trious in the annals of their country; but the personal merit of the former was eclipsed by the fame and abilities of his rival. They engaged in tempestuous weather; and the tumultuary conflict was continued from the dawn to the extinction of light. The enemies of the Genoese applaud their prowess; the friends of the Venetians are dissatisfied with their behaviour; but all parties agree in praising the skill and boldness of the Catalans, who, with many wounds, sustained the brunt of the action. On the separation of the fleets, the event might appear doubtful; but the thirteen Genoese galleys, that had been sunk or taken, were compensated by a double loss of the allies; of fourteen Venetians, ten Catalans, and two Greeks; and even the grief of the conquerors expressed the assurance and habit of more deci sive victories. Pisani confessed his defeat, by retiring into a fortified harbour, from whence, under the pretext of the orders of the senate, he steered with a broken and flying squadron for the isle of Candia, and abandoned to his rivals the sovereignty of the sea. In a public epistle,* addressed to the doge and senate, Petrarch employs his eloquence to reconcile the maritime powers, the two luminaries of Italy. The orator celebrates the valour and victory of the Genoese, the first of men in the exercise of naval war; he drops a tear on the misfortunes of their Venetian brethren; but he exhorts them to pursue with fire and sword the base and perfidious Greeks; to purge the metropolis of the East from the heresy with which it was infected. Deserted by their friends, the Greeks were incapable of resistance; and three months after the battle, the emperor Cantacuzene solicited and subscribed a treaty, which for ever banished the Venetians and Catalans, and granted to the Genoese a monopoly of trade, and almost a right of dominion. The Roman empire (I smile in transcribing the name) might * The Abbé de Sade (Mémoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 257-263) translates this letter, which he had copied from a MS. in the king of France's library. Though a servant of the duke of Milan, Petrarch pours forth his astonishment and grief at the defeat and despair of the Genoese in the following year (p. 323-332). [Finlay (ii. 569-570) relates a previous naval victory of the Genoese, in 1351, after which Pisani retired to Negropont to effect a junction with the Catalan fleet. During their absence the Genoese took Heraclea and Sozopolis, and even besieged Constantinople. In 1352, Pisani returned and fought the battle described by Gibbon, in which " the honour of a doubtful and bloody day rested with the Genoese."-ED.] soon have sunk into a province of Genoa, if the ambition of the republic had not been checked by the ruin of her freedom and naval power. A long contest of one hundred and thirty years was determined by the triumph of Venice; and the factions of the Genoese compelled them to seek for domestic peace under the protection of a foreign lord, the duke of Milan, or the French king. Yet the spirit of commerce survived that of conquest; and the colony of Pera still awed the capital and navigated the Euxine, till it was involved by the Turks in the final servitude of Constantinople itself. CHAPTER LXIV.-CONQUESTS OF ZINGIS KHAN AND THE MOGULS THE FROM the petty quarrels of a city and her suburbs, from the cowardice and discord of the falling Greeks, I shall now ascend to the victorious Turks, whose domestic slavery was ennobled by martial discipline, religious enthusiasm, and the energy of the national character. The rise and progress of the Ottomans, the present sovereigns of Constantinople, are connected with the most important scenes of modern history; but they are founded on a previous knowledge of the great irruption of the Moguls and Tartars; whose rapid conquests may be compared with the primitive convulsions of nature, which have agitated and altered the surface of the globe. I have long since asserted my claim to introduce the nations, the immediate or remote authors of the fall of the Roman empire; nor can I refuse myself to those events, which from their uncommon magnitude, will interest a philosophic mind in the history of blood.* * [La Brocquiére, who visited Constantinople in 1432, describes the state of Pera, the government and trade of the Genoese, and the resort of foreigners to the place. He adds the curious fact, that the Genoese were then masters of it under the Duke of Milan, who styled himself Lord of Pera. Early Travels in Palestine, Bohn, p. 335.—ED.] The reader is invited to review in chapters 26 and 34 (vol. iii.) the manners of the pastoral nations, the conquests of Attila and the Huns, which were composed at a time when I entertained the wish, rather than the hope, of concluding my history. From the spacious highlands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea, the tide of emigration and war has repeatedly been poured.* These ancient seats of the Huns and Turks were occupied in the twelfth century by many pastoral tribes of the same descent and similar manners, which were united and led to conquest by the formidable Zingis. In his ascent to greatness, that Barbarian (whose private appellation was Temugin) had trampled on the necks of his equals. His birth was noble; but it was in the pride of victory, that the prince or people deduced his seventh ancestor from the immaculate conception of a virgin. His father had reigned over thirteen hordes, which composed about thirty or forty thousand families; above two-thirds refused to pay tithes or obedience to his infant son; and at the age of thirteen, Temugin fought a battle against his rebellious subjects. The future conqueror of Asia was reduced to fly and to obey; but he rose superior to his fortune, and in his fortieth year he had established his fame and dominion over the circumjacent tribes. In a state of society, in which policy is rude and valour is universal, the ascendant of one man must be founded on his power and resolution to punish his enemies and recompense his friends. His first military league was ratified by the simple rites of sacrificing a horse and tasting of a running stream; Temugin pledged himself to divide with his followers the sweets and the bitters of life; and when he had shared among them his horses and apparel, he was rich in their gratitude and his own hopes. After his first victory he placed seventy caldrons on the fire, and seventy of the most guilty rebels were cast headlong into the boiling water. The sphere of his attraction was continually enlarged by the ruin of the proud and the * [Instead of seeking in Scandinavia the cradle of our race, we must look for it in the lofty ridges of central Asia, now called the Great Tartary. That region, as Adelung has justly observed (Mithridates, 1. 449), seems to have been provided by nature as the nursery of robust tribes, that were first to people the earth, and then to infuse fresh vigour where softer climates or slavish habits had introduced effeminacy and weakness. From those tracts issued in succession, the Celtic, Gothic, and Slavonian waves, that have overspread Europe and are now flowing round the world; and thence proceeded in later times the Tartar hordes that have filled the rest of Asia. See vol. iv. p. 451, also Humboldt's Views of Nature, p. 3-5, and the note in Bohn's Marco Polo, p. 122. + [The tribe to which he belonged was that of the Kalkas, to the north of the great desert Gobi. Adelung, Mith. 1. 500.—ED.] submission of the prudent; and the boldest chieftains might tremble, when they beheld enchased in silver, the skull of the khan of the Keraites ;* who, under the name of Prester John, had corresponded with the Roman pontiff and the princes of Europe. The ambition of Temugin condescended to employ the arts of superstition; and it was from a naked prophet, who could ascend to heaven on a white horse, that he accepted the title of Zingis,† the most great; and a divine. right to the conquest and dominion of the earth. In a general couroultai, or diet, he was seated on a felt, which was long afterwards revered as a relic, and solemnly proclaimed great khan or emperor of the Moguls and Tartars.§ Of these kindred though rival names, the former had given birth to the imperial race; and the latter has been extended by accident or error over the spacious wilderness of the north. * The khans of the Keraites were most probably incapable of reading the pompous epistles composed in their name by the Nestorian missionaries, who endowed them with the fabulous wonders of an Indian kingdom. Perhaps these Tartars (the presbyter or priest John) had submitted to the rights of baptism and ordination. (Assemann. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iii. p. 2. p. 487-503.) [Mr. Layard collected, among the Curds, information respecting Prester John, which may be seen in "Nineveh and its Remains," i. 249. Marco Polo was in Tartary about fifty years after the time of Prester John, and tells us that his name, in the Tartar language, was Un-Khan. He describes him as a powerful, yet common chieftian, whom Zingis conquered, and then married his daughter. Travels, and Marsden's Notes, edit. Bohn, p. 120-125.-ED.] Since the history and tragedy of Voltaire, Gengis, at least in French, seems to be the more fashionable spelling; but Abulghazi Khan must have known the true name of his ancestor. His etymology appears just; zin, in the Mogul tongue, signifies great, and gis is the superlative termination. (Hist. Généalogique des Tartars, part 3, p. 194, 195.) From the same idea of magnitude, the appellation of Zingis is bestowed on the ocean. [Adelung wrote the name Dschingis; others have Chingis-khan, Jengis-khan, &c. Koeppen (World in the Middle Ages, p. 127) has Chimkhis-Chan.-ED.] The name of Moguls has prevailed among the Orientals, and still adheres to the titular sovereign, the great Mogul of Hindostan. [Mogul is an incorrect form of Mongol. The name originated with the Mantschous, who called their neighbours Mongu, plural Mongusa. Adelung, Mith. 1. 497.—ED.] § The Tartars (more properly Tatars) were descended from Tatar Khan, the brother of Mogul Khan (see Abulghazi, part 1 and 2), and once formed a horde of seventy thousand families on the borders of Kitay (p. 103–112). · In the great invasion of Europe (A.D. 1238), they seem to have led the The code of laws which Zingis dictated to his subjects was adapted to the preservation of domestic 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 regu lations 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 by his presence the heavens and 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 Imam, 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, 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. iv. p. 535, 4to. edit. 1777.) |