been extended by accident or error over the spacious wilderness of the north.

The code of laws which Zingis dictated to his

His laws. subjects was adapted to the preservation of do

mestic peace, and the exercise of foreign hostility. The punishment of death was inflicted on the crimes of adultery, murder, perjury, and the capital thefts of a horse or ox; and the fiercest of men were mild and just in their intercourse with each other. The future election of the great khan was vested in the princes of his family and the heads of the tribes; and the regulations of the chase were essential to the pleasures and plenty of a Tartar camp. The victorious nation was held sacred from all servile labours, which were abandoned to slaves and strangers; and every labour was servile except the profession of arms. The service and discipline of the troops, who were armed with bows, scimitars, and iron maces, and divided by hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands, were the institutions of a veteran commander. Each officer and soldier was made responsible, under pain of death, for the safety and honour of his companions; and the spirit of conquest breathed in the law, that peace should never be granted unless to a vanquished and suppliant enemy. But it is the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and applause. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy, and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith was the existence of one God, the author of all good; who fills of seventy thousand families on the borders of Kitay. (p. 105-112.) In the great invasion of Europe, (A. D. 1238.) they seem to have led the vanguard; and the similitude of the name of Tartarei, recommended that of Tartars to the Latins. (Matt. Paris, p. 398, &c.)

A singular conformity may be found between the religious laws of Zingis Khan and of Mr. Locke. (Constitutions of Carolina, in his works, vol. 4. p. 535. 4to. edit. 1777.)

by his presence the heavens and the earth, which he has created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and many of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These various systems, in freedom and concord, were taught and practised within the precincts of the same camp; and the Bonze, the Iman, the Rabbi, the Nestorian, and the Latin priest, enjoyed the same honourable exemption from service and tribute: in the mosch of Bochara, the insolent victor might trample the Koran under his horse's feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most hostile sects. The reason of Zingis was not informed by books; the khan could neither read nor write; and, except the tribe of the Igours, the greatest part of the Moguls and Tartars were as illiterate as their sovereign. The memory of their exploits was preserved by tradition: sixty-eight years after the death of Zingis, these traditions were collected and transcribed; the brevity of their domestic annals may be supplied by the Chinese," Persians, Arme

8 In the year 1294, by the command of Cazan, khan of Persia, the fourth in his descent from Zingis. From these traditions, his vizir Fadlallah composed a Mogul history in the Persian language, which has been used by Petit de la Croix. (Hist. de Genghizcan, p. 537-539.) The Histoire Genealogique des Tartars (à Leyde, 1726, in 12mo. 2 tomes) was translated by the Swedish prisoners in Siberia from the Mogul MS. of Abulgasi Bahadur Khan, a descendant of Zingis, who reigned over the Usbecks of Charaism or Carizme. (A. D. 1644-1663.) He is of most value and credit for the names, pedigrees, and manners, of his nation. Of his nine parts, the first descends from Adam to Mogul Khan; the second, from Mogul to Zingis; the third is the life of Zingis; the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh, the general history of his four sons and their posterity; the eighth and ninth, the particular history of the descendants of Sheibani Khan, who reigned in Mauranhar and Charasm.

h Histoire de Gentchiscan, et de toute la Dinastie des Mongous ses Successours, Conquerans de la Chine; tirée de l'Histoire de la Chine, par le R. P. Gaubil, de la Societé de Jesus, Missionaire à Pekin; à Paris, 1739, in 4to. This translation is stamped with the Chinese character of domestic accuracy and foreign ignorance.

iSee the Histoire du Grand Genghizcan, premier Empereur des Mogols et Tartares, par M. Petit de la Croix, à Paris, 1710, in 12mo; a work of ten years' labour, chiefly drawn from the Persian writers, among whom Nisavi, the secretary of sultan Gelaleddin, has the merit and prejudices of a contemporary. A slight air of romance is the fault of the originals, or the compiler. See likewise the articles of Genghiscan, Mohammed, Gelaleddin, &c. in the Bibliothèque Orientale of d'Herbelot.

k

г

nians, Syrians,' Arabians," Greeks," Russians, Poles," Hungarians, and Latins, and each name will deserve credit in the relation of their own disasters and defeats."

Invasion

of China, 1210

A. D.

1214.

The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced the hordes of the desert, who pitched their tents between the wall of China and the Volga; and the Mogul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world, the lord of many millions of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their united strength, and were impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy climates of the south. His ancestors had been the tribu

k Haithonus, or Aithonus, an Armenian prince, and afterward a monk of Premontré, (Fabric. Bibliot. Lat. medii Ævi. tom. 1. p. 34.) dictated in the French language his book de Tartaris, his old fellow-soldiers. It was immediately translated into Latin, and is inserted in the Novus Orbis of Simon Grynous. (Basil, 1555, in folio.)

Zingis Khan, and his first successors, occupy the conclusion of the ninth dynasty of Abulpharagius; (vers. Pocock, Oxon. 1663, in 4to.) and his tenth dynasty is that of the Moguls of Persia. Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom. 2.) has extracted some facts from his Syriac writings, and the lives of the jacobite maphrians, or primates of the east.

m Among the Arabians, in language and religion, we may distinguish Abulfeda sultan of Hamah in Syria, who fought in person under the Mamaluke standard against the Moguls.

n Nicephoras Gregoras (lib. 2. c. 5, 6.) has felt the necessity of connecting the Scythian and Byzantine histories. He describes with truth and elegance the settlement and manners of the Moguls of Persia, but he is ignorant of their origin, and corrupts the name of Zingis and his sons.

• M. Levesque (Histoire de Russie, tom. 2.) has described the conquest of Russia by the Tartars, from the patriarch Nicon, and the old chronicles.

P For Poland, I am content with the Sarmatia Asiatica et Europea of Matthew a Michou, or de Mischovia, a canon and physician of Cracow (A. D. 1506), inserted in the Novus Orbis of Grynæus. Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. mediæ et infimæ Ætatis, tom. 5. p. 56.

4 I should quote Thuroczius, the oldest general historian, (pars. 2. c. 74. p. 150.) in the first volume of the Scriptores Rerum Hungaricarum, did not the same volume contain the original narrative of a contemporary, an eye-witness, and a sufferer; (M. Rogerii, Hungari, Varadiensis Capituli Canonici, Carmen miserabile, seu Historia super Destructione Regni Hungariæ, Temporibus Belæ IV. Regis per Tartaros facta, p. 292–321.) the best picture that I have ever seen of all the circumstances of a barbaric invasion.

r Matthew Paris has represented, from authentic documents, the danger and distress of Europe. (consult the word Tarturi in his copious Index.) From motives of zeal and curiosity, the court of the great khan, in the thirteenth century, was visited by two friars, John de Plano Carpini, and William Rubruquis, and by Marco Polo, a Venetian gentleman. The Latin relations of the two former are inserted in the first volume of Hackluyt; the Italian original or version of the third (Fabric, Bibliot. Latin. medii Ævi, tom. 2. p. 198. tom. 5. p. 25.) may be found in the second tome of Ramusio..

s In his great history of the Huns, M. de Guignes has most amply treated the Zingis Khan and his successors. See tom. 3. lib. 15-19. and in the collateral articles of the Seljukians of Rome, tom. 2. lib. 11. the Carizmians, lib. 14. and the Mamalukes, tom. 4. lib. 21.: consult likewise the tables of the first volume. He is ever learned and accurate; yet I am only indebted to him for a general view, and some passages of Abulfeda, which are still latent in the Arabic text.

taries of the Chinese emperors; and Temugin himself had been disgraced by a title of honour and servitude. The court of Pekin was astonished by an embassy from its former vassal, 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. A haughty answer disguised their secret apprehensions; and their fears were soon justified by the march of innumerable squadrons, who pierced on all sides 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 invasion was supported by the revolt of a hundred thousand Khitans, who guarded the frontier: yet he listened to a treaty; and a princess of China, three thousand horses, five hundred youths, and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and silk, were the price of his retreat. In his second expedition, he compelled the Chinese emperor to retire beyond the Yellow river to a more southern residence. The siege of Pekint was long and laborious: the inhabitants were reduced by famine to decimate and devour their fellow-citizens; when their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of gold and silver from their engines: but the Moguls introduced a mine to the centre of the capital; and the conflagration of the palace burnt above thirty days. China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction; and the five northern provinces were added to the empire of Zingis.

Of Carizme, Transoxiana,

In the west, he touched the dominion of Mohammed, sultan of Carizme, who reigned from

t More properly Yen-king, an ancient city, whose ruins still appear some furlongs to the south-east of the modern Pekin, which was built by Cublai Khan. (Gabel. p. 146.) Pe-king and Nan-king are vague titles, the courts of the north and of the south. The identity and change of names perplex the most skilful readers of the Chinese geography. (p. 177.)

sia, A. D.

1218

1224.

and Per- the Persian gulf to the borders of India and Turkestan; and who, in the proud imitation of Alexander the Great, forgot the servitude and ingratitude of his fathers to the house of Seljuk. It was the wish of Zingis to establish a friendly and commercial intercourse with the most powerful of the Moslem princes; nor could he be tempted by the secret solicitations of the caliph of Bagdad, who sacrificed to his personal wrongs the safety of the church and state. A rash and inhuman deed provoked and justified the Tartar arms in the invasion of the southern Asia. A caravan of three ambassadors 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 justice, till he had prayed and fasted three nights on a mountain, that the Mogul emperor appealed to the judgment of God and his sword. Our European battles, says a philosophic writer," are petty skirmishes, if compared to the numbers that have fought and fallen in the fields of Asia. Seven hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched under the standard of Zingis and his four sons. In the vast plains that extend to the north of the Sihon or Jaxartes, they were encountered by four hundred thousand soldiers of the sultan; and in the first battle, which was suspended by the night, one hundred and sixty thousand Carizmians were slain. Mohammed was astonished 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 repulsed by the length and difficulty of so many regular sieges. But the prudence of Zingis had formed a body of Chinese engineers, skilled in the mechanic arts, informed perhaps of the secret of gunpowder, and capable, under his discipline, of attacking a foreign country with

u M. de Voltaire, Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, tom. 3. c. 60. p. 8. His account of Zingis and the Moguls contains, as usual, much general sense and truth, with some particular errors.