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roads than conquefts. He invaded Turkeftan, Kipzak, CHA P. Ruffia, Hindoftan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a defire of preferving thofe diftant provinces. From thence he departed, laden with spoil; but he left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor magiftrates to protect the obedient, natives. When he had broken the fabric of their ancient government, he abandoned them to the evils which his invafion had aggravated or caufed; nor were these evils compenfated by any prefent or poffible benefits. 3. The kingdoms of Tranfoxiana and Perfia were the proper field which he laboured to cultivate and adorn, as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labours were often interrupted, and fometimes blafted, by the abfence of the conqueror. While he triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his fervants, and even his fons, forgot their master and their duty. The public and private injuries were poorly redreffed by the tardy rigour of enquiry and punishment; and we must be content to praise the Inftitutions of Timour, as the fpecious idea of a perfect monarchy. 4. Whatsoever might be the bleffings of his adminiftration, they evaporated with his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was the ambition of his children and grandchildren (70); the enemies of each other and of the people. A fragment of the empire was upheld with fome glory by Sharokh his youngest fon; but after his decease, the scene was again involved in darkness and blood; and before the end of a century, Transoxiana and Perfia were trampled by the Uzbeks from the north, and the Turkmans of the black and white fheep. The race of Timour would have been extinct, if an hero, his defcendant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the Uzbeck arms to the conquest of Hindoftan. His fucceffors, the great Moguls (71), extended VOL. VI.

Z

their

of his cruelty. Except in Rowe's play on the fifth of November, I did not expect to hear of Timour's amiable moderation (White's preface, p. 7.). Yet I can excufe a generous enthusiasm in the reader, and ftill more in the editor, of the Inftitutions.

(70) Confult the last chapters of Sherefeddin and Arabfhah, and M. de Guignes (Hift. des Huns, tom. iv. 1. xx.). Frafer's Hiftory of Nadir Shah, P. 1-62. The ftory of Timour's defcendants is perfectly told: and the fecond and third parts of Sherefeddin are unknown.

(71) Shah Allum, the prefent Mogul, is in the fourteenth degree from Timour by Miran Shah, his third fon. See the 3d volume of Dow's Hiftory of Hindostan.

LXV.

CHA P. their fway from the mountains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurengzebe, their empire has been diffolved; their treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Perfian robber; and the richeft of their kingdoms is now poffeffed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the Northern ocean.

Civil wars.

Far different was the fate of the Ottoman monarchy. of the fons The maffy trunk was bent to the ground, but no fooner of Bajazet, A. D. did the hurricane pass away, than it again rofe with fresh 1403-1421. vigour and more lively vegetation. When Timour, in

1. Muftapha;

every fenfe, had evacuated Anatolia, he left the cities without a palace, a treafure, or a king. The open country was overfpread with hords of fhepherds and robbers of Tartar or Turkman origin; the recent conquefts of Bajazet were restored to the emirs, one of whom, in bafe revenge, demolished his fepulchre; and his five fons were eager, by civil difcord, to confume the remnant of their patrimony. I fhall enumerate their names in the order of their age and actions (72). 1. It is doubtful, whether I relate the story of the true Muftapha, or of an impoftor, who perfonated that loft prince. He fought by his father's fide in the battle of Angora: but when the captive fultan was permitted to enquire for his children, Moufa alone could be found; and the Turkish hiftorians, the flaves of the triumphant faction, are perfuaded that his brother was confounded among the flain. If Mustapha escaped from that difaftrous field, he was concealed twelve years from his friends and enemies; till he emerged in Theffaly, and was hailed by a numerous party, as the fon and fucceffor of Bajazet. His firft defeat would have been his laft, had not the true, or falfe, Muftapha been faved by the Greeks, and restored, after the decease of his brother Mahomet, to liberty and empire. A degenerate mind feemed to argue his fpurious birth; and if, on the throne of Adrianople, he was adored as the Ottoman fultan; his flight, his fetters, and an ignominious gibbet, delivered the impoftor to popular contempt. A fimilar character

and

(72) The civil wars, from the death of Bajazet to that of Muftapha, are related, according to the Turks, by Demetrius Cantemir (p. 58-82.). Of the Greeks, Chalcondyles (1. iv and v.), Phranza (1. i. c. 30-32.), and Ducas (c. 18—27.), the last is the most copious and best informed.

LXV.

A.D.

and claim was afferted by feveral rival pretenders; thirty CHA P. perfons are faid to have fuffered under the name of Mustapha; and these frequent executions may perhaps infinuate, that the Turkish court was not perfectly fecure of the death of the lawful prince. 2. After his father's capti- 2. Ifa; vity, Ifa (73) reigned for fome time in the neighbourhood of Angora, Sinope, and the Black Sea; and his ambaffadors were difmiffed from the prefence of Timour with fair promises and honourable gifts. But their mafter was foon deprived of his province and life, by a jealous brother, the fovereign of Amafia; and the final event fuggested a pious allufion, that the law of Mofes and Jefus, of Ija and, Moufa, had been abrogated by the greater Mahomet. 3. 3. Soliman, Soliman is not numbered in the lift of the Turkish emperors: yet he checked the victorious progrefs of the Mo- 1493-1410. guls; and after their departure, united for a while the thrones of Adrianople and Bourfa. In war he was brave, active, and fortunate: his courage was foftened by clemency; but it was likewife inflamed by prefumption, and corrupted by intemperance and idlenefs. He relaxed the nerves of difcipline, in a government where either the fubject or the fovereign must continually tremble: his vices alienated the chiefs of the army and the law; and his daily drunkenness, fo contemptible in a prince and a man, was doubly odious in a difciple of the prophet. In the flumber of intoxication, he was surprised by his brother Moufa; and as he fled from Adrianople towards the Byzantine capital, Soliman was overtaken and flain in a bath, after a reign of seven years and ten months. 4. The inveftiture 4. Moufa, of Moufa degraded him as the flave of the Moguls: his tributary kingdom of Anatolia was confined within a narrow limit, nor could his broken militia and empty treasury contend with the hardy and veteran bands of the fovereign of Romania. Moufa fled in difguife from the palace of Bourfa; traverfed the Propontis in an open boat; wandered over the Walachianand Servian hills; and, after some vain attempts, afcended the throne of Adrianople, fo recently stained with the blood of Soliman. In a reign of three years and an half, his troops were victorious against Z 2 the

(73) Arabfhah, tom. ii. c. 26. whofe teftimony on this occafion is weighty and valuable. The existence of Ifa (unknown to the Turks) is likewife onfirmed by Sherefeddin (1. v. c. 57.).

A. D. 1410.

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met 1.

A. D.

CHA P. the Chriftians of Hungary and the Morea; but Moufa was ruined by his timorous difpofition and unfeasonable clemency. After refigning the fovereignty of Anatolia, he fell a victim to the perfidy of his minifters, and the fuperior afcendant of his brother Mahomet. 5. The final 5. Maho- victory of Mahomet was the juft recompenfe of his prudence and moderation. Before his father's captivity, the 1413-1421. royal youth had been entrusted with the government of Amafia, thirty days journey from Conftantinople, and the Turkish frontier against the Chriftians of Trebizond and Georgia. The caftle, in Afiatic warfare, was efteemed impregnable; and the city of Amafia (74), which is equally divided by the river Iris, rifes on either fide in the form of an amphitheatre, and reprefents on a fmaller fcale the image of Bagdad. In his rapid career, Timour appears to have overlooked this obfcure and contumacious angle of Anatolia; and Mahomet, without provoking the conqueror, maintained his filent independence, and chafed from the province the laft ftragglers of the Tartar hoft. He relieved himfelf from the dangerous neighbourhood of Ifa; but in the contefts of their more powerful brethren, his firm neutrality was refpected; till, after the triumph of Moufa, he ftood forth the heir and avenger of the unfortunate Soliman. Mahomet obtained Anatolia by treaty and Romania by arms; and the foldier who prefented him with the head of Moufa was rewarded as the benefactor of his king and country. The eight years of his fole and peaceful reign were ufefully employed in banishing the vices of civil difcord, and reftoring on a firmer bafis the fabric of the Ottoman monarchy. His last care was the choice of two vizirs, Bajazet and Ibrahim (75), who might guide the youth of his fon Amurath; and fuch was their union and prudence, that they concealed above forty days the emperor's death, till the arrival of his fucceffor in the palace of Bourfa. A new war was kindled in Europe by 1421-1451. the prince, or impoftor, Muftapha; the first vizir loft his

Reign of
Amurath

II. A. D.

February 9.

army

(74) Arabshah, loc. citat. Abulfeda, Geograph. tab. xvii. p. 302. Bufbequius, epift. i. p. 96, 97. in Itinere C. P. et Amafiano.

(75) The virtues of Ibrahim are praifed by a contemporary Greek (Ducas, c. 25.). His defcendants are the fole nobles in Turkey: they content themfelves with the adminiftration of his pious foundations, are excufed from public offices, and receive two annual vi£ts from the sultan (Cantemir, p. 76.),

LXV.

army and his head; but the more fortunate Ibrahim, CHA P. whofe name and family are ftill revered, extinguished the laft pretender to the throne of Bajazet, and clofed the fcene of domeftic hoftility.

toman em!

In these conflicts, the wifeft Turks, and indeed the body Re-union of the nation, were ftrongly attached to the unity of the of the Otempire; and Romania and Anatolia, fo often torn afunder by private ambition, were animated by a ftrong and invin- A. Ú. 1421. cible tendency of cohesion. Their efforts might have inftructed the Chriftian powers; and had they occupied with a confederate fleet, the ftreights of Gallipoli, the Ottomans, at leaft in Europe, muft have been fpeedily annihilated. But the fchifm of the Weft, and the factions and wars of France and England, diverted the Latins from this generous enterprife: they enjoyed the prefent refpite, without a thought of futurity; and were often tempted by a momentary intereft, to ferve the common enemy of their religion. A colony of Genoefe (76), which had been planted at Phocæa (77) on the Ionian coaft, was riched by the lucrative monopoly of alum (78); and their tranquillity, under the Turkish empire, was fecured by the annual payment of tribute. In the last civil war of the Ottomans, the Genoefe governor, Adorno, a bold and ambitious youth, embraced the party of Amurath; and undertook with feven ftout gallies to transport him from Alia to Europe. The fultan and five hundred guards embarked on board the admiral's fhip; which was manned by eight hundred of the bravest Franks. His life and liberty were in their hands; nor can we, without reluctance, applaud the fidelity of Adorno, who, in the

en

midft

(76) See Pachymer (1. v. 29.), Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ii. c. 1.), Shere feddin (1. v. c. 57.), and Ducas (c. 25.). The laft of thefe, a curious and careful obferver, is entitled, from his birth and station, to particular credit in all that concerns Ionia and the islands. Among the nations that resorted to New Phocæa, he mentions the English (Iyyλnvos); an early evidence of Mediterranean trade.

(77) For the fpirit of navigation, and freedom of ancient Phocæa, or rather of the Phocæans, confult the ft book of Herodotus, and the Geographical Index of his laft and learned French tranflator, M. Larcher (tom. vii. p. 299.).

(78) Phocæa is not enumerated by Pliny (Hift. Nat. xxxv. 52.) among the places productive of alum; he reckons Égypt as the first, and for the fecond the ifle of Melos, whofe alum mines are defcribed by Tournefort (tom. i. lettre iv.), a traveller and a naturalitt. After the lofs of Phocæa, the Genoefe, in 1459, found that useful mineral in the ifle of Ifchia (Ismal. Bouillaud, ad Ducam, c. 25.).