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Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3)

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Title: Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3)

Author: John Henry Newman


        
Release date: June 18, 2007 [eBook #21859]

Language: English

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HISTORICAL SKETCHES

VOL. I.

The Turks in Their Relation to Europe

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Apollonius of Tyana

Primitive Christianity

by

JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN

New Impression







[Illustration]

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     WORKS BY CARDINAL NEWMAN.

     Apologia Pro Vita Sua. 2s. 6d. net in cloth; 3s. 6d. net in
     leather.

     The Church of the Fathers. Reprinted from "Historical Sketches".
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     University Teaching. Being the First Part of "The Idea of a
     University Defined and Illustrated". 2s. net in cloth; 3s. net in
     leather.


       *       *       *       *       *


TO THE

RIGHT REVEREND DAVID MORIARTY, D.D.

BISHOP OF KERRY.


MY DEAR LORD

If I have not asked your Lordship for your formal leave to dedicate this
Volume to you, this has been because one part of it, written by me as an
Anglican controversialist, could not be consistently offered for the
direct sanction of a Catholic bishop. If, in spite of this, I presume to
inscribe your name in its first page, I do so because I have a freedom
in this matter which you have not, because I covet much to be associated
publicly with you, and because I trust to gain your forgiveness for a
somewhat violent proceeding, on the plea that I may perhaps thereby be
availing myself of the only opportunity given to me, if not the most
suitable occasion, of securing what I so earnestly desire.

I desire it, because I desire to acknowledge the debt I owe you for
kindnesses and services rendered to me through a course of years. All
along, from the time that the Oratory first came to this place, you have
taken a warm interest in me and in my doings. You found me out
twenty-four years ago on our first start in the narrow streets of
Birmingham, before we could well be said to have a home or a church. And
you have never been wanting to me since, or spared time or trouble, when
I had occasion in any difficulty to seek your guidance or encouragement.

Especially have I cause to remember the help you gave me, by your
prudent counsels and your anxious sympathy, when I was called over to
Ireland to initiate a great Catholic institution. From others also,
ecclesiastics and laymen, I received a hearty welcome and a large
assistance, which I ever bear in mind; but you, when I would fill the
Professors' chairs, were in a position to direct me to the men whose
genius, learning, and zeal became so great a part of the life and
strength of the University; and, even as regards those whose high
endowments I otherwise learned, or already knew myself, you had your
part in my appointments, for I ever tried to guide myself by what I had
gained from the conversations and correspondence which you had from time
to time allowed me. To you, then, my dear Lord, more than to any other,
I owe my introduction to a large circle of friends, who faithfully
worked with me in the course of my seven years of connexion with the
University, and who now, for twice seven years since, have generously
kept me in mind, though I have been out of their sight.

There is no one, then, whom I more intimately associate with my life in
Dublin than your Lordship; and thus, when I revive the recollections of
what my friends there did for me, my mind naturally reverts to you; and
again in making my acknowledgments to you, I am virtually thanking
them.

That you may live for many years, in health, strength, and usefulness,
the centre of many minds, a blessing to the Irish people, and a light in
the Universal Church, is,

                              MY DEAR LORD,
                                  The fervent prayer of
                               Your affectionate friend and servant,

                                                JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.
   BIRMINGHAM,
  _October 23, 1872._




I.

LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE TURKS,

IN THEIR RELATION TO EUROPE.




PREFATORY NOTICE.


The following sketch of Turkish history was the substance of Lectures
delivered in the Catholic Institute of Liverpool during October, 1853.
It may be necessary for its author to state at once, in order to prevent
disappointment, that he only professes in the course of it to have
brought together in one materials which are to be found in any
ordinarily furnished library. Not intending it in the first instance for
publication, but to answer a temporary purpose, he has, in drawing it
up, sometimes borrowed words and phrases, to save himself trouble, from
the authorities whom he has consulted; and this must be taken as his
excuse, if any want of keeping is discernible in the composition. He has
attempted nothing more than to group old facts in his own way; and he
trusts that his defective acquaintance with historical works and
travels, and the unreality of book-knowledge altogether in questions of
fact, have not exposed him to superficial generalizations.

One other remark may be necessary. Such a work at the present moment,
when we are on the point of undertaking a great war in behalf of the
Turks, may seem without meaning, unless it conducts the reader to some
definite conclusions, as to what is to be wished, what to be done, in
the present state of the East; but a minister of religion may fairly
protest against being made a politician. Political questions are mainly
decided by political expediency, and only indirectly and under
circumstances fall into the province of theology. Much less can such a
question be asked of the priests of that Church, whose voice in this
matter has been for five centuries unheeded by the Powers of Europe. As
they have sown, so must they reap: had the advice of the Holy See been
followed, there would have been no Turks in Europe for the Russians to
turn out of it. All that need be said here in behalf of the Sultan is,
that the Christian Powers are bound to keep such lawful promises as they
have made to him. All that need be said in favour of the Czar is, that
he is attacking an infamous Power, the enemy of God and man. And all
that need be said by way of warning to the Catholic is, that he should
beware of strengthening the Czar's cause by denying or ignoring its
strong point. It is difficult to understand how a reader of history can
side with the Spanish people in past centuries in their struggle with
the Moors, without wishing Godspeed, in mere consistency, to any
Christian Power, which aims at delivering the East of Europe from the
Turkish yoke.




THE TURKS.

  I. THE MOTHER COUNTRY OF THE TURKS.

  LECT.                                       PAGE

  1. The Tribes of the North                     1

  2. The Tartars                                19


  II. THE DESCENT OF THE TURKS.

  3. The Tartar and the Turk                    48

  4. The Turk and the Saracen                   74


  III. THE CONQUESTS OF THE TURKS.

  5. The Turk and the Christian                104

  6. The Pope and the Turk                     131


  IV. THE PROSPECTS OF THE TURKS.

  7. Barbarism and Civilization                159

  8. The Past and Present of the Ottomans      183

  9. The Future of the Ottomans                207

  Note                                         230

  Chronological Tables                         235


       *       *       *       *       *


I.

THE MOTHER COUNTRY OF THE TURKS.


       *       *       *       *       *




LECTURE 1.

_The Tribes of the North._


1.

The collision between Russia and Turkey, which at present engages public
attention, is only one scene in that persevering conflict, which is
carried on, from age to age, between the North and the South,--the North
aggressive, the South on the defensive. In the earliest histories this
conflict finds a place; and hence, when the inspired Prophets[1]
denounce defeat and captivity upon the chosen people or other
transgressing nations, who were inhabitants of the South, the North is
pointed out as the quarter from which the judgment is to descend.

Nor is this conflict, nor is its perpetuity, difficult of explanation.
The South ever has gifts of nature to tempt the invader, and the North
ever has multitudes to be tempted by them. The North has been fitly
called the storehouse of nations. Along the breadth of Asia, and thence
to Europe, from the Chinese Sea on the East, to the Euxine on the West,
nay to the Rhine, nay even to the Bay of Biscay, running between and
beyond the 40th and 50th degrees of latitude, and above the fruitful
South, stretches a vast plain, which has been from time immemorial what
may be called the wild common and place of encampment, or again the
highway, or the broad horse-path, of restless populations seeking a
home. The European portion of this tract has in Christian times been
reclaimed from its state of desolation, and is at present occupied by
civilized communities; but even now the East remains for the most part
in its primitive neglect, and is in possession of roving barbarians.

It is the Eastern portion of this vast territory which I have pointed
out, that I have now, Gentlemen, principally to keep before your view.
It goes by the general name of Tartary: in width from north to south it
is said to vary from 400 to 1,100 miles, while in length from east to
west it is not far short of 5,000. It is of very different elevations in
different parts, and it is divided longitudinally by as many as three or
four mountain-chains of great height. The valleys which lie between them
necessarily confine the wandering savage to an eastward or westward
course, and the slope of the land westward invites him to that direction
rather than to the east. Then, at a certain point in these westward
passages, as he approaches the meridian of the Sea of Aral, he finds the
mountain-ranges cease, and open upon him the opportunity, as well as the
temptation, to roam to the North or to the South also. Up in the East,
from whence he came, in the most northerly of the lofty ranges which I
have spoken of, is a great mountain, which some geographers have
identified with the classical Imaus; it is called by the Saracens Caf,
by the Turks Altai. Sometimes too it has the name of the Girdle of the
Earth, from the huge appearance of the chain to which it belongs,
sometimes of the Golden Mountain, from the gold, as well as other
metals, with which its sides abound. It is said to be at an equal
distance of 2,000 miles from the Caspian, the Frozen Sea, the North
Pacific Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal: and, being in situation the
furthest withdrawn from West and South, it is in fact the high capital
or metropolis of the vast Tartar country, which it overlooks, and has
sent forth, in the course of ages, innumerable populations into the
illimitable and mysterious regions around it, regions protected by their
inland character both from the observation and the civilizing influence
of foreign nations.


2.

To eat bread in the sweat of his brow is the original punishment of
mankind; the indolence of the savage shrinks from the obligation, and
looks out for methods of escaping it. Corn, wine, and oil have no charms
for him at such a price; he turns to the brute animals which are his
aboriginal companions, the horse, the cow, and the sheep; he chooses to
be a grazier rather than to till the ground. He feeds his horses,
flocks, and herds on its spontaneous vegetation, and then in turn he
feeds himself on their flesh. He remains on one spot while the natural
crop yields them sustenance; when it is exhausted, he migrates to
another. He adopts, what is called, the life of a _nomad_. In maritime
countries indeed he must have recourse to other expedients; he fishes in
the stream, or among the rocks of the beach.[2] In the woods he betakes
himself to roots and wild honey; or he has a resource in the chase, an
occupation, ever ready at hand, exciting, and demanding no perseverance.
But when the savage finds himself inclosed in the continent and the
wilderness, he draws the domestic animals about him, and constitutes
himself the head of a sort of brute polity. He becomes a king and father
of the beasts, and by the economical arrangements which this pretension
involves, advances a first step, though a low one, in civilization,
which the hunter or the fisher does not attain.

And here, beyond other animals, the horse is the instrument of that
civilization. It enables him to govern and to guide his sheep and
cattle; it carries him to the chase, when he is tempted to it; it
transports him and his from place to place; while his very locomotion
and shifting location and independence of the soil define the idea, and
secure the existence, both of a household and of personal property. Nor
is this all which the horse does for him; it is food both in its life
and in its death;--when dead, it nourishes him with its flesh, and,
while alive, it supplies its milk for an intoxicating liquor which,
under the name of _koumiss_, has from time immemorial served the Tartar
instead of wine or spirits. The horse then is his friend under all
circumstances, and inseparable from him; he may be even said to live on
horseback, he eats and sleeps without dismounting, till the fable has
been current that he has a centaur's nature, half man and half beast.
Hence it was that the ancient Saxons had a horse for their ensign in
war; thus it is that the Ottoman ordinances are, I believe, to this day
dated from "the imperial stirrup," and the display of horsetails at the
gate of the palace is the Ottoman signal of war. Thus too, as the
Catholic ritual measures intervals by "a Miserere," and St Ignatius in
his Exercises by "a Pater Noster," so the Turcomans and the Usbeks speak
familiarly of the time of a gallop. But as to houses, on the other hand,
the Tartars contemptuously called them the sepulchres of the living,
and, when abroad, could hardly be persuaded to cross a threshold. Their
women, indeed, and children could not live on horseback; them some kind
of locomotive dwelling must receive, and a less noble animal must draw.
The old historians and poets of Greece and Rome describe it, and the
travellers of the middle ages repeat and enlarge the classical
description of it The strangers from Europe gazed with astonishment on
huge wattled houses set on wheels, and drawn by no less than twenty-two
oxen.


3.

From the age of Job, the horse has been the emblem of battle; a mounted
shepherd is but one remove from a knight-errant, except in the object of
his excursions; and the discipline of a pastoral station from the nature
of the case is not very different from that of a camp. There can be no
community without order, and a community in motion demands a special
kind of organization. Provision must be made for the separation, the
protection, and the sustenance of men, women, and children, horses,
flocks, and cattle. To march without straggling, to halt without
confusion, to make good their ground, to reconnoitre neighbourhoods, to
ascertain the character and capabilities of places in the distance, and
to determine their future route, is to be versed in some of the most
important duties of the military art. Such pastoral tribes are already
an army in the field, if not as yet against any human foe, at least
against the elements. They have to subdue, or to check, or to
circumvent, or to endure the opposition of earth, water, and wind, in
their pursuits of the mere necessaries of life. The war with wild beasts
naturally follows, and then the war on their own kind. Thus when they
are at length provoked or allured to direct their fury against the
inhabitants of other regions, they are ready-made soldiers. They have a
soldier's qualifications in their independence of soil, freedom from
local ties, and practice in discipline; nay, in one respect they are
superior to any troops which civilized countries can produce. One of the
problems of warfare is how to feed the vast masses which its operations
require; and hence it is commonly said, that a well-managed commissariat
is a chief condition of victory. Few people can fight without
eating;--Englishmen as little as any. I have heard of a work of a
foreign officer, who took a survey of the European armies previously to
the revolutionary war; in which he praised our troops highly, but said
they would not be effective till they were supported by a better
commissariat. Moreover, one commonly hears, that the supply of this
deficiency is one of the very merits of the great Duke of Wellington. So
it is with civilized races; but the Tartars, as is evident from what I
have already observed, have in their wars no need of any commissariat at
all; and that, not merely from the unscrupulousness of their foraging,
but because they find in the instruments of their conquests the staple
of their food. "Corn is a bulky and perishable commodity," says an
historian;[3] "and the large magazines, which are indispensably
necessary for the subsistence of civilized troops, are difficult and
slow of transport." But, not to say that even their flocks and herds
were fitted for rapid movement, like the nimble sheep of Wales and the
wild cattle of North Britain, the Tartars could even dispense with these
altogether. If straitened for provisions, they ate the chargers which
carried them to battle; indeed they seemed to account their flesh a
delicacy, above the reach of the poor, and in consequence were enjoying
a banquet in circumstances when civilized troops would be staving off
starvation. And with a view to such accidents, they have been accustomed
to carry with them in their expeditions a number of supernumerary
horses, which they might either ride or eat, according to the occasion.
It was an additional advantage to them in their warlike movements, that
they were little particular whether their food had been killed for the
purpose, or had died of disease. Nor is this all: their horses' hides
were made into tents and clothing, perhaps into bottles and coracles;
and their intestines into bowstrings.[4]

Trained then as they are, to habits which in themselves invite to war,
the inclemency of their native climate has been a constant motive for
them to seek out settlements and places of sojournment elsewhere. The
spacious plains, over which they roam, are either monotonous grazing
lands, or inhospitable deserts, relieved with green valleys or recesses.
The cold is intense in a degree of which we have no experience in
England, though we lie to the north of them.[5] This arises in a measure
from their distance from the sea, and again from their elevation of
level, and further from the saltpetre with which their soil or their
atmosphere is impregnated. The sole influence then of their fatherland,
if I may apply to it such a term, is to drive its inhabitants from it to
the West or to the South.


4

I have said that the geographical features of their country carry them
forward in those two directions, the South and the West; not to say that
the ocean forbids them going eastward, and the North does but hold out
to them a climate more inclement than their own. Leaving the district of
Mongolia in the furthermost East, high above the north of China, and
passing through the long and broad valleys which I spoke of just now,
the emigrants at length would arrive at the edge of that elevated
plateau, which constitutes Tartary proper. They would pass over the high
region of Pamer, where are the sources of the Oxus, they would descend
the terrace of the Bolor, and the steeps of Badakshan, and gradually
reach a vast region, flat on the whole as the expanse they had left, but
as strangely depressed below the level of the sea, as Tartary is lifted
above it.[6] This is the country, forming the two basins of the Aral and
the Caspian, which terminates the immense Asiatic plain, and may be
vaguely designated by the name of Turkistan. Hitherto the necessity of
their route would force them on, in one multitudinous emigration, but
now they may diverge, and have diverged. If they were to cross the
Jaxartes and the Oxus, and then to proceed southward, they would come to
Khorasan, the ancient Bactriana, and so to Affghanistan and to Hindostan
on the east, or to Persia on the west. But if, instead, they continued
their westward course, then they would skirt the north coast of the Aral
and the Caspian, cross the Volga, and there would have a second
opportunity, if they chose to avail themselves of it, of descending
southwards, by Georgia and Armenia, either to Syria or to Asia Minor.
Refusing this diversion, and persevering onwards to the west, at length
they would pass the Don, and descend upon Europe across the Ukraine,
Bessarabia, and the Danube.

Such are the three routes,--across the Oxus, across the Caucasus, and
across the Danube,--which the pastoral nations have variously pursued
at various times, when their roving habits, their warlike propensities,
and their discomforts at home, have combined to precipitate them on the
industry, the civilization, and the luxury of the West and of the South.
And at such times, as might be inferred from what has been already said,
their invasions have been rather irruptions, inroads, or, what are
called, raids, than a proper conquest and occupation of the countries
which have been their victims. They would go forward, 200,000 of them at
once, at the rate of 100 miles a day, swimming the rivers, galloping
over the plains, intoxicated with the excitement of air and speed, as if
it were a fox-chase, or full of pride and fury at the reverses which set
them in motion; seeking indeed their fortunes, but seeking them on no
plan; like a flight of locusts, or a swarm of angry wasps smoked out of
their nest. They would seek for immediate gratification, and let the
future take its course. They would be bloodthirsty and rapacious, and
would inflict ruin and misery to any extent; and they would do tenfold
more harm to the invaded, than benefit to themselves. They would be
powerful to break down; helpless to build up. They would in a day undo
the labour and skill, the prosperity of years; but they would not know
how to construct a polity, how to conduct a government, how to organize
a system of slavery, or to digest a code of laws. Rather they would
despise the sciences of politics, law, and finance; and, if they
honoured any profession or vocation, it would be such as bore
immediately and personally on themselves. Thus we find them treating the
priest and the physician with respect, when they found such among their
captives; but they could not endure the presence of a lawyer. How could
it be otherwise with those who may be called the outlaws of the human
race? They did but justify the seeming paradox of the traveller's
exclamation, who, when at length, after a dreary passage through the
wilderness, he came in sight of a gibbet, returned thanks that he had
now arrived at a civilized country. "The pastoral tribes," says the
writer I have already quoted, "who were ignorant of the distinction of
landed property, must have disregarded the use, as well as the abuse, of
civil jurisprudence; and the skill of an eloquent lawyer would excite
only their contempt or their abhorrence." And he refers to an outrage on
the part of a barbarian of the North, who, not satisfied with cutting
out a lawyer's tongue, sewed up his mouth, in order, as he said, that
the viper might no longer hiss. The well-known story of the Czar Peter,
himself a Tartar, is here in point. When told there were some thousands
of lawyers at Westminster, he is said to have observed that there had
been only two in his own dominions, and he had hung one of them.


5.

Now I have thrown the various inhabitants of the Asiatic plain together,
under one description, not as if I overlooked, or undervalued, the
distinction of races, but because I have no intention of committing
myself to any statements on so intricate and interminable a subject as
ethnology. In spite of the controversy about skulls, and skins, and
languages, by means of which man is to be traced up to his primitive
condition, I consider place and climate to be a sufficiently real aspect
under which he may be regarded, and with this I shall content myself. I
am speaking of the inhabitants of those extended plains, whether
Scythians, Massagetæ, Sarmatians, Huns, Moguls, Tartars, Turks, or
anything else; and whether or no any of them or all of them are
identical with each other in their pedigree and antiquities. Position
and climate create habits; and, since the country is called Tartary, I
shall call them Tartar habits, and the populations which have inhabited
it and exhibited them, Tartars, for convenience-sake, whatever be their
family descent. From the circumstances of their situation, these
populations have in all ages been shepherds, mounted on horseback,
roaming through trackless spaces, easily incited to war, easily formed
into masses, easily dissolved again into their component parts, suddenly
sweeping across continents, suddenly descending on the south or west,
suddenly extinguishing the civilization of ages, suddenly forming
empires, suddenly vanishing, no one knows how, into their native north.

Such is the fearful provision for havoc and devastation, when the Divine
Word goes forth for judgment upon the civilized world, which the North
has ever had in store; and the regions on which it has principally
expended its fury, are those, whose fatal beauty, or richness of soil,
or perfection of cultivation, or exquisiteness of produce, or amenity of
climate, makes them objects of desire to the barbarian. Such are China,
Hindostan, Persia, Syria, and Anatolia or the Levant, in Asia; Greece,
Italy, Sicily, and Spain, in Europe; and the northern coast of Africa.

These regions, on the contrary, have neither the inducement nor the
means to retaliate upon their ferocious invaders. The relative position
of the combatants must always be the same, while the combat lasts. The
South has nothing to win, the North nothing to lose; the North nothing
to offer, the South nothing to covet. Nor is this all: the North, as in
an impregnable fortress, defies the attack of the South. Immense
trackless solitudes; no cities, no tillage, no roads; deserts, forests,
marshes; bleak table-lands, snowy mountains; unlocated, flitting,
receding populations; no capitals, or marts, or strong places, or
fruitful vales, to hold as hostages for submission; fearful winters and
many months of them;--nature herself fights and conquers for the
barbarian. What madness shall tempt the South to undergo extreme risks
without the prospect or chance of a return? True it is, ambition, whose
very life is a fever, has now and then ventured on the reckless
expedition; but from the first page of history to the last, from Cyrus
to Napoleon, what has the Northern war done for the greatest warriors
but destroy the flower of their armies and the _prestige_ of their name?
Our maps, in placing the North at the top, and the South at the bottom
of the sheet, impress us, by what may seem a sophistical analogy, with
the imagination that Huns or Moguls, Kalmucks or Cossacks, have been a
superincumbent mass, descending by a sort of gravitation upon the fair
territories which lie below them. Yet this is substantially
true;--though the attraction towards the South is of a moral, not of a
physical nature, yet an attraction there is, and a huge conglomeration
of destructive elements hangs over us, and from time to time rushes down
with an awful irresistible momentum. Barbarism is ever impending over
the civilized world. Never, since history began, has there been so long
a cessation of this law of human society, as in the period in which we
live. The descent of the Turks on Europe was the last instance of it,
and that was completed four hundred years ago. They are now themselves
in the position of those races, whom they themselves formerly came down
upon.


6.

As to the instances of this conflict between North and South in the
times before the Christian era, we know more of them from antiquarian
research than from history. The principal of those which ancient writers
have recorded are contained in the history of the Persian Empire. The
wandering Tartar tribes went at that time by the name of Scythians, and
had possession of the plains of Europe as well as of Asia. Central
Europe was not at that time the seat of civilized nations; but from the
Chinese Sea even to the Rhine or Bay of Biscay, a course of many
thousand miles, the barbarian emigrant might wander on, as necessity or
caprice impelled him. Darius assailed the Scythians of Europe; Cyrus,
his predecessor, the Scythians of Asia.

As to Cyrus, writers are not concordant on the subject; but the
celebrated Greek historian, Herodotus, whose accuracy of research is
generally confessed, makes the great desert, which had already been
fatal, according to some accounts, to the Assyrian Semiramis, the ruin
also of the founder of the Persian Empire. He tells us that Cyrus led an
army against the Scythian tribes (Massagetæ, as they were called), who
were stationed to the east of the Caspian; and that they, on finding him
prepared to cross the river which bounded their country to the South,
sent him a message which well illustrates the hopelessness of going to
war with them. They are said to have given him his choice of fighting
them either three days' march within their own territory, or three days'
march within his; it being the same to them whether he made himself a
grave in their inhospitable deserts, or they a home in his flourishing
provinces. He had with him in his army a celebrated captive, the Lydian
King Croesus, who had once been head of a wealthy empire, till he had
succumbed to the fortunes of a more illustrious conqueror; and on this
occasion he availed himself of his advice. Croesus cautioned him
against admitting the barbarians within the Persian border, and
counselled him to accept their permission of his advancing into their
territory, and then to have recourse to stratagem. "As I hear," he says
in the simple style of the historian, which will not bear translation,
"the Massagetæ have no experience of the good things of life. Spare not
then to serve up many sheep, and add thereunto stoups of neat wine, and
all sorts of viands. Set out this banquet for them in our camp, leave
the refuse of the army there, and retreat with the body of your troops
upon the river. If I am not mistaken, the Scythians will address
themselves to all this good cheer, as soon as they fall in with it, and
then we shall have the opportunity of a brilliant exploit." I need not
pursue the history further than to state the issue. In spite of the
immediate success of his _ruse de guerre_, Cyrus was eventually
defeated, and lost both his army and his life. The Scythian Queen
Tomyris, in revenge for the lives which he had sacrificed to his
ambition, is related to have cut off his head and plunged it into a
vessel filled with blood, saying, "Cyrus, drink your fill." Such is the
account given us by Herodotus; and, even if it is to be rejected, it
serves to illustrate the difficulties of an invasion of Scythia; for
legends must be framed according to the circumstances of the case, and
grow out of probabilities, if they are to gain credit, and if they have
actually succeeded in gaining it.


7.

Our knowledge of the expedition of Darius in the next generation, is
more certain. This fortunate monarch, after many successes, even on the
European side of the Bosphorus, impelled by that ambition, which holy
Daniel had already seen in prophecy to threaten West and North as well
as South, towards the end of his life directed his arms against the
Scythians who inhabited the country now called the Ukraine. His pretext
for this expedition was an incursion which the same barbarians had made
into Asia, shortly before the time of Cyrus. They had crossed the Don,
just above the sea of Azoff, had entered the country now called
Circassia, had threaded the defiles of the Caucasus, and had defeated
the Median King Cyaxares, the grandfather of Cyrus. Then they overran
Armenia, Cappadocia, Pontus, and part of Lydia, that is, a great portion
of Anatolia or Asia Minor; and managed to establish themselves in the
country for twenty-eight years, living by plunder and exaction. In the
course of this period, they descended into Syria, as far as to the very
borders of Egypt. The Egyptians bought them off, and they turned back;
however, they possessed themselves of a portion of Palestine, and gave
their name to one town, Scythopolis, in the territory of Manasses. This
was in the last days of the Jewish monarchy, shortly before the
captivity. At length Cyaxares got rid of them by treachery; he invited
the greater number of them to a banquet, intoxicated, and massacred
them. Nor was this the termination of the troubles, of which they were
the authors; and I mention the sequel, because both the office which
they undertook and their manner of discharging it, their insubordination
and their cruelty, are an anticipation of some passages in the early
history of the Turks. The Median King had taken some of them into his
pay, made them his huntsmen, and submitted certain noble youths to
their training. Justly or unjustly they happened one day to be punished
for leaving the royal table without its due supply of game: without more
ado, the savages in revenge murdered and served up one of these youths
instead of the venison which had been expected of them, and made
forthwith for the neighbouring kingdom of Lydia. A war between the two
states was the consequence.

But to return to Darius:--it is said to have been in retaliation for
these excesses that he resolved on his expedition against the Scythians,
who, as I have mentioned, were in occupation of the district between the
Danube and the Don. For this purpose he advanced from Susa in the
neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf, through Assyria and Asia Minor to the
Bosphorus, just opposite to the present site of Constantinople, where he
crossed over into Europe. Thence he made his way, with the incredible
number of 700,000 men, horse and foot, to the Danube, reducing Thrace,
the present Roumelia, in his way. When he had crossed that stream, he
was at once in Scythia; but the Scythians had adopted the same sort of
strategy, which in the beginning of this century was practised by their
successors against Napoleon. They cut and carried off the green crops,
stopped up their wells or spoilt their water, and sent off their
families and flocks to places of safety. Then they stationed their
outposts just a day's journey before the enemy, to entice him on. He
pursued them, they retreated; and at length he found himself on the Don,
the further boundary of the Scythian territory. They crossed the Don,
and he crossed it too, into desolate and unknown wilds; then, eluding
him altogether, from their own knowledge of the country, they made a
circuit, and got back into their own land again.

Darius found himself outwitted, and came to a halt; how he had
victualled his army, whatever deduction we make for its numbers, does
not appear; but it is plain that the time must come, when he could not
proceed. He gave the order for retreat. Meanwhile, he found an
opportunity of sending a message to the Scythian chief, and it was to
this effect:--"Perverse man, take your choice; fight me or yield." The
Scythians intended to do neither, but contrived, as before, to harass
the Persian retreat. At length an answer came; not a message, but an
ominous gift; they sent Darius a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows;
without a word of explanation. Darius himself at first hailed it as an
intimation of submission; in Greece to offer earth and water was the
sign of capitulation, as, in a sale of land in our own country, a clod
from the soil still passes, or passed lately, from seller to purchaser,
as a symbol of the transfer of possession. The Persian king, then,
discerned in these singular presents a similar surrender of territorial
jurisdiction. But another version, less favourable to his vanity and his
hopes, was suggested by one of his courtiers, and it ran thus: "Unless
you can fly like a bird, or burrow like a mouse, or swim the marshes
like a frog, you cannot escape our arrows." Whichever interpretation was
the true one, it needed no message from the enemy to inflict upon Darius
the presence of the dilemma suggested in this unpleasant interpretation.
He yielded to imperative necessity, and hastened his escape from the
formidable situation in which he had placed himself, and through great
good fortune succeeded in effecting it. He crossed the sea just in time;
for the Scythians came down in pursuit, as far as the coast, and
returned home laden with booty.

This is pretty much all that is definitely recorded in history of the
ancient Tartars. Alexander, in a later age, came into conflict with them
in the region called Sogdiana which lies at the foot of that high
plateau of central and eastern Asia, which I have designated as their
proper home. But he was too prudent to be entangled in extended
expeditions against them, and having made trial of their formidable
strength, and made some demonstrations of the superiority of his own, he
left them in possession of their wildernesses.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Isai. xli. 25: Jer. i. 14; vi. 1, 22; Joel ii. 20; etc., etc.

[2] Gibbon.

[3] Gibbon.

[4] Caldecott's Baber.

[5] Vid. Mitford's Greece, vol. viii. p. 86.

[6] Pritchard's Researches.




LECTURE II.

_The Tartars._


1.

If anything needs be added to the foregoing account, in illustration of
the natural advantages of the Scythian or Tartar position, it is the
circumstance that the shepherds of the Ukraine were divided in their
counsels when Darius made war against them, and that only a portion of
their tribes coalesced to repel his invasion. Indeed, this internal
discord, which is the ordinary characteristic of races so barbarous, and
the frequent motive of their migrations, is the cause why in ancient
times they were so little formidable to their southern neighbours; and
it suggests a remark to the philosophical historian, Thucydides, which,
viewed in the light of subsequent history, is almost prophetic. "As to
the Scythians," he says, "not only no European nation, but not even any
Asiatic, would be able to measure itself with them, nation with nation,
were they but of one mind." Such was the safeguard of civilization in
ancient times; in modern unhappily it has disappeared. Not unfrequently,
since the Christian era, the powers of the North have been under one
sovereign, sometimes even for a series of years; and have in consequence
been brought into combined action against the South; nay, as time has
gone on, they have been thrown into more and more formidable
combinations, with more and more disastrous consequences to its
prosperity. Of these northern coalitions or Empires, there have been
three, nay five, which demand our especial attention both from their
size and their historical importance.

The first of these is the Empire of the Huns, under the sovereignty of
Attila, at the termination of the Roman Empire; and it began and ended
in himself. The second is in the time of the Crusades, when the Moguls
spread themselves over Europe and Asia under Zingis Khan, whose power
continued to the third generation, nay, for two centuries, in the
northern parts of Europe. The third outbreak was under Timour or
Tamerlane, a century and more before the rise of Protestantism, when the
Mahometan Tartars, starting from the basin of the Aral and the fertile
region of the present Bukharia, swept over nearly the whole of Asia
round about, and at length seated themselves in Delhi in Hindostan,
where they remained in imperial power till they succumbed to the English
in the last century. Then come the Turks, a multiform and reproductive
race, varied in its fortunes, complicated in its history, falling to
rise again, receding here to expand there, and harassing and oppressing
the world for at least a long 800 years. And lastly comes the Russian
Empire, in which the Tartar element is prominent, whether in its pure
blood or in the Slavonian approximation, and which comprises a
population of many millions, gradually moulded into one in the course of
centuries, ever growing, never wavering, looking eagerly to the South
and to an unfulfilled destiny, and possessing both the energy of
barbarism in its subjects and the subtlety of civilization in its
rulers. The two former of these five empires were Pagan, the two next
Mahometan, the last Christian, but schismatic; all have been persecutors
of the Church, or, at least, instruments of evil against her children.
The Russians I shall dismiss; the Turks, who form my proper subject, I
shall postpone. First of all, I will take a brief survey of the three
empires of the Tartars proper; of Attila and his Huns; of Zingis and his
Moguls; and of Timour and his Mahometan Tartars.

I have already waived the intricate question of race, as regards the
various tribes who have roamed from time immemorial, or used to roam, in
the Asiatic and European wilderness, because it was not necessary to the
discussion in which I am engaged. Their geographical position
assimilated them to each other in their wildness, their love of
wandering, their pastoral occupations, their predatory habits, their
security from attack, and the suddenness and the transitoriness of their
conquests, even though they descend from our first parent by different
lines. However, there is no need of any reserve or hesitation in
speaking of the three first empires into which the shepherds of the
North developed, the Huns, the Moguls, and the Mahometan Tartars: they
were the creation of Tribes, whose identity of race is as certain as
their community of country.


2.

Of these the first in order is the Hunnish Empire of Attila, and if I
speak of it and of him with more of historical consecutiveness than of
Zingis or of Timour, it is because I think in him we see the pure
undiluted Tartar, better than in the other two, and in his empire the
best specimen of a Tartar rule. Nothing brings before us more vividly
the terrible character of Attila than this, that he terrified the Goths
themselves. These celebrated barbarians at the time of Attila inhabited
the countries to the north of the Black Sea, between the Danube and the
Don, the very district in which Darius so many centuries before found
the Scythians. They were impending over the Roman Empire, and
threatening it with destruction; their king was the great Hermanric,
who, after many victories, was closing his days in the fulness of power
and renown. That they themselves, the formidable Goths, should have to
fear and flee, seemed the most improbable of prospects; yet it was their
lot. Suddenly they heard, or rather they felt before they heard,--so
rapid is the torrent of Scythian warfare,--they felt upon them and among
them the resistless, crushing force of a remorseless foe. They beheld
their fields and villages in flames about them, and their hearthstones
deluged in the blood of their dearest and their bravest. Shocked and
stunned by so unexpected a calamity, they could think of nothing better
than turning their backs on the enemy, crowding to the Danube, and
imploring the Romans to let them cross over, and to lodge themselves and
their families in safety from the calamity which menaced them.

Indeed, the very appearance of the enemy scared them; and they shrank
from him, as children before some monstrous object. It is observed of
the Scythians, their ancestors, who, as I have mentioned, came down upon
Asia in the Median times, that they were a frightful set of men. "The
persons of the Scythians," says a living historian,[7] "naturally
unsightly, were rendered hideous by indolent habits, only occasionally
interrupted by violent exertions; and the same cause subjected them to
disgusting diseases, in which they themselves revered the finger of
Heaven." Some of these ancient tribes are said to have been cannibals,
and their horrible outrage in serving up to Cyaxares human flesh for
game, may be taken to confirm the account Their sensuality was
unbridled, so much so that even polygamy was a licence too limited for
their depravity. The Huns were worthy sons of such fathers. The Goths,
the bravest and noblest of barbarians, recoiled in horror from their
physical and mental deformity. Their voices were shrill, their gestures
uncouth, and their shapes scarcely human. They are said by a Gothic
historian to have resembled brutes set up awkwardly on their hind legs,
or to the misshapen figures (something like, I suppose, the grotesque
forms of medieval sculpture), which were placed upon the bridges of
antiquity. Their shoulders were broad, their noses flat, and their eyes
black, small, and deeply buried in their head. They had little hair on
their skulls, and no beard. The report was spread and believed by the
Goths, that they were not mere men, but the detestable progeny of evil
spirits and witches in the wilds of the East.

As the Huns were but reproductions of the ancient Scythians, so are they
reproduced themselves in various Tartar races of modern times.
Tavernier, the French traveller, in the seventeenth century, gives us a
similar description of the Kalmuks, some of whom at present are included
in the Russian Empire. "They are robust men," he says,[8] "but the most
ugly and deformed under heaven; a face so flat and broad, that from one
eye to the other is a space of five or six fingers. Their eyes are very
small, the nose so flat that two small nostrils is the whole of it;
their knees turned out, and their feet turned in."

Attila himself did not degenerate in aspect from this unlovely race; for
an historian tells us, whom I have already made use of, that "his
features bore the stamp of his national origin; and the portrait of
Attila exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuck; a large
head, a swarthy complexion, small deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few
hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square body,
of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form." I should add
that the Tartar eyes are not only far apart, but slant inwards, as do
the eyebrows, and are partly covered by the eyelid. Now Attila, this
writer continues, "had a custom of rolling his eyes, as if he wished to
enjoy the terror which he had inspired;" yet, strange to say, all this
was so far from being thought a deformity by his people, that it even
went for something supernatural, for we presently read, "the barbarian
princes confessed, that they could not presume to gaze, with a steady
eye, on the divine majesty of the King of the Huns."

I consider Attila to have been a pure Hun; I do not suppose the later
hordes under Zingis and Timour to have been so hideous, as being the
descendants of mixed marriages. Both Zingis himself and Timour had
foreign mothers; as to the Turks, from even an earlier date than those
conquerors, they had taken foreign captives to be mothers of their
families, and had lived among foreign people. Borrowing the blood of a
hundred tribes as they went on, they slowly made their way, in the
course of six or seven centuries, from Turkistan to Constantinople. Then
as to the Russians again, only a portion of the empire is strictly
Tartar or Scythian; the greater portion is but Scythian in its first
origin, many ages ago, and has long surrendered its wandering or nomad
habits, its indolence, and its brutality.


3.

To return to Attila:--this extraordinary man is the only conqueror of
ancient and modern times who has united in one empire the two mighty
kingdoms of Eastern Scythia and Western Germany, that is, of that
immense expanse of plain, which stretches across Europe and Asia. If we
divide the inhabited portions of the globe into two parts, the land of
civilization and the land of barbarism, we may call him the supreme and
sole king of the latter, of all those populations who did not live in
cities, who did not till the soil, who were hunters and shepherds,
dwelling in tents, in waggons, and on horseback.[9] Imagination can
hardly take in the extent of his empire. In the West he interfered with
the Franks, and chastised the Burgundians, on the Rhine. On the East he
even sent ambassadors to negotiate an equal alliance with the Chinese
Empire. The north of Asia was the home of his race, and on the north of
Europe he ascended as high as Denmark and Sweden. It is said he could
bring into the field an army of 500,000 or 700,000 men.

You will ask perhaps how he gained this immense power; did he inherit
it? the Russian Empire is the slow growth of centuries; had Attila a
long line of royal ancestors, and was his empire, like that of Haroun,
or Soliman, or Aurunzebe, the maturity and consummation of an eventful
history? Nothing of the kind; it began, as it ended, with himself. The
history of the Huns during the centuries immediately before him, will
show us how he came by it. It seems that, till shortly before the
Christian era, the Huns had a vast empire, from a date unknown, in the
portion of Tartary to the east of Mount Altai. It was against these
formidable invaders that the Chinese built their famous wall, 1,500
miles in length, which still exists as one of the wonders of the world.
In spite of its protection, however, they were obliged to pay tribute to
their fierce neighbours, until one of their emperors undertook a task
which at first sight seems an exception to what I have already laid down
as if a universal law in the history of northern warfare. This Chinese
monarch accomplished the bold design of advancing an army as much as 700
miles into the depths of the Tartar wilderness, and thereby at length
succeeded in breaking the power of the Huns. He succeeded;--but at the
price of 110,000 men. He entered Tartary with an army 140,000 strong; he
returned with 30,000.

The Huns, however, though broken, had no intention at all of being
reduced. The wild warriors turned their faces westward, and not knowing
whither they were going, set out for Europe. This was at the end of the
first century after Christ; in the course of the following centuries
they pursued the track which I have already marked out for the
emigrating companies. They passed the lofty Altai; they gradually
travelled along the foot of the mountain-chain in which it is seated;
they arrived at the edge of the high table-land which bounds Tartary on
the west; then turning southward down the slopes which led to the low
level of Turkistan, they found themselves close to a fertile region
between the Jaxartes and the Oxus, the present Bukharia, then called
Sogdiana by the Greeks, afterwards the native land of Timour. Here was
the first of the three thoroughfares for a descent southwards, which I
have pointed out as open to the choice of adventurers. A portion of
these Huns, attracted by the rich pasture-land and general beauty of
Sogdiana, took up their abode there; the main body wandered on.
Persevering in their original course, they skirted Siberia and the north
of the Caspian, crossed the Volga, then the Don, and thus in the fifth
century of the Christian era, as I just now mentioned, came upon the
Goths, who were in undisturbed possession of the country. Now it would
appear that, in this long march from the wall of China to the Danube,
lasting as it did through some centuries, they lost hold of no part of
the tracts which they traversed. They remained on each successive
encampment long enough (if I may so express myself) to sow themselves
there. They left behind them at least a remnant of their own population
while they went forward, like a rocket thrown up in the sky, which,
while it shoots forward, keeps possession of its track by its train of
fire. And hence it was that Attila, when he found himself at length in
Hungary, and elevated to the headship of his people, became at once the
acknowledged king of the vast territories and the untold populations
which that people had been leaving behind them in its advance during the
foregoing 350 years.

Such a power indeed had none of the elements of permanence in it, but it
was appalling at the moment, whenever there was a vigorous and
unscrupulous hand to put it into motion. Such was Attila; it was his
boast, that, where his horse once trod, there grass never grew again. As
he fulfilled his terrible destiny, religious men looked on with awe, and
called him the "Scourge of God." He burst as a thunder-cloud upon the
whole extent of country, now called Turkey in Europe, along a line of
more than five hundred miles from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Venice.
He defeated the Roman armies in three pitched battles, and then set
about destroying the cities of the Empire. Three of the greatest,
Constantinople, Adrianople, and another, escaped: but as for the rest,
the barbarian fury fell on as many as seventy; they were sacked,
levelled to the ground, and their inhabitants carried off to captivity.
Next he turned round to the West, and rode off with his savage horsemen
to the Rhine. He entered France, and stormed and sacked the greater part
of its cities. At Metz he involved in one promiscuous massacre priests
and children; he burned the city, so that a solitary chapel of St.
Stephen was its sole remains. At length he was signally defeated by the
Romans and Goths united at Chalons on the Marne, in a tremendous battle,
which ended in 252,000, or, as one account says, 300,000 men being left
dead on the field.

Irritated rather than humbled, as some beast of prey, by this mishap, he
turned to Italy. Crossing the Alps, he laid siege to Aquileia, at that
time one of the richest, most populous, and strongest of the cities on
the Hadriatic coast. He took it, sacked it, and so utterly destroyed it,
that the succeeding generation could scarcely trace its ruins. It is, we
know, no slight work, in toil and expense, even with all the appliances
of modern science, to raze a single fortress; yet the energy of these
wild warriors made sport of walled cities. He turned back, and passed
along through Lombardy; and, as he moved, he set fire to Padua and other
cities; he plundered Vincenza, Verona, and Bergamo; and sold to the
citizens of Milan and Pavia their lives and buildings at the price of
the surrender of their property. There were a number of minute islands
in the shallows of the extremity of the Hadriatic; and thither the
trembling inhabitants of the coast fled for refuge. Fish was for a time
their sole food, and salt, extracted from the sea, their sole
possession. Such was the origin of the city and the republic of Venice.


4.

It does not enter into my subject to tell you how this ferocious
conqueror was stayed in the course of blood and fire which was carrying
him towards Rome, by the great St. Leo, the Pope of the day, who
undertook an embassy to his camp. It was not the first embassy which the
Romans had sent to him, and their former negotiations had been
associated with circumstances which could not favourably dispose the Hun
to new overtures. It is melancholy to be obliged to confess that, on
that occasion, the contrast between barbarism and civilization had been
to the advantage of the former. The Romans, who came to Attila to treat
upon the terms of an accommodation, after various difficulties and some
insults, had found themselves at length in the Hunnish capital, in
Hungary, the sole city of an empire which extended for some thousand
miles. In the number of these ambassadors were some who were conducting
an intrigue with Attila's own people for his assassination, and who
actually had with them the imperial gold which was to be the price of
the crime. Attila was aware of the conspiracy, and showed his knowledge
of it; but, from respect for the law of nations and of hospitality, he
spared the guilty instruments or authors. Sad as it is to have to record
such practices of an Imperial Court professedly Christian, still, it is
not unwelcome, for the honour of human nature, to discover in
consequence of them those vestiges of moral rectitude which the
degradation of ages had not obliterated from the Tartar character. It is
well known that when Homer, 1,500 years before, speaks of these
barbarians, he calls them, on the one hand, "drinkers of mare's milk;"
on the other, "the most just of men." Truth, honesty, justice,
hospitality, according to their view of things, are the historical
characteristics, it must be granted, of Scythians, Tartars, and Turks,
down to this day; and Homer, perhaps, as other authors after him, was
the more struck with such virtues in these wild shepherds, in contrast
with the subtlety and perfidy, which, then as since, were the qualities
of his own intellectually gifted countrymen.

Attila, though aware of the treachery and of the traitor, had received
the Roman ambassadors, as a barbarian indeed, but as a king; and with
that strange mixture of rudeness and magnificence of which I shall have,
as I proceed, to give more detailed specimens. As he entered the royal
village or capital with his guests, a numerous troop of women came out
to meet him, and marched in long files before him, chanting hymns in his
honour. As he passed the door of one of his favourite soldiers, the wife
of the latter presented wine and meat for his refreshment. He did not
dismount, but a silver table was raised for his accommodation by his
domestics, and then he continued his march. His palace, which was all of
wood, was surrounded by a wooden wall, and contained separate houses for
each of his numerous wives. The Romans were taken round to all of them
to pay their respects; and they admired the singular quality and
workmanship of the wooden columns, which they found in the apartments of
his queen or state wife. She received them reclining on a soft couch,
with her ladies round her working at embroidery. Afterwards they had an
opportunity of seeing his council; the supreme tribunal was held in the
gate of the palace according to Oriental custom, perpetuated even to
this day in the title of the "Ottoman Porte." They were invited to two
solemn banquets, in which Attila feasted with the princes and nobles of
Scythia. The royal couch and table were covered with carpets and fine
linen. The swords, and even the shoes of the nobles, were studded with
gold and precious stones; the tables were profusely spread with gold
and silver plates, goblets, and vases. Two bards stood before the King's
couch, and sung of his victories. Wine was drunk in great excess; and
buffoons, Scythian and Moorish, exhibited their unseemly dances before
the revellers. When the Romans were to depart, Attila discovered to them
his knowledge of the treachery which had been carried on against him.

Such were some of the untoward circumstances under which the great
Pontiff I have mentioned undertook a new embassy to the King of the
Huns. He was not, we may well conceive, to be a spectator of their
barbaric festivities, or to be a listener to their licentious
interludes; he was rather an object to be gazed upon, than to gaze; and
in truth there was that about him, in the noble aspect and the spare
youthful form, which portraits give to Pope Leo, which was adapted to
arrest and subdue even Attila. Attila had seen many great men in his
day; he had seen the majesty of the Cæsars, and the eagles of their
legions; he had never seen before a Vicar of Christ. The place of their
interview has been ascertained by antiquarians;[10] it is near the great
Austrian fortress of Peschiera, where the Mincio enters the Lago di
Garda, close to the farm of Virgil. It is said he saw behind the Pontiff
the two Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, as they are represented in the
picture of Raffaelle; he was subdued by the influence of religion, and
agreed to evacuate Italy.

A few words will bring us to the end of his career. Evil has its limit;
the Scourge of God had accomplished His mission. Hardly had St. Leo
retired, when the barbarian king availed himself of the brief interval
in his work of blood, to celebrate a new marriage. In the deep
corruption of the Tartar race, polygamy is comparatively a point of
virtue: Attila's wives were beyond computation. Zingis, after him, had
as many as five hundred; another of the Tartar leaders, whose name I
forget, had three hundred. Attila, on the evening of his new nuptials,
drank to excess, and was carried to his room. There he was found in the
morning, bathed and suffocated in his blood. An artery had suddenly
burst; and, as he lay on his back, the blood had flowed back upon his
throat and lungs, and so he had gone to his place.


5.

And now for Zingis and Timour:--like the Huns, they and their tribes
came down from the North of Asia, swept over the face of the South,
obliterated the civilization of centuries, inflicted unspeakable misery
on whole nations, and then were spent, extinguished, and only survived
to posterity in the desolation they caused. As Attila ruled from China
to the Rhine, and wasted Europe from the Black Sea to the Loire, so
Zingis and his sons and grandsons occupied a still larger portion of the
world's surface, and exercised a still more pitiless sway. Besides the
immense range of territory, from Germany to the North Pacific Ocean,
throughout which their power was felt, even if it was not acknowledged,
they overran China, Siberia, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Anatolia, Syria,
and Persia. During the sixty-five years of their dominion, they subdued
almost all Asia and a large portion of Europe. The conquests of Timour
were as sudden and as complete, if not as vast, as those of Zingis; and,
if he did not penetrate into Europe, he accomplished instead the
subjugation of Hindostan.

The exploits of those warriors have the air of Eastern romance; 700,000
men marched under the standard of Zingis; and in one of his battles he
left 160,000 of his enemies upon the field. Before Timour died, he had
had twenty-seven crowns upon his head. When he invaded Turkistan, his
army stretched along a line of thirteen miles. We may conceive his
energy and determination, when we are told that, for five months, he
marched through wildernesses, subsisting his immense army on the
fortunes of the chase. In his invasion of Hindostan he had to pass over
a high chain of mountains, and, in one stage of the passage, had to be
lowered by ropes on a scaffold, down a precipice of 150 cubits in depth.
He attempted the operation five times before he got safely to the
bottom.

These two extraordinary men rivalled or exceeded Attila in their
wholesale barbarities. Attila vaunted that the grass never grew again
after his horse's hoof; so it was the boast of Zingis, that when he
destroyed a city, he did it so completely, that his horse could gallop
across its site without stumbling. He depopulated the whole country from
the Danube to the Baltic in a season; and the ruins of cities and
churches were strewed with the bones of the inhabitants. He allured the
fugitives from the woods, where they lay hid, under a promise of pardon
and peace; he made them gather in the harvest and the vintage, and then
he put them to death. At Gran, in Hungary, he had 300 noble ladies
slaughtered in his presence. But these were slight excesses compared
with other of his acts. When he had subdued the northern part of China,
he proposed, not in the heat of victory, but deliberately in council, to
exterminate all its inhabitants, and to turn it into a cattle-walk; from
this project indeed he was diverted, but a similar process was his rule
with the cities he conquered. Let it be understood, he came down upon
cities living in peace and prosperity, as the cities of England now,
which had done him no harm, which had not resisted him, which submitted
to him at discretion on his summons. What was his treatment of such? He
ordered out the whole population on some adjacent plain; then he
proceeded to sack their city. Next he divided them into three parts:
first, the soldiers and others capable of bearing arms; these he either
enlisted into his armies, or slaughtered on the spot. The second class
consisted of the rich, the women, and the artizans;--these he divided
amongst his followers. The remainder, the old, infirm, and poor, he
suffered to return to their rifled city. Such was his ordinary course;
but when anything occurred to provoke him, the most savage excesses
followed. The slightest offence, or appearance of offence, on the part
of an individual, sufficed for the massacre of whole populations. The
three great capitals of Khorasan were destroyed by his orders, and a
reckoning made of the slain; at Maru were killed 1,300,000; at Herat,
1,600,000; and at Neisabour, 1,747,000; making a total of 4,647,000
deaths. Say these numbers are exaggerated fourfold or tenfold; even on
the last supposition you will have a massacre of towards half a million
of helpless beings. After recounting such preternatural crimes, it is
little to add, that his devastation of the fine countries between the
Caspian and the Indus, a tract of many hundred miles, was so complete,
that six centuries have been unable to repair the ravages of four years.

Timour equalled Zingis, if he could not surpass him, in barbarity. At
Delhi, the capital of his future dynasty, he massacred 100,000
prisoners, because some of them were seen to smile when the army of
their countrymen came in sight. He laid a tax of the following sort on
the people of Ispahan, viz, to find him 70,000 human skulls, to build
his towers with; and, after Bagdad had revolted, he exacted of the
inhabitants as many as 90,000. He burned, or sacked, or razed to the
ground, the cities of Astrachan, Carisme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad,
Aleppo, Damascus, Broussa, Smyrna, and a thousand others. We seem to be
reading of some antediluvian giant, rather than of a medieval conqueror.


6.

The terrible races which I have been describing, like those giants of
old, have ever been enemies of God and persecutors of His Church. Celts,
Goths, Lombards, Franks, have been converted, and their descendants to
this day are Christian; but, whether we consider Huns, Moguls, or Turks,
up to this time they are in the outer darkness. And accordingly, to the
innumerable Tartar tribes, and to none other, have been applied by
commentators the solemn passages about Gog and Magog, who are to fight
the battles of Antichrist against the faithful. "Satan shall go forth
and seduce the nations which are at the four corners of the earth, Gog
and Magog, and shall collect them to battle, whose number is as the sea
sand." From time to time the Holy See has fulfilled its apostolic
mission of sending preachers to them, but without success. The only
missionaries who have had any influence upon them have been those of the
Nestorian heresy, who have in certain districts made the same sort of
impression on them which the Greek schism has made upon the Russians.
St. Louis too sent a friar to them on an embassy, when he wished to
persuade them to turn their strength upon the Turks, with whom he was at
war; other European monarchs afterwards followed his pattern; and
sometimes European merchants visited them for the purposes of trade.
However little influence as these various visitants, in the course of
several centuries, had upon their minds, they have at least done us the
service of giving us information concerning their habits and manners;
and this so fully corroborates the historical account of them which I
have been giving, that it will be worth while laying before you some
specimens of it here.

I have said that some of these travellers were laymen travelling for
gain or in secular splendour, and others were humble servants of
religion. The contrast of their respective adventures is striking. The
celebrated Marco Polo, who was one of a company of enterprising Venetian
merchants, lived many years in Tartary in honour, and returned laden
with riches; the poor friars met with hardships in plenty, and nothing
besides. Not that the Poli were not good Catholics, not that they went
out without a blessing from the Pope, or without friars of the order of
St. Dominic of his selection; but so it was, that the Tartars understood
the merchant well enough, but could not comprehend, could not set a
value on the friar.

When the Pope's missionaries came in sight of the Tartar encampment on
the northern frontier of Persia, they at once announced their mission
and its object. It was from the Vicar of Christ upon earth, and the
spiritual head of Christendom; and it was a simple exhortation addressed
to the fierce conquerors before whom they stood, to repent and believe.
The answer of the Tartars was equally prompt and equally intelligible.
When they had fully mastered the business of their visitors, they
sentenced them to immediate execution; and did but hesitate about the
mode. They were to be flayed alive, their skins filled with hay, and so
sent back to the Pope; or they were to be put in the first rank in the
next battle with the Franks, and to die by the weapons of their own
countrymen. Eventually one of the Khan's wives begged them off. They
were kept in a sort of captivity for three years, and at length thought
themselves happy to be sent away with their lives. So much for the
friars; how different was the lot of the merchants may be understood by
the scene which took place on their return to Venice, It is said that,
on their arrival at their own city, after the absence of a quarter of a
century, their change of appearance and poorness of apparel were such
that even their nearest friends did not know them. Having with
difficulty effected an entrance into their own house, they set about
giving a splendid entertainment to the principal persons of the city.
The banquet over, following the Oriental custom, they successively put
on and then put off again, and distributed to their attendants, a series
of magnificent dresses; and at length they entered the room in the same
weather-stained and shabby dresses, in which, as travellers, they had
made their first appearance at Venice. The assembled company eyed them
with wonder; which you may be sure was not diminished, when they began
to unrip the linings and the patches of those old clothes, and as the
seams were opened, poured out before them a prodigious quantity of
jewels. This had been their expedient for conveying their gains to
Europe, and the effect of the discovery upon the world may be
anticipated. Persons of all ranks and ages crowded to them, as the
report spread, and they were the wonder of their day.[11]


7.

Savage cruelty, brutal gluttony, and barbarous magnificence, are the
three principal ethical characteristics of a Tartar prince, as we may
gather from what has come down to us in history, whether concerning the
Scythians or the Huns. The first of these three qualities has also been
illustrated, from the references which I have been making to the history
of Zingis and Timour, so that I think we have heard enough of it,
without further instances from the report of these travellers, whether
ecclesiastical or lay. I will but mention one corroboration of a
barbarity, which at first hearing it is difficult to credit. When the
Spanish ambassador, then, was on his way to Timour, and had got as far
as the north of Persia, he there actually saw a specimen of that sort of
poll-tax, which I just now mentioned. It was a structure consisting of
four towers, composed of human skulls, a layer of mud and of skulls
being placed alternately; and he tells us that upwards of 60,000 men
were massacred to afford materials for this building. Indeed it seems a
demonstration of revenge familiar to the Tartar race. Selim, the Ottoman
Sultan, reared a similar pyramid on the banks of the Nile.[12]

To return to our Spanish traveller. He proceeded to his destination,
which was Samarcand, the royal city of Timour, in Sogdiana, the present
Bukharia, and was presented to the great conqueror. He describes the
gate of the palace as lofty, and richly ornamented with gold and azure;
in the inner court were six elephants, with wooden castles on their
backs, and streamers which performed gambols for the amusement of the
courtiers. He was led into a spacious room, where were some boys,
Timour's grandsons, and these carried the King of Spain's letters to the
Khan. He then was ushered into Timour's presence, who was seated, like
Attila's queen, on a sort of cushioned sofa, with a fountain playing
before him. He was at that time an old man, and his eyesight was
impaired.

At the entertainment which followed, the meat was introduced in leathern
bags, so large as to be dragged along with difficulty. When opened,
pieces were cut out and placed on dishes of gold, silver, or porcelain.
One of the most esteemed, says the ambassador, was the hind quarter of a
horse; I must add what I find related, in spite of its offending our
ears:--our informant tells us that horse-tripe also was one of the
delicacies at table. No dish was removed, but the servants of the guests
were expected to carry off the remains, so that our ambassador doubtless
had his larder provided with the sort of viands I have mentioned for
some time to come. The drink was the famous Tartar beverage which we
hear of so often, mares' milk, sweetened with sugar, or perhaps rather
the _koumiss_ or spirit which is distilled from it. It was handed round
in gold and silver cups.

Nothing is more strange about the Tartars than the attachment they have
shown to such coarse fare, from the earliest times till now. Timour, at
whose royal table this most odious banquet was served, was lord of all
Asia, and had the command of every refinement not only of luxury, but of
gluttony. Yet he is faithful to the food which regaled the old Scythians
in the heroic age of Greece, and which is prized by the Usbek of the
present day. As Homer, in the beginning of the historic era, calls the
Scythians "mares'-milk drinkers," so geographers of the present day
describe their mode of distilling it in Russia. Tavernier speaks of it
two centuries ago; the European visitors partook of it in the middle
ages; and the Roman ambassadors, in the later times of the Empire. These
tribes have had the command of the vine, yet they seem to have scorned
or even abhorred its use; and we have a curious account in Herodotus, of
a Scythian king who lost his life for presuming to take part secretly in
the orgies of Bacchus. Yet it was not that they did not intoxicate
themselves freely with the distillation which they had chosen; and even
when they tolerated wine, they still adhered to their _koumiss_. That
beverage is described by the Franciscan, who was sent by St. Louis, as
what he calls biting, and leaving a taste like almond milk on the
palate; though Elphinstone, on the contrary writing in this century,
says "it is of a whitish colour and a sourish taste." And so of
horse-flesh; I believe it is still put out for sale in the Chinese
markets; Lieutenant Wood, in his journey to the source of the Oxus,
speaks of it among the Usbeks as an expensive food. So does Elphinstone,
adding that in consequence the Usbeks are "obliged to be content with
beef." Pinkerton tells us that it is made into dried hams; but this
seems to be a refinement, for we hear a great deal from various authors
of its being eaten more than half raw. After all, horse-flesh was the
most delicate of the Tartar viands in the times we are now considering.
We are told that, in spite of their gold and silver, and jewels, they
were content to eat dogs, foxes, and wolves; and, as I have observed
before, the flesh of animals which had died of disease.

But again we have lost sight of the ambassador of Spain. After this
banquet, he was taken about by Timour to other palaces, each more
magnificent than the one preceding it. He speaks of the magnificent
halls, painted with various colours, of the hangings of silk, of gold
and silver embroidery, of tables of solid gold, and of the rubies and
other precious stones. The most magnificent of these entertainments was
on a plain; 20,000 pavilions being pitched around Timour's, which
displayed the most gorgeous variety of colours. Two entertainments were
given by the ladies of the court, in which the state queens of Timour,
nine in number, sat in a row, and here pages handed round wine, not
_koumiss_, in golden cups, which they were not slow in emptying.

The good friar, who went from St. Louis to the princes of the house of
Zingis, several centuries earlier, gives us a similar account. When he
was presented to the Khan, he went with a Bible and a Psalter in his
hand; on entering the royal apartment, he found a curtain of felt spread
across the room; it was lifted up, and discovered the great man at table
with his wives about him, and prepared for drinking _koumiss_. The court
knew something of Christianity from the Nestorians, who were about it,
and the friar was asked to say a blessing on the meal; so he entered
singing the Salve Regina. On another occasion he was present at the
baptism of a wife of the Khan by a Nestorian priest. After the ceremony,
she called for a cup of liquor, desired a blessing from the officiating
minister, and drank it off. Then she drank off another, and then
another; and continued this process till she could drink no more, and
was put into her carriage, and taken home. At another entertainment the
friar had to make a speech, in the name of the holy king he represented,
to pray for health and long life to the Khan. When he looked round for
his interpreter, he found him in a state of intoxication, and in no
condition to be of service; then he directed his gaze upon the Khan
himself, and found him intoxicated also.

I have made much mention of the wealth of the Tartars, from Attila to
Timour; their foreign conquests would yield to them of course whatever
of costly material their pride might require; but their native territory
itself was rich in minerals. Altai in the north yielded the precious
metals; the range of mountains which branches westward from the Himalaya
on the south yielded them rubies and lapis lazuli. We are informed by
the travellers whom I have been citing that they dressed in winter in
costly furs; in summer in silk, and even in cloth of gold.[13] One of
the Franciscans speaks of the gifts received by the Khan from foreign
powers. They were more than could be numbered;--satin cloths, robes of
purple, silk girdles wrought with gold, costly skins. We are told of an
umbrella enriched with precious stones; of a train of camels covered
with cloth of Bagdad; of a tent of glowing purple; of five hundred
waggons full of silver, gold, and silk stuffs.


8.

It is remarkable that the three great conquerors, who have been our
subject, all died in the fulness of glory. From the beginning of history
to our own times, the insecurity of great prosperity has been the theme
of poets and philosophers. Scripture points out to our warning in
opposite ways the fortunes of Sennacherib, Nabuchodonosor, and
Antiochus. Profane history tells us of Solon, the Athenian sage, coming
to the court of Croesus, the prosperous King of Lydia, whom in his
fallen state I have already had occasion to mention; and, when he had
seen his treasures and was asked by the exulting monarch who was the
happiest of men, making answer that no one could be called happy before
his death. And we may call to mind in confirmation the history of
Cyrus, of Hannibal, of Mithridates, of Belisarius, of Bajazet, of
Napoleon. But these Tartars finished a prosperous course without
reverse; they died indeed and went to judgment, but, as far as the
visible scene of their glory is concerned, they underwent no change.
Attila was summoned suddenly, but the summons found him a triumphant
king; and the case is the same with Zingis and Timour. These latter
conquerors had glories besides of a different kind which increased the
lustre of their rule. They were both lawgivers; it is the boast of
Zingis that he laid down the principle of religious toleration with a
clearness which modern philsophers have considered to rival the theory
of Locke; and Timour, also established an efficient police in his
dominions, and was a patron of literature. Their sun went down full and
cloudless, with the merit of having shed some rays of blessing upon the
earth, scorching and withering as had been its day. It is remarkable
also that all three had something of a misgiving, or softening of mind,
miserably unsatisfactory as it was, shortly before their deaths.
Attila's quailing before the eye of the Vicar of Christ, and turning
away from Italy, I have already spoken of. As to Zingis, as, laden at
once with years and with the spoils of Asia, he reluctantly measured his
way home at the impatient bidding of his veterans, who were tired of
war, he seemed visited by a sense of the vanity of all things and a
terror for the evil he had done. He showed some sort of pity for the
vanquished, and declared his intention of rebuilding the cities he had
destroyed. Alas! it is ever easier to pull down than to build up. His
wars continued; he was successful by his lieutenants when he could not
go to battle himself; he left his power to his children and
grandchildren, and he died.


9.

Such was the end of Zingis, a pagan, who had some notion of Christianity
in a corrupted form, and who once almost gave hopes of becoming a
Christian, but who really had adopted a sort of indifference towards
religious creeds altogether. Timour was a zealous Mahometan, and had
been instructed in more definite notions of moral duty. He too felt some
misgivings about his past course towards the end of his life; and the
groans and shrieks of the dying and the captured in the sack of Aleppo
awoke for a while the stern monitor within him. He protested to the
cadhi his innocence of the blood which he had shed. "You see me here,"
he said, "a poor, lame, decrepit mortal; yet by my arm it has pleased
the Almighty to subdue the kingdoms of Iran, Touran, and Hindostan. I am
not a man of blood; I call God to witness, that never, in all my wars,
have I been the aggressor, but that my enemies have ever been the
authors of the calamities which have come upon them."[14]

This was the feeling of a mind sated with conquest, sated with glory,
aware at length that he must go further and look deeper, if he was to
find that on which the soul could really feed and live, and startled to
find the entrance to that abode of true greatness and of glory sternly
shut against him. He looked towards the home of his youth, and the seat
of his long prosperity, across the Oxus, to Sogdiana, to Samarcand, its
splendid capital, with its rich groves and smiling pastures, and there
the old man went to die. Not that he directly thought of death; for
still he yearned after military success: and he went thither for but a
short repose, between his stupendous victories in Asia Minor and a
projected campaign in China. But Samarcand was a fitting halt in that
long march; and there for the last time he displayed the glory of his
kingdom, receiving the petitions or appeals of his subjects,
ostentatiously judging between the deserving and the guilty, inspecting
plans for the erection of palaces and temples, and giving audience to
ambassadors from Russia, Spain, Egypt, and Hindostan. An English
historian, whom I have already used, has enlarged upon this closing
scene, and I here abridge his account of it. "The marriage of six of the
Emperor's grandsons," he says, "was esteemed an act of religion as well
as of paternal tenderness; and the pomp of the ancient caliphs was
revived in their nuptials. They were celebrated in the garden of
Canighul, where innumerable tents and pavilions displayed the luxury of
a great city and the spoils of a victorious camp. Whole forests were cut
down to supply fuel for the kitchens; the plain was spread with pyramids
of meat and vases of every liquor, to which thousands of guests were
courteously invited. The orders of the state and the nations of the
earth were marshalled at the royal banquet. The public joy was testified
by illuminations and masquerades; the trades of Samarcand passed in
review; and every trade was emulous to execute some quaint device, some
marvellous pageant, with the materials of their peculiar art. After the
marriage contracts had been ratified by the cadhies, nine times,
according to the Asiatic fashion, were the bridegrooms and their brides
dressed and undressed; and at each change of apparel, pearls and rubies
were showered on their heads, and contemptuously abandoned to their
attendants."

You may recollect the passage in Milton's Paradise Lost, which has a
reference to the Oriental ceremony here described. It is in his account
of Satan's throne in Pandemonium. "High on a throne," the poet says,

  "High on a throne of royal state, which far
  Outshone the wealth of Ormus or of Ind,
  Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
  Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
  Satan exulting sat, by merit raised
  To that bad eminence."

So it is; the greatest magnificence of this world is but a poor
imitation of the flaming throne of the author of evil. But let us return
to the history:--"A general indulgence was proclaimed, and every law was
relaxed, every pleasure was allowed; the people were free, the sovereign
was idle; and the historian of Timour may remark, that after devoting
fifty years to the attainment of empire, the only happy period of his
life was the two months in which he ceased to exercise his power. But he
was soon awakened to the cares of government and war. The standard was
unfurled for the invasion of China; the emirs made the report of
200,000, the select and veteran soldiers of Iran and Touran; the baggage
and provisions were transported by 500 great waggons, and an immense
train of horses and camels; and the troops might prepare for a long
absence, since more than six months were employed in the tranquil
journey of a caravan from Samarcand to Pekin. Neither age, nor the
severity of winter, could retard the impatience of Timour; he mounted on
horseback, passed the Sihun" (or Jaxartes) "on the ice, marched 300
miles from his capital, and pitched his last camp at Otrar, where he was
expected by the angel of death. Fatigue and the indiscreet use of iced
water accelerated the progress of his fever; and the conqueror of Asia
expired in the seventieth year of his age; his designs were lost; his
armies were disbanded; China was saved."

       *       *       *       *       *

But the wonderful course of human affairs rolled on. Timour's death was
followed at no long interval by the rise of John Basilowich in Russia,
who succeeded in throwing of the Mogul yoke, and laid the foundation of
the present mighty empire. The Tartar sovereignty passed from Samarcand
to Moscow.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Thirlwall: Greece, vol. ii. p. 196.

[8] Voyages, t. i. p. 456.

[9] Gibbon.

[10] Maffei Verona, part ii. p. 6.

[11] Murray's Asia.

[12] Thornton's Turkey. Vid. also Jenkinson's Voyage across the Caspian
in 1562.

[13] Vid. also Jenkinson, _supr._

[14] Gibbon.




II.

THE DESCENT OF THE TURKS,




LECTURE III.

_The Tartar and the Turk._


You may think, Gentlemen, I have been very long in coming to the Turks,
and indeed I have been longer than I could have wished; but I have
thought it necessary, in order to your taking a just view of them, that
you should survey them first of all in their original condition. When
they first appear in history they are Huns or Tartars, and nothing else;
they are indeed in no unimportant respects Tartars even now; but, had
they never been made something more than Tartars, they never would have
had much to do with the history of the world. In that case, they would
have had only the fortunes of Attila and Zingis; they might have swept
over the face of the earth, and scourged the human race, powerful to
destroy, helpless to construct, and in consequence ephemeral; but this
would have been all. But this has not been all, as regards the Turks;
for, in spite of their intimate resemblance or relationship to the
Tartar tribes, in spite of their essential barbarism to this day, still
they, or at least great portions of the race, have been put under
education; they have been submitted to a slow course of change, with a
long history and a profitable discipline and fortunes of a peculiar
kind; and thus they have gained those qualities of mind, which alone
enable a nation to wield and to consolidate imperial power.


1.

I have said that, when first they distinctly appear on the scene of
history, they are indistinguishable from Tartars. Mount Altai, the high
metropolis of Tartary, is surrounded by a hilly district, rich not only
in the useful, but in the precious metals. Gold is said to abound there;
but it is still more fertile in veins of iron, which indeed is said to
be the most plentiful in the world. There have been iron works there
from time immemorial, and at the time that the Huns descended on the
Roman Empire (in the fifth century of the Christian era), we find the
Turks nothing more than a family of slaves, employed as workers of the
ore and as blacksmiths by the dominant tribe. Suddenly in the course of
fifty years, soon after the fall of the Hunnish power in Europe, with
the sudden development peculiar to Tartars, we find these Turks spread
from East to West, and lords of a territory so extensive, that they were
connected, by relations of peace or war, at once with the Chinese, the
Persians, and the Romans. They had reached Kamtchatka on the North, the
Caspian on the West, and perhaps even the mouth of the Indus on the
South. Here then we have an intermediate empire of Tartars, placed
between the eras of Attila and Zingis; but in this sketch it has no
place, except as belonging to Turkish history, because it was contained
within the limits of Asia, and, though it lasted for 200 years, it only
faintly affected the political transactions of Europe. However, it was
not without some sort of influence on Christendom, for the Romans
interchanged embassies with its sovereign in the reign of the then
Greek Emperor Justin the younger (A.D. 570), with the view of engaging
him in a warlike alliance against Persia. The account of one of these
embassies remains, and the picture it presents of the Turks is
important, because it seems clearly to identify them with the Tartar
race.

For instance, in the mission to the Tartars from the Pope, which I have
already spoken of, the friars were led between two fires, when they
approached the Khan, and they at first refused to follow, thinking they
might be countenancing some magical rite. Now we find it recorded of
this Roman embassy, that, on its arrival, it was purified by the Turks
with fire and incense. As to incense, which seems out of place among
such barbarians, it is remarkable that it is used in the ceremonial of
the Turkish court to this day. At least Sir Charles Fellows, in his work
on the Antiquities of Asia Minor, in 1838, speaks of the Sultan as going
to the festival of Bairam with incense-bearers before him. Again, when
the Romans were presented to the great Khan, they found him in his tent,
seated on a throne, to which wheels were attached and horses attachable,
in other words, a Tartar waggon. Moreover, they were entertained at a
banquet which lasted the greater part of the day; and an intoxicating
liquor, not wine, which was sweet and pleasant, was freely presented to
them; evidently the Tartar _koumiss_.[15] The next day they had a second
entertainment in a still more splendid tent; the hangings were of
embroidered silk, and the throne, the cups, and the vases were of gold.
On the third day, the pavilion, in which they were received, was
supported on gilt columns; a couch of massive gold was raised on four
gold peacocks; and before the entrance to the tent was what might be
called a sideboard, only that it was a sort of barricade of waggons,
laden with dishes, basins, and statues of solid silver. All these points
in the description,--the silk hangings, the gold vessels, the
successively increasing splendour of the entertainments,--remind us of
the courts of Zingis and Timour, 700 and 900 years afterwards.

This empire, then, of the Turks was of a Tartar character; yet it was
the first step of their passing from barbarism to that degree of
civilization which is their historical badge. And it was their first
step in civilization, not so much by what it did in its day, as (unless
it be a paradox to say so), by its coming to an end. Indeed it so
happens, that those Turkish tribes which have changed their original
character and have a place in the history of the world, have obtained
their _status_ and their qualifications for it, by a process very
different from that which took place in the nations most familiar to us.
What this process has been I will say presently; first, however, let us
observe that, fortunately for our purpose, we have still specimens
existing of those other Turkish tribes, which were never submitted to
this process of education and change, and, in looking at them as they
now exist, we see at this very day the Turkish nationality in something
very like its original form, and are able to decide for ourselves on its
close approximation to the Tartar. You may recollect I pointed out to
you, Gentlemen, in the opening of these lectures, the course which the
pastoral tribes, or nomads as they are often called, must necessarily
take in their emigrations. They were forced along in one direction till
they emerged from their mountain valleys, and descended their high
plateau at the end of Tartary, and then they had the opportunity of
turning south. If they did not avail themselves of this opening, but
went on still westward, their next southern pass would be the defiles of
the Caucasus and Circassia, to the west of the Caspian. If they did not
use this, they would skirt the top of the Black Sea, and so reach
Europe. Thus in the emigration of the Huns from China, you may recollect
a tribe of them turned to the South as soon as they could, and settled
themselves between the high Tartar land and the sea of Aral, while the
main body went on to the furthest West by the north of the Black Sea.
Now with this last passage into Europe we are not here concerned, for
the Turks have never introduced themselves to Europe by means of it;[16]
but with those two southward passages which are Asiatic, viz., that to
the east of the Aral, and that to the west of the Caspian. The Turkish
tribes have all descended upon the civilized world by one or other of
these two roads; and I observe, that those which have descended along
the east of the Aral have changed their social habits and gained
political power, while those which descended to the west of the Caspian
remain pretty much what they ever were. The former of these go among us
by the general name of Turks; the latter are the Turcomans or Turkmans.


2.

Now, first, I shall briefly mention the Turcomans, and dismiss them,
because, when they have once illustrated the original state of their
race, they have no place in this sketch. I have said, then, that the
ancient Turco-Tartar empire, to which the Romans sent their embassy in
the sixth century, extended to the Caspian and towards the Indus. It was
in the beginning of the next century that the Romans, that is, the
Greco-Romans of Constantinople, found them in the former of these
neighbourhoods; and they made the same use of them in the defence of
their territory, to which they had put the Goths before the overthrow of
the Western Empire. It was a most eventful era at which they addressed
themselves to these Turks of the Caspian. It was almost the very year of
the Hegira, which marks the rise of the Mahometan imposture and rule. As
yet, however, the Persians were in power, and formidable enemies to the
Romans, and at this very time in possession of the Holy Cross, which
Chosroes, their powerful king, had carried away from Jerusalem twelve
years before. But the successful Emperor Heraclius was already in the
full tide of those brilliant victories, which in the course of a few
years recovered it; and, to recall him from their own soil, the Persians
had allied themselves with the barbarous tribes of Europe, (the
Russians, Sclavonians, Bulgarians, and others,) which, then as now, were
pressing down close upon Constantinople from the north. This alliance
suggested to Heraclius the counterstroke of allying himself with the
Turkish freebooters, who in like manner, as stationed above the Caspian,
were impending over Persia. Accordingly the horde of Chozars, as this
Turkish tribe was called, at the Emperor's invitation, transported their
tents from the plains of the Volga through the defiles of the Caucasus
into Georgia. Heraclius showed them extraordinary attention; he put his
own diadem on the head of the barbarian prince, and distributed gold,
jewels, and silk to his officers; and, on the other hand, he obtained
from them an immediate succour of 40,000 horse, and the promise of an
irruption of their brethren into Persia from the far East, from the
quarter of the Sea of Aral, which I have pointed out as the first of
the passages by which the shepherds of Tartary came down upon the South.
Such were the allies, with which Heraclius succeeded in utterly
overthrowing and breaking up the Persian power; and thus, strange to
say, the greatest of all the enemies of the Church among the nations of
the earth, the Turk, began his career in Christian history by
coöperating with a Christian Emperor in the recovery of the Holy Cross,
of which a pagan, the ally of Russia, had got possession. The religious
aspect, however, of this first era of their history, seems to have
passed away without improvement; what they gained was a temporal
advantage, a settlement in Georgia and its neighbourhood, which they
have held from that day to this.

This horde of Turks, the Chozars, was nomad and pagan; it consisted of
mounted shepherds, surrounded with their flocks, living in tents and
waggons. In the course of the following centuries, under the shadow of
their more civilized brethren, other similar hordes were introduced,
nomad and pagan still; they might indeed happen sometimes to pass down
from the east of the Caspian as well as from the west, hastening to the
south straight from Turkistan along the coast of the Aral;--either road
would lead them down to the position which the Chozars were the first to
occupy in Georgia and Armenia,--but still there would be but one step in
their journey between their old native sheep-walk and horse-path and the
fair region into which they came. It was a sudden Tartar descent,
accompanied with no national change of habits, and promising no
permanent stability. Nor would they have remained there, I suppose, as
they did remain, were it not that they have been protected, as they were
originally introduced, by neighbouring states which have made use of
them. There, however, in matter of fact, they remain to this day, the
successors of the Chozars, in Armenia, in Syria, in Asia Minor, even as
far west as the coast of the Archipelago and its maritime cities and
ports, being pretty much what they were a thousand years ago, except
that they have taken up the loose profession of Mahometanism, and have
given up some of the extreme peculiarities of their Tartar state, such
as their attachment to horse-flesh and mares' milk. These are the
Turcomans.


3.

The writer in the Universal History divides them into eastern and
western. Of the Eastern, with which we are not concerned, he tells us
that[17] "they are tall and robust, with square flat faces, as well as
the western; only they are more swarthy, and have a greater resemblance
to the Tartars. Some of them have betaken themselves to husbandry. They
are all Mohammedans; they are very turbulent, very brave, and good
horsemen." And of the Western, that they once had two dynasties in the
neighbourhood of Armenia, and were for a time very powerful, but that
they are now subjects of the Turks, who never have been able to subdue
their roving habits; that they dwell in tents of thick felt, without
fixed habitation; that they profess Mahomedanism, but perform its duties
no better than their brethren in the East; that they are governed by
their own chiefs according to their own laws; that they pay tribute to
the Ottoman Porte, and are bound to furnish it with horsemen; that they
are great robbers, and are in perpetual warfare with their neighbours
the Kurds; that they march sometimes two or three hundred families
together, and with their droves cover sometimes a space of two leagues,
and that they prefer the use of the bow to that of firearms.

This account is drawn up from writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Precisely the same report of their habits is made by Dr.
Chandler in his travels in Asia Minor in the middle of the last century;
he fell in with them in his journey between Smyrna and Ephesus. "We were
told here," he says, "that the road farther on was beset with Turcomans,
a people supposed to be descended from the Nomades Scythæ: or Shepherd
Scythians; busied, as of old, in breeding and nurturing cattle, and
leading, as then, an unsettled life; not forming villages and towns with
stable habitations, but flitting from place to place, as the season and
their convenience directs; choosing their stations, and overspreading
without control the vast neglected pastures of this desert empire.... We
set out, and ... soon after came to a wild country covered with
thickets, and with the black booths of the Turcomans, spreading on every
side, innumerable, with flocks and herds and horses and poultry feeding
round them."[18]

I may seem to be making unnecessary extracts, but I have two reasons for
multiplying them; in order, first, to show the identity in character of
the various tribes of the Tartar and the Turkish stock, and next, in
order to impress upon your imagination what that character is; for it is
not easy to admit into the mind the very idea of a people of this kind,
dwelling too, and that for ages, in some of the most celebrated and
beautiful regions of the world, such as Syria and Asia Minor. With this
view I will read what Volney says of them, as he found them in Syria
towards the close of the last century. "The Turkmans," he says,[19] "are
of the number of those Tartar hordes, who, in the great revolutions of
the Empire of the Caliphs, emigrated from the eastward of the Caspian
Sea, and spread themselves over the vast plains of Armenia and Asia
Minor. Their language is the same as that of the Turks, and their mode
of life nearly resembles that of the Bedouin Arabs. Like them, they are
shepherds, and consequently obliged to travel over immense tracts of
land to procure subsistence for their numerous herds.... Their whole
occupation consists in smoking and looking after their flocks.
Perpetually on horseback, with their lances on their shoulders, their
crooked sabres by their sides, and their pistols in their belts, they
are expert horsemen and indefatigable soldiers.... A great number of
these tribes pass in the summer into Armenia and Caramania, where they
find grass in great abundance, and return to their former quarters in
the winter. The Turkmans are reputed to be Moslem ... but they trouble
themselves little about religion."

While I was collecting these passages, a notice of these tribes appeared
in the columns of the _Times_ newspaper, sent home by its Constantinople
correspondent, apropos of the present concentration of troops in that
capital in expectation of a Russian war. His Statement enables us to
carry down our specimens of the Tartar type of the Turkish race to the
present day "From the coast of the Black Sea," he writes home, "to the
Taurus chain of mountains, a great part of the population is nomad, and
besides the Turks or Osmanlis," that is, the Ottoman or Imperial Turks,
"consists of two distinct races;--the Turcomans, who possessed
themselves of the land before the advent of the Osmanlis, and who
wander with their black tents up to the shores of the Bosphorus; and the
Curds." With the Curds we are not here concerned. He proceeds: "The
Turcomans, who are spread over the whole of Asia Minor, are a most
warlike people. Clans, numbering many thousand, acknowledge the Sultan
as the representative of the Caliphs and the Sovereign Lord of Islam,
from whom all the Frank kings receive their crowns; but they are
practically independent of him, and pay no taxes but to their own
chiefs. In the neighbourhood of Cæsarea, Kusan Oghlou, a Turcoman chief,
numbers 20,000 armed horsemen, rules despotically over a large district,
and has often successfully resisted the Sultan's arms. These people lead
a nomad life, are always engaged in petty warfare, are well mounted, and
armed with pistol, scimitar, spear, or gun, and would always be useful
as irregular troops."


4.

And now I have said enough, and more than enough, of the original state
of the Turkish race, as exhibited in the Chozars and Turcomans:--it is
time to pursue the history of that more important portion of it with
which we are properly engaged, which received some sort of education,
and has proved itself capable of social and political union. I observed
just now, that that education was very different in its mode and
circumstances from that which has been the lot of the nations with which
we are best acquainted. Other nations have been civilized in their own
homes, and, by their social progress, have immortalized a country as
well as a race. They have been educated by their conquests, or by
subjugation, or by the intercourse with foreigners which commerce or
colonization has opened; but in every case they have been true to their
fatherland, and are children of the soil. The Greeks sent out their
colonies to Asia Minor and Italy, and those colonies reacted upon the
mother country. Magna Græcia and Ionia showed their mother country the
way to her intellectual supremacy. The Romans spread gradually from one
central city, and when their conquests reached as far as Greece, "the
captive," in the poet's words, "captivated her wild conqueror, and
introduced arts into unmannered Latium."[20] England was converted by
the Roman See and conquered by the Normans, and was gradually civilized
by the joint influences of religion and of chivalry. Religion indeed,
though a depraved religion, has had something to do, as we shall see,
with the civilization of the Turks; but the circumstances have been
altogether different from those which we trace in the history of
England, Rome, or Greece. The Turks present the spectacle of a race
poured out, as it were, upon a foreign material, interpenetrating all
its parts, yet preserving its individuality, and at length making its
way through it, and reappearing, in substance the same as before, but
charged with the qualities of the material through which it has been
passed, and modified by them. They have been invaded by no conqueror,
they have brought no captive arts or literature home, they have
undergone no conversion in mass, they have been taught by no commerce,
by no international relationship; but they have in the course of
centuries slowly soaked or trickled, if I may use the words, through the
Saracenic populations with which they came in contact, and after being
nationally lost to the world, as far as history goes, for long periods
and through different countries, eventually they have come to the face
of day with that degree of civilization which they at present possess,
and at length have usurped a place within the limits of the great
European family. And this is why the path southwards to the east of the
Aral was, in matter of fact, the path of civilization, and that by the
Caucasus the path of barbarism; this is why the Turks who took the
former course could found an empire, and those who took the latter have
remained Tartars or Turcomans, as they were originally; because the way
of the Caucasus was a sheer descent from Turkistan into the country
which they occupy, but the way of the Aral was a circuitous course,
leading them through many countries--through Sogdiana, Khorasan,
Zabulistan, and Persia,--with many fortunes, under many masters, for
many hundred years, before they came round to the region to which their
Turcoman brethren attained so easily, but with so little eventual
advantage. My meaning will be clearer, as I proceed.


5.

1. First of all, we may say that the very region into which they came,
tended to their civilization. Of course the peculiarities of soil,
climate, and country are not by themselves sufficient for a social
change, else the Turcomans would have the best right to civilization;
yet, when other influences are present too, climate and country are far
from being unimportant. You may recollect that I have spoken more than
once of the separation of a portion of the Huns from the main body, when
they were emigrating from Tartary into Europe, in the time of the
Goths.[21] These turned off sharp to the South immediately on descending
the high table-land; and, crossing the Jaxartes, found themselves in a
fertile and attractive country, between the Aral and their old country,
where they settled. It is a peculiarity of Asia that its regions are
either very hot or very cold. It has the highest mountains in the world,
bleak table-lands, vast spaces of burning desert, tracts stretched out
beneath the tropical sun. Siberia goes for a proverb for cold: India is
a proverb for heat. It is not adequately supplied with rivers, and it
has little of inland sea. In these respects it stands in singular
contrast with Europe. If then the tribes which inhabit a cold country
have, generally speaking, more energy than those which are relaxed by
the heat, it follows that you will have in Asia two descriptions of
people brought together in extreme, sometimes in sudden, contrariety
with each other, the strong and the weak. Here then, as some
philosophers have argued,[22] you have the secret of the despotisms and
the vast empires of which Asia has been the seat; for it always
possesses those who are naturally fitted to be tyrants, and those also
whose nature it is to tremble and obey. But we may take another, perhaps
a broader, view of the phenomenon. The sacred writer says: "Give me
neither riches nor beggary:" and, as the extremes of abundance and of
want are prejudicial to our moral well-being, so they seem to be
prejudicial to our intellectual nature also. Mental cultivation is best
carried on in temperate regions. In the north men are commonly too cold,
in the south too hot, to think, read, write, and act. Science,
literature, and art refuse to germinate in the frost, and are burnt up
by the sun.

Now it so happened that the region in which this party of Huns settled
themselves was one of the fairest and most fruitful in Asia. It is
bounded by deserts, it is in parts encroached on by deserts; but viewed
in its length and breadth, in its produce and its position, it seems a
country equal, or superior, to any which that vast continent, as at
present known, can show. Its lower portion is the extensive territory of
Khorasan, the ancient Bactriana; going northwards across the Oxus, we
come into a spacious tract, stretching to the Aral and to the Jaxartes,
and measuring a square of 600 miles. It was called in ancient times
Sogdiana; in the history of the middle ages Transoxiana, or "beyond the
Oxus;" by the Eastern writers Maver-ul-nere, or Mawer-al-nahar, which is
said to have the same meaning; and it is now known by the name Bukharia.
To these may be added a third province, at the bottom of the Aral,
between the mouth of the Oxus and the Caspian, called Kharasm. These,
then, were the regions in which the Huns in question took up their
abode.

The two large countries I first mentioned are celebrated in all ages for
those characteristics which render a spot desirable for human
habitation. As to Sogdiana, or Maver-ul-nere, the region with which we
are specially concerned, the Orientals, especially the Persians, of the
medieval period do not know how to express in fit terms their admiration
of its climate and soil. They do not scruple to call it the Paradise of
Asia. "It may be considered," says a modern writer,[23] "as almost the
only example of the finest temperate climate occurring in that
continent, which presents generally an abrupt transition from burning
tropical heat to the extreme cold of the north." According to an Arabian
author, there are just three spots in the globe which surpass all the
rest in beauty and fertility; one of them is near Damascus, another
seems to be the valley of a river on the Persian Gulf, and the third is
the plain of Sogdiana. Another writer says: "I have cast my eyes around
Bokhara, and never have I seen a verdure more fresh or of wider extent.
The green carpet mingles in the horizon with the azure of the sky."[24]
Abulfeda in like manner calls it "the most delightful of all places God
has created." Some recent writer, I think, speaks in disparagement of
it.[25] And I can quite understand, that the deserts which must be
passed to reach it from the south or the north may betray the weary
traveller into an exaggerated praise, which is the expression both of
his recruited spirits and of his gratitude. But all things are good only
by comparison; and I do not see why an Asiatic, having experience of the
sands which elsewhere overspread the face of his continent, should for
that reason be ill qualified to pronounce that Sogdiana affords a
contrast to them. Moreover, we have the experience of other lands, as
Asia Minor, which have presented a very different aspect in different
ages. A river overflows and turns a fruitful plain into a marsh; or it
fails, and turns it into a sandy desert. Sogdiana is watered by a number
of great rivers, which make their way across it from the high land on
its east to the Aral or Caspian. Now we read in history of several
instances of changes, accidental or artificial, in the direction or the
supply of these great water-courses. I think I have read somewhere, but
cannot recover my authority, of some emigration of the inhabitants of
those countries, caused by a failure of the stream on which they
depended. And we know for certain that the Oxus has been changed in its
course, accidentally or artificially, more than once. Disputes have
arisen before now between the Russian Government and the Tartars, on the
subject of one of these diversions of the bed of a river.[26] One
province of Khorasan, which once was very fertile, is in consequence now
a desert It may be questioned, too, whether the sands of the adjacent
deserts, which are subject to violent agitation from the action of the
wind, may not have encroached upon Sogdiana. Nor should it be overlooked
that this rich country has been subjected to the same calamities which
have been the desolation of Asia Minor; for, as the Turcomans have
devastated the latter, so, as I have already had occasion to mention,
Zingis swept round the sea of Aral, and destroyed the fruits of a long
civilization.

Even after the ravages of that conqueror, however, Timour and the
Emperor Baber, who had a right to judge of the comparative excellence of
the countries of the East, bear witness to the beauty of Sogdiana.
Timour, who had fixed his imperial seat in Samarcand, boasted he had a
garden 120 miles in extent. Baber expatiates on the grain and fruit and
game of its northern parts; of the tulips, violets, and roses of another
portion of it; of the streams and gardens of another. Its plains are
said by travellers to abound in wood, its rivers in fish, its valleys in
fruit-trees, in wheat and barley, and in cotton.[27] The quince,
pomegranate, fig, apricot, and almond all flourish in it. Its melons are
the finest in the world. Mulberries abound, and provide for a
considerable manufacture of silk. No wine, says Baber, is equal to the
wine of Bokhara. Its atmosphere is so clear and serene, that the stars
are visible even to the verge of the horizon. A recent Russian traveller
says he came to a country so smiling, well cultivated, and thickly
peopled, with fields, canals, avenues of trees, villages, and gardens,
that he thought himself in an enchanted country. He speaks in raptures
of its melons, pomegranates, and grapes.[28] Its breed of horses is
celebrated; so much so that a late British traveller[29] visited the
country with the special object of substituting it for the Arab in our
Indian armies. Its mountains abound in useful and precious produce. Coal
is found there; gold is collected from its rivers; silver and iron are
yielded by its hills; we hear too of its mines of turquoise, and of its
cliffs of lapis lazuli,[30] and its mines of rubies, which to this day
are the object of the traveller's curiosity.[31] I might extend my
remarks to the country south of the Oxus and of its mountain range, the
modern Affghanistan. Though Cabul is 6,000 feet above the level of the
sea, it abounds in pomegranates, mulberries, apples, and fruit of every
kind. Grapes are so plentiful, that for three months of the year they
are given to the cattle.


6.

This region, favoured in soil and climate, is favoured also in position.
Lying at the mouth of the two great roads of emigration from the far
East, the valleys of the Jaxartes and the Oxus, it is the natural mart
between High Asia and Europe, receiving the merchandize of East and
North, and transporting it by its rivers, by the Caspian, the Kur, and
the Phasis, to the Black Sea. Thus it received in former days the silk
of China, the musk of Thibet, and the furs of Siberia, and shipped them
for the cities of the Roman Empire. To Samarcand, its metropolis, we owe
the art of transforming linen into paper, which the Sogdian merchants
are said to have gained from China, and thence diffused by means of
their own manufacturers over the western world. A people so
circumstanced could not be without civilization; but that civilization
was of a much earlier date. It must not be forgotten that the celebrated
sage, Zoroaster, before the times of history, was a native, and, as some
say, king of Bactriana. Cyrus had established a city in the same region,
which he called after his name. Alexander conquered both Bactriana and
Sogdiana, and planted Grecian cities there. There is a long line of
Greco-Bactrian kings; and their coins and pateræ have been brought to
light within the last few years. Alexander's name is still famous in the
country; not only does Marco Polo in the middle ages speak of his
descendants as still found there, but even within the last fifteen years
Sir Alexander Burns found a man professing that descent in the valley of
the Oxus, and Lieutenant Wood another in the same neighbourhood.

Nor was Greek occupation the only source of the civilization of
Sogdiana. Centuries rolled on, and at length the Saracens renewed, on
their own peculiar basis, the mental cultivation which Sogdiana had
received from Alexander. The cities of Bokhara and Samarcand have been
famous for science and literature. Bokhara was long celebrated as the
most eminent seat of Mahometan learning in central Asia; its colleges
were, and are, numerous, accommodating from 60 to 600 students each. One
of them gained the notice and the pecuniary aid of the Russian Empress
Catharine.[32] Samarcand rivals Bokhara in fame; its university even in
the last century was frequented by Mahometan youth from foreign
countries. There were more than 300 colleges for students, and there was
an observatory, celebrated in the middle ages, the ruins of which
remain. Here lies the body of Timour, under a lofty dome, the sides of
which are enriched with agate. "Since the time of the Holy Prophet,"
that is, Mahomet, says the Emperor Baber, "no country has produced so
many Imaums and eminent divines as Mawar-al-nahar," that is, Sogdiana.
It was celebrated for its populousness. At one time it boasted of being
able to send out 300,000 foot, and as many horse, without missing them.
Bridges and caravansaries abounded; the latter, in the single province
attached to its capital, amounted to 2,000. In Bactriana, the very ruins
of Balkh extend for a circuit of 20 miles, and Sir A. Burns wound
through three miles of them continuously.

Such is the country, seated at present between the British and the
Russian Empires, and such as regards its previous and later state, which
the savage Huns, in their emigration from Tartary, had necessarily
encountered; and it cannot surprise us that one of their many tribes had
been persuaded to settle there, instead of seeking their fortunes
farther west. The effect upon these settlers in course of time was
marvellous. Though it was not of course the mere climate of Sogdiana
that changed them, still we cannot undervalue the influence which is
necessarily exerted on the mind by the idea of property, when once
recognised and accepted, by the desire of possession and by the love of
home, and by the sentiment of patriotism which arises in the mind,
especially with the occupation of a rich and beautiful country.
Moreover, they became the guests or masters of a people, who, however
rude, at least had far higher claims to be called civilized than they
themselves, and possessed among them the remains of a more civilized
era. They found a race, too, not Tartar, more capable of civilization,
more gifted with intellect, and more comely in person. Settling down
among the inhabitants, and intermarrying with them, in the course of
generations their Tartar characteristics were sensibly softened. For a
thousand years this restless people remained there, as if chained to the
soil. They still had the staple of barbarism in them, but so polished
were they for children of a Tartar stock, that they are called in
history the White Huns of Sogdiana. They took to commerce, they took to
literature; and when, at the end of a few centuries, the Turks, as I
have already described, spread abroad from the iron works and forges of
Mount Altai to Kamtchatka, the Volga, and the Indus, and overran these
White Huns in the course of their victories, they could find no parties
more fitted than them to act as their diplomatists and correspondents in
their negotiations with the Romans.

Such was the influence of Sogdiana on the Huns; is it wonderful that it
exerted some influence on the Turks, when they in turn got possession of
it? History justifies the anticipation; as the Huns of the second or
third centuries settled around the Aral, so the Turks in the course of
the sixth or seventh centuries overran them, and descended down to the
modern Affghanistan and the Indus; and as the fair region and its
inhabitants, which they crossed and occupied, had begun at the former
era the civilization of the first race of Tartars, so did it at the
latter era begin the education of the second.


7.

2. But a more direct and effective instrument of social education was
accorded to the Turks on their occupation of Sogdiana. You may recollect
I spoke of their first empire as lasting for only 200 years,[33] about
90 of which measures the period of that occupation. Their power then
came to an end; what was the consequence of their fall? were they driven
out of Sogdiana again? were they massacred? did they take refuge in the
mountains or deserts? were they reduced to slavery? Thus we are
introduced to a famous passage of history: the case was as follows:--At
the very date at which Heraclius called the Turcomans into Georgia, at
the very date when their Eastern brethren crossed the northern border of
Sogdiana, an event of most momentous import had occurred in the South. A
new religion had arisen in Arabia. The impostor Mahomet, announcing
himself the Prophet of God, was writing the pages of that book, and
moulding the faith of that people, which was to subdue half the known
world. The Turks passed the Jaxartes southward in A.D. 626; just four
years before Mahomet had assumed the royal dignity, and just six years
after, on his death, his followers began the conquest of the Persian
Empire. In the course of 20 years they effected it; Sogdiana was at its
very extremity, or its borderland; there the last king of Persia took
refuge from the south, while the Turks were pouring into it from the
north. There was little to choose for the unfortunate prince between the
Turk and the Saracen; the Turks were his hereditary foe; they had been
the giants and monsters of the popular poetry; but he threw himself into
their arms. They engaged in his service, betrayed him, murdered him, and
measured themselves with the Saracens in his stead. Thus the military
strength of the north and south of Asia, the Saracenic and the Turkish,
came into memorable conflict in the regions of which I have said so
much. The struggle was a fierce one, and lasted many years; the Turks
striving to force their way down to the ocean, the Saracens to drive
them back into their Scythian deserts. They first fought this issue in
Bactriana or Khorasan; the Turks got the worst of the fight, and then
it was thrown back upon Sogdiana itself, and there it ended again in
favour of the Saracens. At the end of 90 years from the time of the
first Turkish descent on this fair region, they relinquished it to their
Mahometan opponents. The conquerors found it rich, populous, and
powerful; its cities, Carisme, Bokhara, and Samarcand, were surrounded
beyond their fortifications by a suburb of fields and gardens, which was
in turn protected by exterior works; its plains were well cultivated,
and its commerce extended from China to Europe. Its riches were
proportionally great; the Saracens were able to extort a tribute of two
million gold pieces from the inhabitants; we read, moreover, of the
crown jewels of one of the Turkish princesses; and of the buskin of
another, which she dropt in her flight from Bokhara, as being worth two
thousand pieces of gold.[34] Such had been the prosperity of the
barbarian invaders, such was its end; but not _their_ end, for adversity
did them service, as well as prosperity, as we shall see.

It is usual for historians to say, that the triumph of the South threw
the Turks back again upon their northern solitudes; and this might
easily be the case with some of the many hordes, which were ever passing
the boundary and flocking down; but it is no just account of the
historical fact, viewed as a whole. Not often indeed do the Oriental
nations present us with an example of versatility of character; the
Turks, for instance, of this day are substantially what they were four
centuries ago. We cannot conceive, were Turkey overrun by the Russians
at the present moment, that the fanatical tribes, which are pouring into
Constantinople from Asia Minor, would submit to the foreign yoke, take
service under their conquerors, become soldiers, custom-officers,
police, men of business, attachés, statesmen, working their way up from
the ranks and from the masses into influence and power; but, whether
from skill in the Saracens, or from far-reaching sagacity in the Turks
(and it is difficult to assign it to either cause), so it was, that a
process of this nature followed close upon the Mahometan conquest of
Sogdiana. It is to be traced in detail to a variety of accidents. Many
of the Turks probably were made slaves, and the service to which they
were subjected was no matter of choice. Numbers had got attached to the
soil; and inheriting the blood of Persians, White Huns, or aboriginal
inhabitants for three generations, had simply unlearned the wildness of
the Tartar shepherd. Others fell victims to the religion of their
conquerors, which ultimately, as we know, exercised a most remarkable
influence upon them. Not all at once, but as tribe descended after
tribe, and generation followed generation, they succumbed to the creed
of Mahomet; and they embraced it with the ardour and enthusiasm which
Franks and Saxons so gloriously and meritoriously manifested in their
conversion to Christianity.


8.

3. Here again was a very powerful instrument in modification of their
national character. Let me illustrate it in one particular. If there is
one peculiarity above another, proper to the savage and to the Tartar,
it is that of excitability and impetuosity on ordinary occasions; the
Turks, on the other hand, are nationally remarkable for gravity and
almost apathy of demeanour. Now there are evidently elements in the
Mahometan creed, which would tend to change them from the one
temperament to the other. Its sternness, its coldness, its doctrine of
fatalism; even the truths which it borrowed from Revelation, when
separated from the truths it rejected, its monotheism untempered by
mediation, its severe view of the divine attributes, of the law, and of
a sure retribution to come, wrought both a gloom and also an improvement
in the barbarian, not very unlike the effect which some forms of
Protestantism produce among ourselves. But whatever was the mode of
operation, certainly it is to their religion that this peculiarity of
the Turks is ascribed by competent judges. Lieutenant Wood in his
journal gives us a lively account of a peculiarity of theirs, which he
unhesitatingly attributes to Islamism. "Nowhere," he says, "is the
difference between European and Mahomedan society more strongly marked
than in the lower walks of life.... A Kasid, or messenger, for example,
will come into a public department, deliver his letters in full durbar,
and demean himself throughout the interview with so much composure and
self-possession, that an European can hardly believe that his grade in
society is so low. After he has delivered his letters, he takes his seat
among the crowd, and answers, calmly and without hesitation, all the
questions which may be addressed to him, or communicates the verbal
instructions with which he has been entrusted by his employer, and which
are often of more importance than the letters themselves. Indeed, all
the inferior classes possess an innate self-respect, and a natural
gravity of deportment, which differs as far from the suppleness of a
Hindustani as from the awkward rusticity of an English clown." ... "Even
children," he continues, "in Mahomedan countries have an unusual degree
of gravity in their deportment. The boy, who can but lisp his 'Peace be
with you,' has imbibed this portion of the national character. In
passing through a village, these little men will place their hands upon
their breasts, and give the usual greeting. Frequently have I seen the
children of chiefs approach their father's durbar, and stopping short at
the threshold of the door, utter the shout of 'Salam Ali-Kum,' so as to
draw all eyes upon them; but nothing daunted, they marched boldly into
the room, and sliding down upon their knees, folded their arms and took
their seat upon the musnad with all the gravity of grown-up persons."

As Islamism has changed the demeanour of the Turks, so doubtless it has
in other ways materially innovated on their Tartar nature. It has given
an aim to their military efforts, a political principle, and a social
bond. It has laid them under a sense of responsibility, has moulded them
into consistency, and taught them a course of policy and perseverance in
it. But to treat this part of the subject adequately to its importance
would require, Gentlemen, a research and a fulness of discussion
unsuitable to the historical sketch which I have undertaken. I have said
enough for my purpose upon this topic; and indeed on the general
question of the modification of national character to which the Turks
were at this period subjected.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Univ. Hist. Modern, vol. iii. p. 346.

[16] I am here assuming that the Magyars are not of the Turkish stock;
vid. Gibbon and Pritchard.

[17] Vol. v. p. 248.

[18] P. 127, ed. 1817.

[19] Travels in Syria, vol. i. p. 369, ed. 1787.

[20] Hor. Epist. ii 1, 155.

[21] _Supr._ p. 26.

[22] Montesquieu.

[23] Murray.

[24] Caldecott's Baber.

[25] Vid. Quarterly Review, vol. lii. p. 396-7.

[26] Univ. Hist. mod. vol. v. p. 262, etc.

[27] Ibid. vol. iv. p. 353.

[28] Meyendorff.

[29] Moorcroft.

[30] Vid. Elphinstone.

[31] Wood's Oxus.

[32] Elphinstone's Cabul.

[33] _Supr._ p. 59.

[34] Gibbon.




LECTURE IV.

_The Turk and the Saracen._


1.

Mere occupation of a rich country is not enough for civilization, as I
have granted already. The Turks came into the pleasant plains and
valleys of Sogdiana; the Turcomans into the well-wooded mountains and
sunny slopes of Asia Minor. The Turcomans were brought out of their
dreary deserts, yet they retained their old habits, and they remain
barbarians to this day. But why? it must be borne in mind, they neither
subjugated the inhabitants of their new country on the one hand, nor
were subjugated by them on the other. They never had direct or intimate
relations with it; they were brought into it by the Roman Government at
Constantinople as its auxiliaries, but they never naturalized themselves
there. They were like gipseys in England, except that they were mounted
freebooters instead of pilferers and fortune-tellers. It was far
otherwise with their brethren in Sogdiana; they were there first as
conquerors, then as conquered. First they held it in possession as their
prize for 90 or 100 years; they came into the usufruct and enjoyment of
it. Next, their political ascendancy over it involved, as in the case of
the White Huns, some sort of moral surrender of themselves to it. What
was the first consequence of this? that, like the White Huns, they
intermarried with the races they found there. We know the custom of the
Tartars and Turks; under such circumstances they would avail themselves
of their national practice of polygamy to its full extent of licence. In
the course of twenty years a new generation would arise of a mixed race;
and these in turn would marry into the native population, and at the end
of ninety or a hundred years we should find the great-grandsons or the
great-great-grandsons of the wild marauders who first crossed the
Jaxartes, so different from their ancestors in features both of mind and
body, that they hardly would be recognized as deserving the Tartar name.
At the end of that period their power came to an end, the Saracens
became masters of them and of their country, but the process of
emigration southward from the Scythian desert, which had never
intermitted during the years of their domination, continued still,
though that domination was no more.

Here it is necessary to have a clear idea of the nature of that
association of the Turkish tribes from the Volga to the Eastern Sea, to
which I have given the name of Empire:--it was not so much of a
political as of a national character; it was the power, not of a system,
but of a race. They were not one well-organized state, but a number of
independent tribes, acting generally together, acknowledging one leader
or not, according to circumstances, combining and coöperating from the
identity of object which acted on them, and often jealous of each other
and quarrelling with each other on account of that very identity. Each
tribe made its way down to the south as it could; one blocked up the way
of the other for a time; there were stoppages and collisions, but there
was a continual movement and progress. Down they came one after another,
like wolves after their prey; and as the tribes which came first became
partially civilized, and as a mixed generation arose, these would
naturally be desirous of keeping back their less polished uncles or
cousins, if they could; and would do so successfully for awhile: but
cupidity is stronger than conservatism; and so, in spite of delay and
difficulty, down they would keep coming, and down they did come, even
after and in spite of the overthrow of their Empire; crowding down as to
a new world, to get what they could, as adventurers, ready to turn to
the right or the left, prepared to struggle on anyhow, willing to be
forced forward into countries farther still, careless what might turn
up, so that they did but get down. And this was the process which went
on (whatever were their fortunes when they actually got down, prosperous
or adverse) for 400, nay, I will say for 700 years. The storehouse of
the north was never exhausted; it sustained the never-ending run upon
its resources.


2.

I was just now referring to a change in the Turks, which I have
mentioned before, and which had as important a bearing as any other of
their changes upon their subsequent fortunes. It was a change in their
physiognomy and shape, so striking as to recommend them to their masters
for the purposes of war or of display. Instead of bearing any longer the
hideous exterior which in the Huns frightened the Romans and Goths, they
were remarkable, even as early as the ninth century, when they had been
among the natives of Sogdiana only two hundred years, for the beauty of
their persons. An important political event was the result: hence the
introduction of the Turks into the heart of the Saracenic empire. By
this time the Caliphs had removed from Damascus to Bagdad; Persia was
the imperial province, and into Persia they were introduced for the
reason I have mentioned, sometimes as slaves, sometimes as captives
taken in war, sometimes as mercenaries for the Saracenic armies: at
length they were enrolled as guards to the Caliph, and even appointed to
offices in the palace, to the command of the forces, and to
governorships in the provinces. The son of the celebrated Harun al
Raschid had as many as 50,000 of these troops in Bagdad itself. And thus
slowly and silently they made their way to the south, not with the pomp
and pretence of conquest, but by means of that ordinary intercommunion
which connected one portion of the empire of the Caliphs with another.
In this manner they were introduced even into Egypt.

This was their history for a hundred and fifty years, and what do we
suppose would be the result of this importation of barbarians into the
heart of a flourishing empire? Would they be absorbed as slaves or
settlers in the mass of the population, or would they, like mercenaries
elsewhere, be fatal to the power that introduced them? The answer is not
difficult, considering that their very introduction argued a want of
energy and resource in the rulers whom they served. To employ them was a
confession of weakness; the Saracenic power indeed was not very aged,
but the Turkish was much younger, and more vigorous;--then too must be
considered the difference of national character between the Turks and
the Saracens. A writer of the beginning of the present century,[35]
compares the Turks to the Romans; such parallels are generally fanciful
and fallacious; but, if we must accept it in the present instance, we
may complete the picture by likening the Saracens and Persians to the
Greeks, and we know what was the result of the collision between Greece
and Rome. The Persians were poets, the Saracens were philosophers. The
mathematics, astronomy, and botany were especial subjects of the studies
of the latter. Their observatories were celebrated, and they may be
considered to have originated the science of chemistry. The Turks, on
the other hand, though they are said to have a literature, and though
certain of their princes have been patrons of letters, have never
distinguished themselves in exercises of pure intellect; but they have
had an energy of character, a pertinacity, a perseverance, and a
political talent, in a word, they then had the qualities of mind
necessary for ruling, in far greater measure, than the people they were
serving. The Saracens, like the Greeks, carried their arms over the
surface of the earth with an unrivalled brilliancy and an unchequered
success; but their dominion, like that of Greece, did not last for more
than 200 or 300 years. Rome grew slowly through many centuries, and its
influence lasts to this day; the Turkish race battled with difficulties
and reverses, and made its way on amid tumult and complication, for a
good 1,000 years from first to last, till at length it found itself in
possession of Constantinople, and a terror to the whole of Europe. It
has ended its career upon the throne of Constantine; it began it as the
slave and hireling of the rulers of a great empire, of Persia and
Sogdiana.


3.

As to Sogdiana, we have already reviewed one season of power and then in
turn of reverse which there befell the Turks; and next a more remarkable
outbreak and its reaction mark their presence in Persia. I have spoken
of the formidable force, consisting of Turks, which formed the guard of
the Caliphs immediately after the time of Harun al Raschid:--suddenly
they rebelled against their master, burst into his apartment at the hour
of supper, murdered him, and cut his body into seven pieces. They got
possession of the symbols of imperial power, the garment and the staff
of Mahomet, and proceeded to make and unmake Caliphs at their pleasure.
In the course of four years they had elevated, deposed, and murdered as
many as three. At their wanton caprice, they made these successors of
the false prophet the sport of their insults and their blows. They
dragged them by the feet, stripped them, and exposed them to the burning
sun, beat them with iron clubs, and left them for days without food. At
length, however, the people of Bagdad were roused in defence of the
Caliphate, and the Turks for a time were brought under; but they
remained in the country, or rather, by the short-sighted policy of the
moment, were dispersed throughout it, and thus became in the sequel
ready-made elements of revolution for the purposes of other traitors of
their own race, who, at a later period, as we shall presently see,
descended on Persia from Turkistan.

Indeed, events were opening the way slowly, but surely, to their
ascendancy. Throughout the whole of the tenth century, which followed,
they seem to disappear from history; but a silent revolution was all
along in progress, leading them forward to their great destiny. The
empire of the Caliphate was already dying in its extremities, and
Sogdiana was one of the first countries to be detached from his power.
The Turks were still there, and, as in Persia, filled the ranks of the
army and the offices of the government; but the political changes which
took place were not at first to their visible advantage. What first
occurred was the revolt of the Caliph's viceroy, who made himself a
great kingdom or empire out of the provinces around, extending it from
the Jaxartes, which was the northern boundary of Sogdiana, almost to the
Indian ocean, and from the confines of Georgia to the mountains of
Affghanistan. The dynasty thus established lasted for four generations
and for the space of ninety years. Then the successor happened to be a
boy; and one of his servants, the governor of Khorasan, an able and
experienced man, was forced by circumstances to rebellion against him.
He was successful, and the whole power of this great kingdom fell into
his hands; now he was a Tartar or Turk; and thus at length the Turks
suddenly appear in history, the acknowledged masters of a southern
dominion.


4.

This is the origin of the celebrated Turkish dynasty of the Gaznevides,
so called after Gazneh, or Ghizni, or Ghuznee, the principal city, and
it lasted for two hundred years. We are not particularly concerned in
it, because it has no direct relations with Europe; but it falls into
our subject, as having been instrumental to the advance of the Turks
towards the West. Its most distinguished monarch was Mahmood, and he
conquered Hindostan, which became eventually the seat of the empire. In
Mahmood the Gaznevide we have a prince of true Oriental splendour. For
him the title of Sultan or Soldan was invented, which henceforth became
the special badge of the Turkish monarchs; as Khan is the title of the
sovereign of the Tartars, and Caliph of the sovereign of the Saracens. I
have already described generally the extent of his dominions: he
inherited Sogdiana, Carisme, Khorasan, and Cabul; but, being a zealous
Mussulman, he obtained the title of Gazi, or champion, by his reduction
of Hindostan, and his destruction of its idol temples. There was no
need, however, of religious enthusiasm to stimulate him to the war: the
riches, which he amassed in the course of it, were a recompense amply
sufficient. His Indian expeditions in all amounted to twelve, and they
abound in battles and sieges of a truly Oriental cast. "Never," says a
celebrated historian,[36] "was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the
inclemency of the seasons, the height of the mountains, the breadth of
the rivers, the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the enemy,"
or their elephants of war. One of the sovereigns of the country brought
against him as many as 2,500 elephants; the borderers on the Indus
resisted him with 4,000 war-boats. He was successful in every direction;
he levelled to the ground many hundreds of pagodas, and carried off
their treasures. In one of his campaigns[37] he took prisoner the prince
of Lahore, round whose neck alone were sixteen strings of jewels, valued
at £320,000 of our money. At Mutra he found five great idols of pure
gold, with eyes of rubies; and a hundred idols of silver, which, when
melted down, loaded a hundred camels with bullion.

These stories, which sound like the fables in the Arabian Nights, are
but a specimen of the wonderful fruits of the victories of this Mahmood.
His richest prize was the great temple of Sunnat, or Somnaut, on the
promontory of Guzerat, between the Indus and Bombay. It was a place as
diabolically wicked as it was wealthy, and we may safely regard Mahmood
as the instrument of divine vengeance upon it. But here I am only
concerned with its wealth, for which grave writers are the vouchers.
When this temple was taken, Mahmood entered a great square hall, having
its lofty roof supported with 56 pillars, curiously turned and set with
precious stones. In the centre stood the idol, made of stone, and five
feet high. The conqueror began to demolish it. He raised his mace, and
struck off the idol's nose. The Brahmins interposed, and are said to
have offered the fabulous sum, as Mill considers it, of ten millions
sterling for its ransom. His officers urged him to accept it, and the
Sultan himself was moved; but recovering himself, he observed that it
was somewhat more honourable to destroy idols than to traffic in them,
and proceeded to repeat his blows at the trunk of the figure. He broke
it open; it was found to be hollow, and at once explained the
prodigality of the offer of the Brahmins. Inside was found an
incalculable treasure of diamonds, rubies, and pearls. Mahmood took away
the lofty doors of sandal-wood, which belonged to this temple, as a
trophy for posterity. Till a few years ago, they were the decoration of
his tomb near Gazneh, which is built of white marble with a cupola, and
where Moollas are still maintained to read prayers over his grave.[38]
There too once hung the ponderous mace, which few but himself could
wield; but the mace has disappeared, and the sandal gates, if genuine,
were carried off about twelve years since by the British
Governor-General of India, and restored to their old place, as an
acceptable present to the impure idolaters of Guzerat.[39]

It is not wonderful that this great conqueror should have been overcome
by the special infirmity, to which such immense plunder would dispose
him; he has left behind him a reputation for avarice. He desired to be
a patron of literature, and on one occasion he promised a court poet a
golden coin for every verse of an heroic poem he was writing. Stimulated
by the promise, "the divine poet," to use the words of the Persian
historian, "wrote the unparalleled poem called the Shah Namna,
consisting of 60,000 couplets." This was more than had been bargained
for by the Sultan, who, repenting of his engagement, wished to
compromise the matter for 60,000 rupees, about a sixteenth part of the
sum he had promised. The indignant author would accept no remuneration
at all, but wrote a satire upon Mahmood instead; but he was merciful in
his revenge, for he reached no more than the seven-thousandth couplet.

There is a melancholy grandeur about the last days of this victorious
Sultan, which seems to show that even then the character of his race was
changed from the fierce impatience of Hun and Tartar to the grave,
pensive, and majestic demeanour of the Turk. Tartar he was in his
countenance, as he was painfully conscious, but his mind had a
refinement, to which the Tartar was a stranger. Broken down by an
agonizing complaint, he perceived his life was failing, and his glory
coming to an end. Two days before his death, he commanded all the untold
riches of his treasury, his sacks of gold and silver, his caskets of
precious stones, to be brought out and placed before him. Having feasted
his eyes upon them, he burst into tears; he knew they would not long be
his, but he had not the heart to give any part of then away. The next
day he caused to be drawn up before his travelling throne, for he
observed still the Tartar custom, his army of 100,000 foot and 55,000
horse, his chariots, his camels, and his 1,300 elephants of war; and
again he wept, and, overcome with grief, retired to his palace. Next
day he died, after a prosperous reign of more than thirty years.

But, to return to the general history. It will be recollected that
Mahmood's dominions stretched very far to the west, as some say, even
round the Caspian to Georgia; and it is not wonderful that, while he was
adding India to them, he found a difficulty in defending his frontier
towards Persia. Meantime, as before, his own countrymen kept streaming
down upon him without intermission from the north, and he thought he
could not do better than employ these dangerous visitors in garrison
duty against his western enemies. They took service under him, but did
not fulfil his expectations. Indeed, what followed may be anticipated
from the history which I have been giving of the Caliphs: it was an
instance of workmen emancipating themselves from their employer. The
fierce barbarians who were defending the province of Khorasan so well
for another, naturally felt that they could take as good care of it for
themselves; and when Mahmood was approaching the end of his life, he
became sensible of the error he had committed in introducing them. He
asked one of their chiefs what force he could lend him: "If you sent one
of the arrows into our camp," was the answer, "50,000 of us will mount
to do thy bidding." "But what if I want more?" inquired Mahmood; "send
this arrow into the camp of Balik, and you will have another 50,000."
The Sultan asked again: "But what if I require your whole forces?" "Send
round my bow," answered the Turk, "and the summons will be obeyed by
200,000 horse."[40] The foreboding, which disclosures such as this
inspired, was fulfilled the year before his death. The Turks came into
collision with his lieutenants, and defeated one of them in a bloody
action; and though he took full reprisals, and for a while cleared the
country of them, yet in the reign of his son they succeeded in wresting
from his dynasty one-half of his empire, and Hindostan, the acquisition
of Mahmood, became henceforth its principal possession.


5.

We have now arrived at what may literally be called the turning-point of
Turkish history. We have seen them gradually descend from the north, and
in a certain degree become acclimated in the countries where they
settled. They first appear across the Jaxartes in the beginning of the
seventh century; they have now come to the beginning of the eleventh.
Four centuries or thereabout have they been out of their deserts,
gaining experience and educating themselves in such measure as was
necessary for playing their part in the civilized world. First they came
down into Sogdiana and Khorasan, and the country below it, as
conquerors; they continued in it as subjects and slaves. They offered
their services to the race which had subdued them; they made their way
by means of their new masters down to the west and the south; they laid
the foundations for their future supremacy in Persia, and gradually rose
upwards through the social fabric to which they had been admitted, till
they found themselves at length at the head of it. The sovereign power
which they had acquired in the line of the Gaznevides, drifted off to
Hindostan; but still fresh tribes of their race poured down from the
north, and filled up the gap; and while one dynasty of Turks was
established in the peninsula, a second dynasty arose in the former seat
of their power.

Now I call the era at which I have arrived the turning-point of their
fortunes, because, when they had descended down to Khorasan and the
countries below it, they might have turned to the East or to the West,
as they chose. They were at liberty to turn their forces eastward
against their kindred in Hindostan, whom they had driven out of Ghizni
and Affghanistan, or to face towards the west, and make their way
thither through the Saracens of Persia and its neighbouring countries.
It was an era which determined the history of the world. I recollect
once hearing a celebrated professor of geology attempt to draw out the
consequences which would have occurred, had there not been an outlet for
the Thames, which exists in fact, at a certain point of its course. He
said that, had the range of hills been unbroken, it would have streamed
off to the north-east, and have run into the sea at the Wash in
Lincolnshire. An utter change in the political events which came after,
another history of England, and nothing short of it, would have been the
result. An illustration such as this will at least serve to express what
I would say of the point at which we now stand in the history of the
Turks. Mahmood turned to the east; and had the barbarian tribes which
successively descended done the same, they might have conquered the
Gaznevide dynasty, they might have settled themselves, like Timour, at
Delhi, and their descendants might have been found there by the British
in their conquests during the last century; but they would have been
unknown to Europe, they would have been strange to Constantinople, they
would have had little interest for the Church. They had rebelled against
Mahmood, they had driven his family to the East; but they did not pursue
him thither; he had strength enough to keep them off the rich territory
he had appropriated; he was the obstacle which turned the stream
westward; in consequence, they looked towards Persia, where their
brethren had been so long settled, and they directed their course for
good and all towards Europe.

But this era was a turning-point in their history in another and more
serious respect. In Sogdiana and Khorasan, they had become converts to
the Mahometan faith. You will not suppose I am going to praise a
religious imposture, but no Catholic need deny that it is, considered in
itself, a great improvement upon Paganism. Paganism has no rule of right
and wrong, no supreme and immutable judge, no intelligible revelation,
no fixed dogma whatever; on the other hand, the being of one God, the
fact of His revelation, His faithfulness to His promises, the eternity
of the moral law, the certainty of future retribution, were borrowed by
Mahomet from the Church, and are steadfastly held by his followers. The
false prophet taught much which is materially true and objectively
important, whatever be its subjective and formal value and influence in
the individuals who profess it. He stands in his creed between the
religion of God and the religion of devils, between Christianity and
idolatry, between the West and the extreme East. And so stood the Turks,
on adopting his faith, at the date I am speaking of; they stood between
Christ in the West, and Satan in the East, and they had to make their
choice; and, alas! they were led by the circumstances of the time to
oppose themselves, not to Paganism, but to Christianity. A happier lot
indeed had befallen poor Sultan Mahmood than befell his kindred who
followed in his wake. Mahmood, a Mahomedan, went eastward and found a
superstition worse than his own, and fought against it, and smote it;
and the sandal doors which he tore away from the idol temple and hung
up at his tomb at Gazneh, almost seemed to plead for him through
centuries as the soldier and the instrument of Heaven. The tribes which
followed him, Moslem also, faced westward, and found, not error but
truth, and fought against it as zealously, and in doing so, were simply
tools of the Evil One, and preachers of a lie, and enemies, not
witnesses of God. The one destroyed idol temples, the other Christian
shrines. The one has been saved the woe of persecuting the Bride of the
Lamb; the other is of all races the veriest brood of the serpent which
the Church has encountered since she was set up. For 800 years did the
sandal gates remain at Mahmood's tomb, as a trophy over idolatry; and
for 800 years have Seljuk and Othman been our foe, singled out as such,
and denounced by successive Vicars of Christ.


6.

The year 1048 of our era is fixed by chronologists as the date of the
rise of the Turkish power, as far as Christendom is interested in its
history.[41] Sixty-three years before this date, a Turk of high rank, of
the name of Seljuk, had quarrelled with his native prince in Turkistan,
crossed the Jaxartes with his followers, and planted himself in the
territory of Sogdiana. His father had been a chief officer in the
prince's court, and was the first of his family to embrace Islamism; but
Seljuk, in spite of his creed, did not obtain permission to advance into
Sogdiana from the Saracenic government, which at that time was in
possession of the country. After several successful encounters, however,
he gained admission into the city of Bokhara, and there he settled. As
time went on, he fully recompensed the tardy hospitality which the
Saracens had shown him; for his feud with his own countrymen, whom he
had left, took the shape of a religious enmity, and he fought against
them as pagans and infidels, with a zeal, which was both an earnest of
the devotion of his people to the faith of Mahomet, and a training for
the exercise of it. He died, it is said, in battle against the pagans,
and at the wonderful age of 107. Of his five sons, whom he left behind
him, one, Michael, was cut off prematurely in battle against the
infidels also, and has obtained the name of Shadid or the Martyr; for in
a religion where the soldier is the missionary, the soldier is the
martyr also. The other sons became rich and powerful; they had numerous
flocks and fertile pastures in Sogdiana, till at length they attracted
the notice of the Sultan Mahmood, who, having dispossessed the Saracens
of the country where Seljuk had placed himself, looked about for
mercenary troops to keep his possession of it. It was one of Seljuk's
family, who at a later date alarmed Mahmood by telling him he could
bring 200,000 horsemen from the Scythian wilderness, if he sent round
his bow to summon them; it was Seljuk's horde and retainers that
ultimately forced back Mahmood's son into the south and the east, and
got possession of Sogdiana and Khorasan. Having secured this
acquisition, they next advanced into Persia, and this was the event,
which is considered to fix the date of their entrance into
ecclesiastical history. It was the date of their first steadily looking
westward; it determined their destiny; they began to be enemies of the
Cross in the year 1048, under the leading of Michael the Martyr's son,
Togrul Beg.

It is the inconvenience of any mere sketch of historical transactions,
that a multiplicity of objects successively passes over the field of
view, not less independent in themselves, though not less connected in
the succession of events, than the pictures of a magic lantern. I am
aware of the weariness and the perplexity which are in consequence
inflicted on the attention and the memory of the hearer; but what can I
do but ask your indulgence, Gentlemen, for a circumstance which is
inherent in any undertaking like the present? I have in the course of an
hour to deal with a series of exploits and fortunes, which begin in the
wilds of Turkistan, and conclude upon the Bosphorus; in which, as I may
say, time is no measure of events, one while from the obscurity in which
they lie, at another from their multitude and consequent confusion. For
four centuries the Turks are little or hardly heard of; then suddenly in
the course of as many tens of years, and under three Sultans, they make
the whole world resound with their deeds; and, while they have pushed to
the East through Hindostan, in the West they have hurried down to the
coasts of the Mediterranean and the Archipelago, have taken Jerusalem,
and threatened Constantinople. In their long period of silence they had
been sowing the seeds of future conquests; in their short period of
action they were gathering the fruit of past labours and sufferings. The
Saracenic empire stood apparently as before; but, as soon as a Turk
showed himself at the head of a military force within its territory, he
found himself surrounded by the armies of his kindred which had been so
long in its pay; he was joined by the tribes of Turcomans, to whom the
Romans in a former age had shown the passes of the Caucasus; and he
could rely on the reserve of innumerable swarms, ever issuing out of his
native desert, and following in his track. Such was the state of Western
Asia in the middle of the eleventh century.


7.

I have said there were three great Sultans of the race of Seljuk, by
whom the conquest of the West of Asia was begun and completed; their
names are Togrul Beg, Alp Arslan, and Malek Shah. I have not to write
their histories, but I may say a few words of their characters and their
actions.

1. The first, Togrul, was the son and grandson of Mahometan Martyrs, and
he inherited that fanaticism, which made the old Seljuk and the young
Michael surrender their lives in their missionary warfare against the
enemies of their faith. Each day he repeated the five prayers prescribed
for the disciples of Islam; each week he gave two days to fasting; in
every city which he made his own, he built a mosque before he built his
palace. He introduced vast numbers of his wild countrymen into his
provinces, and suffered their nomadic habits, on the condition of their
becoming proselytes to his creed. He was the man suited to his time;
mere material power was not adequate to the overthrow of the Saracenic
sovereignty: rebellion after rebellion had been successful against the
Caliph; and at the very time I speak of he was in subjection to a family
of the old Persian race. But then he was spiritual head of the Empire as
well as temporal; and, though he lay in his palace wallowing in brutal
sensuality, he was still a sort of mock-Pope, even after his armies and
his territories had been wrested from his hands; but it was the reward
of Togrul's zeal to gain from him this spiritual prerogative, retaining
which the Caliph could never have fallen altogether. He gave to Togrul
the title of Rocnoddîn, or "the firm pillar of religion;" and, what was
more to the purpose, he made him his vicegerent over the whole Moslem
world. Armed with this religious authority, which was temporal in its
operation, he went to war against the various insurgents who troubled
the Caliph's repose, and substituted himself for them, a more powerful
and insidious enemy than any or all. But even Mahomet, the Caliph's
predecessor, would not have denied that Togrul was worthy of his hire;
he turned towards Armenia and Asia Minor, and began that terrible war
against the Cross, which was to last 500 years. The prodigious number of
130,000 Christians, in battle or otherwise, is said to be the sacrifice
he offered up to the false prophet. On his victorious return, he was
again recognized by his grateful master as his representative. He made
his public entry into the imperial city on horseback. At the palace gate
he showed the outward deference to the Caliph's authority which was his
policy. He dismounted, his nobles laid aside their arms, and thus they
walked respectfully into the recesses of the palace. According to the
Saracenic ceremonial, the Caliph received them behind his black veil,
the black garment of his family was cast over his shoulders, and the
staff of Mahomet was in his hand. Togrul kissed the ground, and waited
modestly, till he was led to the throne, and was there allowed to seat
himself, and to hear the commission publicly declaring him invested with
the authority of the Vicar of the Arch-deceiver. He was then
successively clothed in seven robes of honour, and presented with seven
slaves, the natives of the seven climates of the Saracenic Empire. His
veil was perfumed with musk; two crowns were set upon his head; two
scimitars were girded on his side, in token of his double reign over
East and West. He twice kissed the Caliph's hand; and his titles were
proclaimed by the voice of heralds and the applause of the Moslem.

Such was Togrul Beg, and such was his reward. After these exploits, he
marched against his brother (for these Turkish tribes were always
quarrelling over their prey), deposed him, strangled him and put to
death a number of his adherents, married the Caliph's daughter, and then
died without children. His power passed to his nephew Alp Arslan.

2. Alp Arslan, the second Sultan of the line of Seljuk, is said to
signify in Turkish "the courageous lion:" and the Caliph gave its
possessor the Arabic appellation of Azzaddin, or "Protector of
Religion." It was the distinctive work of his short reign to pass from
humbling the Caliph to attacking the Greek Emperor. Togrul had already
invaded the Greek provinces of Asia Minor, from Cilicia to Armenia,
along a line of 600 miles, and here it was that he had achieved his
tremendous massacres of Christians. Alp Arslan renewed the war; he
penetrated to Cæsarea in Cappadocia, attracted by the gold and pearls
which encrusted the shrine of the great St. Basil. He then turned his
arms against Armenia and Georgia, and conquered the hardy mountaineers
of the Caucasus, who at present give such trouble to the Russians. After
this he encountered, defeated, and captured the Greek Emperor. He began
the battle with all the solemnity and pageantry of a hero of romance.
Casting away his bow and arrows, he called for an iron mace and
scimitar; he perfumed his body with musk, as if for his burial, and
dressed himself in white, that he might be slain in his winding-sheet.
After his victory, the captive Emperor of New Rome was brought before
him in a peasant's dress; he made him kiss the ground beneath his feet,
and put his foot upon his neck. Then, raising him up, he struck or
patted him three times with his hand, and gave him his life and, on a
large ransom, his liberty. At this time the Sultan was only forty-four
years of age, and seemed to have a career of glory still before him.
Twelve hundred nobles stood before his throne; two hundred thousand
soldiers marched under his banner. As if dissatisfied with the South, he
turned his arms against his own paternal wildernesses, with which his
family, as I have related, had a feud. New tribes of Turks seem to have
poured down, and were wresting Sogdiana from the race of Seljuk, as the
Seljukians had wrested it from the Gaznevides. Alp had not advanced far
into the country, when he met his death from the hand of a captive. A
Carismian chief had withstood his progress, and, being taken, was
condemned to a lingering execution. On hearing the sentence, he rushed
forward upon Alp Arslan; and the Sultan, disdaining to let his generals
interfere, bent his bow, but, missing his aim, received the dagger of
his prisoner in his breast. His death, which followed, brings before us
that grave dignity of the Turkish character, of which we have already
had an example in Mahmood. Finding his end approaching, he has left on
record a sort of dying confession:--"In my youth," he said, "I was
advised by a sage to humble myself before God, to distrust my own
strength, and never to despise the most contemptible foe. I have
neglected these lessons, and my neglect has been deservedly punished.
Yesterday, as from an eminence, I beheld the numbers, the discipline,
and the spirit of my armies; the earth seemed to tremble under my feet,
and I said in my heart, Surely thou art the king of the world, the
greatest and most invincible of warriors. These armies are no longer
mine; and, in the confidence of my personal strength, I now fall by the
hand of an assassin." On his tomb was engraven an inscription, conceived
in a similar spirit. "O ye, who have seen the glory of Alp Arslan
exalted to the heavens, repair to Maru, and you will behold it buried in
the dust."[42] Alp Arslan was adorned with great natural qualities both
of intellect and of soul. He was brave and liberal: just, patient, and
sincere: constant in his prayers, diligent in his alms, and, it is
added, witty in his conversation;--but his gifts availed him not.

3. It often happens in the history of states and races, in which there
is found first a rise and then a decline, that the greatest glories take
place just then when the reverse is beginning or begun. Thus, for
instance, in the history of the Ottoman Turks, to which I have not yet
come, Soliman the Magnificent is at once the last and greatest of a
series of great Sultans. So was it as regards this house of Seljuk.
Malek Shah, the son of Alp Arslan, the third sovereign, in whom its
glories ended, is represented to us in history in colours so bright and
perfect, that it is difficult to believe we are not reading the account
of some mythical personage. He came to the throne at the early age of
seventeen; he was well-shaped, handsome, polished both in manners and in
mind; wise and courageous, pious and sincere. He engaged himself even
more in the consolidation of his empire than in its extension. He
reformed abuses; he reduced the taxes; he repaired the high roads,
bridges, and canals; he built an imperial mosque at Bagdad; he founded
and nobly endowed a college. He patronised learning and poetry, and he
reformed the calendar. He provided marts for commerce; he upheld the
pure administration of justice, and protected the helpless and the
innocent. He established wells and cisterns in great numbers along the
road of pilgrimage to Mecca; he fed the pilgrims, and distributed
immense sums among the poor.

He was in every respect a great prince; he extended his conquests across
Sogdiana to the very borders of China. He subdued by his lieutenants
Syria and the Holy Land, and took Jerusalem. He is said to have
travelled round his vast dominions twelve times. So potent was he, that
he actually gave away kingdoms, and had for feudatories great princes.
He gave to his cousin his territories in Asia Minor, and planted him
over against Constantinople, as an earnest of future conquests; and he
may be said to have finally allotted to the Turcomans the fair regions
of Western Asia, over which they roam to this day.

All human greatness has its term; the more brilliant was this great
Sultan's rise, the more sudden was his extinction; and the earlier he
came to his power, the earlier did he lose it He had reigned twenty
years, and was but thirty-seven years old, when he was lifted up with
pride and came to his end. He disgraced and abandoned to an assassin his
faithful vizir, at the age of ninety-three, who for thirty years had
been the servant and benefactor of the house of Seljuk. After obtaining
from the Caliph the peculiar and almost incommunicable title of "the
commander of the faithful," unsatisfied still, he wished to fix his own
throne in Bagdad, and to deprive his impotent superior of his few
remaining honours. He demanded the hand of the daughter of the Greek
Emperor, a Christian, in marriage. A few days, and he was no more; he
had gone out hunting, and returned indisposed; a vein was opened, and
the blood would not flow. A burning fever took him off, only eighteen
days after the murder of his vizir, and less than ten before the day
when the Caliph was to have been removed from Bagdad.


8.

Such is human greatness at the best, even were it ever so innocent; but
as to this poor Sultan, there is another aspect even of his glorious
deeds. If I have seemed here or elsewhere in these Lectures to speak of
him or his with interest or admiration, only take me, Gentlemen, as
giving the external view of the Turkish history, and that as
introductory to the determination of its true significance. Historians
and poets may celebrate the exploits of Malek; but what were they in the
sight of Him who has said that whoso shall strike against His
corner-stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, shall be
ground to powder? Looking at this Sultan's deeds as mere exhibitions of
human power, they were brilliant and marvellous; but there was another
judgment of them formed in the West, and other feelings than admiration
roused by them in the faith and the chivalry of Christendom. Especially
was there one, the divinely appointed shepherd of the poor of Christ,
the anxious steward of His Church, who from his high and ancient watch
tower, in the fulness of apostolic charity, surveyed narrowly what was
going on at thousands of miles from him, and with prophetic eye looked
into the future age; and scarcely had that enemy, who was in the event
so heavily to smite the Christian world, shown himself, when he gave
warning of the danger, and prepared himself with measures for averting
it. Scarcely had the Turk touched the shores of the Mediterranean and
the Archipelago, when the Pope detected and denounced him before all
Europe. The heroic Pontiff, St. Gregory the Seventh, was then upon the
throne of the Apostle; and though he was engaged in one of the severest
conflicts which Pope has ever sustained, not only against the secular
power, but against bad bishops and priests, yet at a time when his very
life was not his own, and present responsibilities so urged him, that
one would fancy he had time for no other thought, Gregory was able to
turn his mind to the consideration of a contingent danger in the almost
fabulous East. In a letter written during the reign of Malek Shah, he
suggested the idea of a crusade against the misbeliever, which later
popes carried out. He assures the Emperor of Germany, whom he was
addressing, that he had 50,000 troops ready for the holy war, whom he
would fain have led in person. This was in the year 1074.

In truth, the most melancholy accounts were brought to Europe of the
state of things in the Holy Land. A rude Turcoman ruled in Jerusalem;
his people insulted there the clergy of every profession; they dragged
the patriarch by the hair along the pavement, and cast him into a
dungeon, in hopes of a ransom; and disturbed from time to time the Latin
Mass and office in the Church of the Resurrection. As to the pilgrims,
Asia Minor, the country through which they had to travel in an age when
the sea was not yet safe to the voyager, was a scene of foreign
incursion and internal distraction. They arrived at Jerusalem exhausted
by their sufferings, and sometimes terminated them by death, before they
were permitted to kiss the Holy Sepulchre.


9.

Outrages such as these were of frequent occurrence, and one was very
like another. In concluding, however, this Lecture, I think it worth
while to set before you, Gentlemen, the circumstances of one of them in
detail, that you may be able to form some ideas of the state both of
Asia Minor and of a Christian pilgrimage, under the dominion of the
Turks. You may recollect, then, that Alp Arslan, the second Seljukian
Sultan, invaded Asia Minor, and made prisoner the Greek Emperor. This
Sultan came to the throne in 1062, and appears to have begun his warlike
operations immediately. The next year, or the next but one, a body of
pilgrims, to the number of 7,000, were pursuing their peaceful way to
Jerusalem, by a route which at that time lay entirely through countries
professing Christianity.[43] The pious company was headed by the
Archbishop of Mentz, the Bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Ratisbon, and,
among others, by a party of Norman soldiers and clerks, belonging to the
household of William Duke of Normandy, who made himself, very soon
afterwards, our William the Conqueror. Among these clerks was the
celebrated Benedictine Monk Ingulphus, William's secretary, afterwards
Abbot of Croyland in Lincolnshire, being at that time a little more than
thirty years of age. They passed through Germany and Hungary to
Constantinople, and thence by the southern coast of Asia Minor or
Anatolia, to Syria and Palestine. When they got on the confines of Asia
Minor towards Cilicia, they fell in with the savage Turcomans, who were
attracted by the treasure, which these noble persons and wealthy
churchmen had brought with them for pious purposes and imprudently
displayed. Ingulphus's words are few, but so graphic that I require an
apology for using them. He says then, they were "exenterated" or
"cleaned out of the immense sums of money they carried with them,
together with the loss of many lives."

A contemporary historian gives us fuller particulars of the adventure,
and he too appears to have been a party to the expedition.[44] It seems
the prelates celebrated the rites of the Church with great
magnificence, as they went along, and travelled with a pomp which became
great dignitaries. The Turcomans in consequence set on them, overwhelmed
them, stripped them to the skin, and left the Bishop of Utrecht disabled
and half dead upon the field. The poor sufferers effected their retreat
to a village, where they fortified an enclosure and took possession of a
building which stood within it. Here they defended themselves
courageously for as many as three days, though they are said to have had
nothing to eat. At the end of that time they expressed a wish to
surrender themselves to the enemy, and admitted eighteen of the
barbarian leaders into their place of strength, with a view of
negotiating the terms. The Bishop of Bamberg, who is said to have had a
striking presence, acted for the Christians, and bargained for nothing
more than their lives. The savage Turcoman, who was the speaker on the
other side, attracted by his appearance, unrolled his turban, and threw
it round the Bishop's neck, crying out: "You and all of you are mine."
The Bishop made answer by an interpreter: "What will you do to me?" The
savage shrieked out some unintelligible words, which, being explained to
the Bishop, ran thus: "I will suck that blood which is so ruddy in your
throat, and then I will hang you up like a dog at your gate." "Upon
which," says the historian, "the Bishop, who had the modesty of a
gentleman, and was of a grave disposition, not bearing the insult,
dashed his fist into the Turcoman's face with such vigour as to fell him
to the ground, crying out that the profane wretch should rather be the
sufferer, for laying his unclean hands upon a priest."

This was the signal for an exploit so bold, that it seemed, if I may so
express myself, like a particular inspiration. The Christians, unarmed
as they were, started up, and though, as I have observed, they may be
said to have scarcely tasted food for three days, rushed upon the
eighteen Turcomans, bound their arms behind their backs, and showing
them in this condition to their own troops who surrounded the house,
protested that they would instantly put them all to death, unless they
themselves were let go. It is difficult to see how this complication
would have ended, in which neither side were in a condition either to
recede or to advance, had not a third party interfered with a
considerable force in the person of the military governor, himself a
Pagan,[45] of a neighbouring city; and though, as our historian says,
the Christians found it difficult to understand how Satan could cast out
Satan, so it was, that they found themselves at liberty and their
enemies marched off to punishment, on the payment of a sum of money to
their deliverers. I need not pursue the history of these pilgrims
further than to say, that, of 7,000 who set out, only 2,000 returned to
Europe.

       *       *       *       *       *

Much less am I led to enter into the history of the Crusades which
followed. How the Holy See, twenty years after St. Gregory, effected
that which St. Gregory attempted without result; how, along the very way
which the pilgrims I have described journeyed, 100,000 men at length
appeared cased in complete armour and on horseback; how they drove the
Turk from Nicæa over against Constantinople, where he had fixed his
imperial city, to the farther borders of Asia Minor; how, after
defeating him in a pitched battle at Dorylæum, they went on and took
Antioch, and then at length, after a long pilgrimage of three years,
made conquest of Jerusalem itself, I need not here relate. To one point
only is it to our present purpose to direct attention. It is commonly
said that the Crusades failed in their object; that they were nothing
else but a lavish expenditure of men and treasure; and that the
possession of the Holy Places by the Turks to this day is a proof of it.
Now I will not enter here into a very intricate controversy; this only
will I say, that, if the tribes of the desert, under the leadership of
the house of Seljuk, turned their faces to the West in the middle of the
eleventh century; if in forty years they had advanced from Khorasan to
Jerusalem and the neighbourhood of Constantinople; and if in consequence
they were threatening Europe and Christianity; and if, for that reason,
it was a great object to drive them back or break them to pieces; if it
were a worthy object of the Crusades to rescue Europe from this peril
and to reassure the anxious minds of Christian multitudes;--then were
the Crusades no failure in their issue, for this object was fully
accomplished. The Seljukian Turks were hurled back upon the East, and
then broken up, by the hosts of the Crusaders.[46] The lieutenant of
Malek Shah, who had been established as Sultan of Roum (as Asia Minor
was called by the Turks), was driven to an obscure town, where his
dynasty lasted, indeed, but gradually dwindled away. A similar fate
attended the house of Seljuk in other parts of the Empire, and internal
quarrels increased and perpetuated its weakness. Sudden as was its rise,
as sudden was its fall; till the terrible Zingis, descending on the
Turkish dynasties, like an avalanche, coöperated effectually with the
Crusaders and finished their work; and if Jerusalem was not protected
from other enemies, at least Constantinople was saved, and Europe was
placed in security, for three hundred years.[47]

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Thornton.

[36] Gibbon.

[37] Vid. Dow's Hindostan.

[38] Caldecott's Baber. Vid. also Elphinstone, vol. ii. p. 366.

[39] "Our victorious army bears the gates of the temple of Somnauth in
triumph from Affghanistan, and the despoiled tomb of Sultan Mahmood
looks upon the ruins of Ghuznee. The insult of 800 years is at last
avenged," etc., etc.--_Proclamation of the Governor-General to all the
princes, chiefs, and people of India._

[40] Gibbon. Universal Hist.

[41] Baronius, Pagi.

[42] Gibbon.

[43] Baronius, Gibbon.

[44] Vid. Cave's Hist. Litterar. in nom. _Lambertus_.

[45] Gibbon makes this the Fatimite governor of some town in Galilee,
laying the scene in Palestine. The name Capernaum is doubtfully
mentioned in the history, but the occurrence is said to have taken place
on the borders of Lycia. Anyhow, there were Turcomans in Palestine. Part
of the account in the text is taken from Marianus Scotus.

[46] I should observe that the Turks were driven out of Jerusalem by the
Fatimites of Egypt, two years before the Crusaders appeared.

[47] I am pleased to see that Mr. Sharon Turner takes the same view
strongly.--_England in Middle Ages_, i. 9. Also Mr. Francis Newman; "The
See of Rome," he says, "had not forgotten, if Europe had, how deadly and
dangerous a war Charles Martel and the Franks had had to wage against
the Moors from Spain. A new and redoubtable nation, the Seljuk Turks,
had now appeared on the confines of Europe, as a fresh champion of the
Mohammedan Creed; and it is not attributing too much foresight or too
sagacious policy to the Court of Rome, to believe, that they wished to
stop and put down the Turkish power before it should come too near. Be
this as it may, such was the result. The might of the Seljukians was
crippled on the plains of Palestine, and did not ultimately reach
Europe.... A large portion of Christendom, which disowned the religious
pretensions of Rome, was afterwards subdued by another Turkish tribe,
the Ottomans or Osmanlis; but Romish Christendom remained untouched:
Poland, Germany, and Hungary, saved her from the later Turks, even
during the schism of the Reformation, as the Franks had saved her from
the Moors. On the whole, it would seem that to the Romish Church we have
been largely indebted for that union between European nations, without
which Mohammedanism might perhaps not have been repelled. I state this
as probable, not at all as certain."--_Lectures at Manchester, 1846._




III.

THE CONQUESTS OF THE TURKS




LECTURE V.

_The Turk and the Christian._


I Said in my last Lecture, that we are bound to judge of persons and
events in history, not by their outward appearance, but by their inward
significancy. In speaking of the Turks, we may for a moment yield to the
romance which attends on their name and their actions, as we may admire
the beauty of some beast of prey; but, as it would be idle and puerile
to praise its shape or skin, and form no further judgment upon it, so in
like manner it is unreal and unphilosophical to interest ourselves in
the mere adventures and successes of the Turks, without going on to view
them in their moral aspect also. No race casts so broad and dark a
shadow on the page of ecclesiastical history, and leaves so painful an
impression on the minds of the reader, as the Turkish. The fierce Goths
and Vandals, and then again the Lombards, were converted to Catholicism.
The Franks yielded to the voice of St. Remigius, and Clovis, their
leader, became the eldest son of the Church. The Anglo-Saxons gave up
their idols at the preaching of St. Augustine and his companions. The
German tribes acknowledged Christ amid their forests, though they
martyred St. Boniface and other English and Irish missionaries who came
to them. The Magyars in Hungary were led to faith through loyalty to
their temporal monarch, their royal missioner St. Stephen. The heathen
Danes reappear as the chivalrous Normans, the haughty but true sons and
vassals of St. Peter. The Saracens even, who gave birth to an imposture,
withered away at the end of 300 or 400 years, and had not the power,
though they had the will, to persevere in their enmity to the Cross. The
Tartars had both the will and the power, but they were far off from
Christendom, or they came down in ephemeral outbreaks, which were rather
those of freebooters than of persecutors, or they directed their fury as
often against the enemies of the Church as against her children. But the
unhappy race, of whom I am speaking, from the first moment they appear
in the history of Christendom, are its unmitigated, its obstinate, its
consistent foes. They are inexhaustible in numbers, pouring down upon
the South and West, and taking one and the same terrible mould of
misbelief, as they successively descend. They have the populousness of
the North, with the fire of the South; the resources of Tartars, with,
the fanaticism of Saracens. And when their strength declines, and age
steals upon them, there is no softening, no misgiving; they die and make
no sign. In the words of the Wise Man, "Being born, they forthwith
ceased to be; and have been able to show no mark of virtue, but are
consumed in wickedness." God's judgments, God's mercies, are
inscrutable; one nation is taken, another is left. It is a mystery; but
the fact stands; since the year 1048 the Turks have been the great
Antichrist among the races of men.

I say since this date, because then it was that Togrul Beg finally
opened the gates of the North to those descents, which had taken place
indeed at intervals before, but then became the habit of centuries. In
vain was the power of his dynasty overthrown by the Crusaders; in vain
do the Seljukians disappear from the annals of the world; in vain is
Constantinople respited; in vain is Europe saved. Christendom in arms
had not yet finished, it had but begun the work, in which it needed the
grace to persevere. Down came the savage hordes, as at first, upon
Sogdiana and Khorasan, so then upon Syria and its neighbouring
countries. Sometimes they remain wild Turcomans, sometimes they fall
into the civilization of the South; but there they are, in Egypt, in the
Holy Land, in Armenia, in Anatolia, forming political bodies of long or
short duration, breaking up here to form again there, in all cases
trampling on Christianity, and beating out its sacred impression from
the breasts of tens of thousands. Nor is this all; scarcely is the race
of Seljuk quite extinct, or rather when it is on its very death-bed,
after it had languished and shrunk and dwindled and flickered and kept
on dying through a tedious two hundred years, when its sole remaining
heir was just in one obscure court, from that very court we discern the
birth of another empire, as dazzling in its rise, as energetic and
impetuous in its deeds as that of Togrul, Alp, and Malek, and far more
wide-spreading, far more powerful, far more lasting than the Seljukian.
This is the empire of the great (if I must measure it by a human
standard) and glorious race of Othman; this is the dynasty of the
Ottomans or Osmanlis; once the admiration, the terror of nations, now,
even in its downfall, an object of curiosity, interest, anxiety, and
even respect; but, whether high or low, in all cases to the Christian
the inveterate and hateful enemy of the Cross.


1.

There is a certain remarkable parallel and contrast between the fortunes
of these two races, the Seljukian and the Ottoman. In the beginning of
the twelfth century, the race of Seljuk all but took Constantinople, and
overran the West, and did not; in the beginning of the fifteenth, the
Ottoman Turks were all but taking the same city, and then were withheld
from taking it, and at length did take it, and have it still. In each
case a foe came upon them from the north, still more fierce and vigorous
than they, and humbled them to the dust.

These two foes, which came upon the Seljukian Turks and the Ottoman
Turks respectively, are names by this time familiar to us; they are
Zingis and Timour. Zingis came down upon the Seljukians, and Timour came
down upon the Ottomans. Timour pressed the Ottomans even more severely
than Zingis pressed the Seljukians; yet the Seljukians did not recover
the blow of Zingis; but the Ottomans survived the blow of Timour, and
rose more formidable after it, and have long outlived the power which
inflicted it.

Zingis and Timour were but the blind instruments of divine vengeance.
They knew not what they did. The inward impulse of gigantic energy and
brutal cupidity urged them forward; ambition, love of destruction,
sensual appetite, frenzied them, and made them both more and less than
men. They pushed eastward, westward, southward; they confronted promptly
and joyfully every peril, every obstacle which lay in their course. They
smote down all rival pride and greatness of man; and therefore, by the
law (as I may call it) of their nature and destiny, not on politic
reason or far-reaching plan, but because they came across him, they
smote the Turk. These then were one class of his opponents; but there
was another adversary, stationed against him, of a different order, one
whose power was not material, but mental and spiritual; one whose enmity
was not random, or casual, or temporary, but went on steadily from age
to age, and lasts down to this day, except so far as the Turk's
decrepitude has at length disarmed anxiety and opposition. I have spoken
of him already; of course I mean the Vicar of Christ. I mean the
zealous, the religious enmity to every anti-Christian power, of him who
has outlasted Zingis and Timour, who has outlasted Seljuk, who is now
outlasting Othman. He incited Christendom against the Seljukians, and
the Seljukians, assailed also by Zingis, sunk beneath the double blow.
He tried to rouse Christendom against the Ottomans also, but in vain;
and therefore in vain did Timour discharge his overwhelming, crushing
force against them. Overwhelmed and crushed they were, but they revived.
The Seljukians fell, in consequence of the united zeal of the great
Christian commonwealth moving in panoply against them; the Ottomans
succeeded by reason of its deplorable divisions, and its decay of faith
and heroism.


2.

Whether indeed in the long run, and after all his disappointments and
reverses, the Pope was altogether unsuccessful in his warfare against
the Ottomans, we shall see by-and-by; but certainly, if perseverance
merited a favourable issue, at least he has had a right to expect it.
War with the Turks was his uninterrupted cry for seven or eight
centuries, from the eleventh to the eighteenth; it is a solitary and
singular event in the history of the Church. Sylvester the Second was
the originator of the scheme of a union of Christian nations against
them. St. Gregory the Seventh collected 50,000 men to repel them. Urban
the Second actually set in motion the long crusade. Honorius the Second
instituted the order of Knight Templars to protect the pilgrims from
their assaults. Eugenius the Third sent St. Bernard to preach the Holy
War. Innocent the Third advocated it in the august Council of the
Lateran. Nicholas the Fourth negotiated an alliance with the Tartars for
its prosecution. Gregory the Tenth was in the Holy Land in the midst of
it, with our Edward the First, when he was elected Pope. Urban the Fifth
received and reconciled the Greek Emperor with a view to its renewal.
Innocent the Sixth sent the Blessed Peter Thomas the Carmelite to preach
in its behalf. Boniface the Ninth raised the magnificent army of French,
Germans, and Hungarians, who fought the great battle of Nicopolis.
Eugenius the Fourth formed the confederation of Hungarians and Poles who
fought the battle of Varna. Nicholas the Fifth sent round St. John
Capistran to urge the princes of Christendom against the enemy.
Callixtus the Third sent the celebrated Hunniades to fight with them.
Pius the Second addressed to their Sultan an apostolic letter of warning
and denunciation. Sixtus the Fourth fitted out a fleet against them.
Innocent the Eighth made them his mark from the beginning of his
Pontificate to the end. St. Pius the Fifth added the "Auxilium
Christianorum" to our Lady's Litany in thankfulness for his victory over
them. Gregory the Thirteenth with the same purpose appointed the
Festival of the Rosary. Clement the Ninth died of grief on account of
their successes. The venerable Innocent the Eleventh appointed the
Festival of the Holy Name of Mary, for their rout before Vienna.
Clement the Eleventh extended the Feast of the Rosary to the whole
Church for the great victory over them near Belgrade. These are but some
of the many instances which might be given; but they are enough for the
purpose of showing the perseverance of the Popes.

Nor was their sagacity in this matter less remarkable than their
pertinacity. The Holy See has the reputation, even with men of the
world, of seeing instinctively what is favourable, what is unfavourable,
to the interests of religion and of the Catholic Faith. Its undying
opposition to the Turks is not the least striking instance of this
divinely imparted gift. From the very first it pointed at them as an
object of alarm for all Christendom, in a way in which it had marked out
neither Tartars nor Saracens. It exposed them to the reprobation of
Europe, as a people, with whom, if charity differ from merciless
ferocity, tenderness from hardness of heart, depravity of appetite from
virtue, and pride from meekness and humility, the faithful never could
have sympathy, never alliance. It denounced, not merely an odious
outlying deformity, painful simply to the moral sight and scent, but an
energetic evil, an aggressive, ambitious, ravenous foe, in whom foulness
of life and cruelty of policy were methodized by system, consecrated by
religion, propagated by the sword. I am not insensible, I wish to do
justice, to the high qualities of the Turkish race. I do not altogether
deny to its national character the grandeur, the force and originality,
the valour, the truthfulness and sense of justice, the sobriety and
gentleness, which historians and travellers speak of; but, in spite of
all that has been done for them by nature and by the European world,
Tartar still is the staple of their composition, and their gifts and
attainments, whatever they may be, do but make them the more efficient
foes of faith and civilization.


3.

It was said by a Prophet of old, in the prospect of a fierce invader, "a
day of clouds and whirlwinds, a numerous and strong people, as the
morning spread upon the mountains. The like to it hath not been from the
beginning, nor shall be after it, even to the years of generation and
generation. Before the face thereof a devouring fire, and behind it a
burning flame. The land is like a garden of pleasure before it, and
behind it a desolate wilderness; neither is there any one can escape
it." Now I might, in illustration of the character which the Turks bear
in history, suitably accommodate these words to the moral, or the
social, or the political, or the religious calamities, of which they
were the authors to the Christian countries they overran; and so I might
bring home to you the meaning and drift of that opposition with which
the Holy See has met them in every age. I might allude (if I dare, but I
dare not, nor does any one dare),--else, allusion might be made to those
unutterable deeds which brand the people which allows them, even in the
natural judgment of men, as the most flagitious, the most detest

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