Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam
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Title: Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam
Author: Augustus Warner Williams
M. Smbat Gabrielean
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLEEDING ARMENIA: ITS HISTORY AND HORRORS UNDER THE CURSE OF ISLAM ***
BLEEDING ARMENIA
Its History and Horrors
Under the Curse of Islam
BY
Rev. A. W. WILLIAMS, of Chicago
For twenty years a close student of Missionary work
in the East--Syria, Turkey and Persia
AND
Dr. M. S. GABRIEL
President of the Armenian Patriotic Alliance, New York
CONTAINING ALSO THE VIEWS OF
HON. WM. E. GLADSTONE
ON THE TURKISH ATROCITIES
THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY
ON ENGLAND'S ATTITUDE
AND
EDWARD A. FREEMAN, the Historian
ON THE EASTERN QUESTION
Fully and Appropriately Illustrated.
PUBLISHERS' UNION
1896
Copyright 1896
BY
A. W. Williams
PREFACE.
In offering to the public this volume on Bleeding Armenia under the
Curse of Islam the writer does not seek to harrow the feelings of
sensitive readers by the recital of blood-curdling outrages, tortures,
murders, and butcherings; neither does he aim to discuss at any length
the involved problems of the Eastern Question, but he does definitely
seek to awaken interest in the history and fate of what may truly be
called the Martyr Nation of the World.
It is not the isolated fact that Armenia is now undergoing a most
terrible persecution, that fifty thousand or sixty thousand helpless
men, women and children have already suffered death in every form
which the most depraved nature, the most cruel instincts, the most
bitter and fanatical hatred could devise, that so deeply arouses us;
but the fact that for more than a thousand years this has been the
bitter and bloody story of her wrongs--this is what staggers us.
That the reader may have some clearer conceptions of the present
terrible situation in Armenia and of the causes which make her general
condition one most deplorable to contemplate, its early history,
civilization and conversion to Christianity is briefly sketched, and
attention is called to the fact that its very geographical position
has for many centuries made it the highway for the contending armies
of the East and West.
Armenia has been the battle ground where diverse systems of religion
and civilization have fought for supremacy. Its fate has always been
to suffer, whichever power was for the time victorious. It has been
sometimes ground to powder between the upper and nether millstone.
The rise of that alien system of religion which is the most bitter
and relentless persecutor of the Christian faith the world has
ever seen is accurately sketched, and careful attention given to it
because Christian people believe it to be true that the cause of the
fiercest and most vindictive hatred of the Turk to Greek, Bulgarian
or Armenian is primarily his loyalty to Mohammed and his hatred of
Jesus as the Christ.
It were not in the heart of humanity to kindle the passions into a
flame so fierce as to consume every element of mercy and compassion,
unless these were set on fire by fiendish fanaticism or religious
bigotry.
In this light these persecutions are but the irregular outbreak of
that spirit of opposition which will never cease so long as Islam
has power to draw the sword. From the hour that the Ottoman Turk was
securely seated on that eastern throne of the Cæsars, there never
has been peace, and there never can be while he holds the keys to
the gateway of nations.
Without laborious disquisition, with only a sincere desire to let
history tell its own story, some phases of the struggle for place,
preëminence and power between England and Russia, which form the
heart of the Eastern Question are also presented.
No one can be in the slightest doubt as to which side of the
Turkish-Armenian question the policy of England leans. There is no
question as to the fact that England has been the firmest friend to
Turkey for more than sixty years, and that the more she has feared
the growing power of Russia the more resolutely she has stood by
the Porte in spite of the atrocities which have marked the frequent
persecutions of the Christian races under the sway of Islam.
Her purely selfish and commercial "interests" have caused the English
government to be deaf to the cry of the decimated Bulgarians, and
of Armenians to-day. The part that England played in elaborating the
great treaties of Paris and of Berlin which controlled the issues of
the Crimean and the Russo-Turkish wars stamps the character of her
interests in the affairs of Turkey.
There is thus furnished in this historical data a broad ground on
which public opinion in this country may call upon Great Britain in
this hour of remorseless cruelty that she shall fulfil the treaty
obligations which she most solemnly and publicly accepted and assumed
and demand of the Porte at the mouth of shotted guns if need be, that
the rights of Christian Armenians shall be defended and maintained
by the whole power of the Turkish Empire.
The situation in Armenia is given with considerable fulness, though
volumes could not contain a complete account of the sufferings that
this long-doomed race has endured under the Curse of Islam.
The position that our government should occupy is that of high moral
equity, the insistence upon the preservation of common rights of
humanity irrespective of race or creed.
The immediate duty lying at our doors is to assist in relieving
the distress even unto starvation, which hundreds of thousands of
Armenians are now enduring. Many will perish before aid can reach
them. What is to be done must be done quickly.
This book while making little pretension to literary polish is the
result of wide historical research and has been carefully written and
edited, and is now cast upon the great tide of public opinion with the
hope that it may stimulate permanent interest in the great problems
which are at issue in the conflict between Christianity and Islam--that
it may reach and move the springs of deepest sympathy for suffering
Armenians; that it may rouse a more vigorous moral indignation against
such crime and cruelty, and thereby assist in creating such a just
and righteous public sentiment that our government may take such a
stand as shall tell speedily for the bettering of the conditions of
human existence in far off Armenia.
Thus confiding in the kindly consideration of a generous public, I
send forth this book on the mission to which it is hereby dedicated,
viz:--to plead the cause of Bleeding Armenia which is being done to
death under the Curse of Islam.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY HISTORY OF ARMENIA.
A Martyr Nation--Need of a Voice--Historical Annals at
Nineveh--Abgar's Letter to Jesus of Nazareth--Acceptance
of Christianity--Council of Nice--Persian Conquests--Bible
Translated--Great Persecutions--Dying for the Faith--Magi
Driven Out--Saracens in Armenia--Fearful Tortures--Burned
Alive--Bogha the Tyrant--Sultan of Turkey--Islam or Death
--Yussuf the Persian--Great Horrors Repeated--Starvation
--Peace Returns 21
CHAPTER II.
THE RISE OF ISLAM.
Arabia--Mecca--Idolatry--Mohammed's Birth--Carlyle on Islamism
--The Hegira--Battle of Beder--Mecca Captured--Death of Mohammed
--Golden Era of the Saracens--Khaled at Damascus--City Captured--
Jerusalem Besieged--Capitulates--Persia Conquered--Egypt Won
in a Day--Constantinople Besieged 44
CHAPTER III.
THE STORY OF THE FIRST CRUSADE.
Origin--Jerusalem Captured by the Turks--Peter the Hermit--
Pope Urban--Crusade of the Mob--Walter the Penniless--Battle
of Nicomedia--300,000 Perished in all--Crusade of the Kings
and Nobles--Godfrey of Bouillon--Europe Moves Westward--
Antioch--Jerusalem Captured July 14th, 1099--Godfrey
Elected King 72
CHAPTER IV.
THE GREAT TARTAR INVASIONS.
The Turcomans--Seljuks--Persia Conquered--Armenia Wasted--
140,000 Slain--Ani with 1,001 Churches Falls--Awful Slaughter
--Asia Minor Ravaged--Emperor of Constantinople Defeated--
Damascus Falls--Saladin--Jerusalem Capitulates--Silence on
the Coast--Jenghiz Khan--Armenia in Great Distress--Turks in
Europe--Tamerlane--Armenia again in Torture--Pyramids of
Human Skulls--Death of Tamerlane 104
CHAPTER V.
THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
Ottoman Empire Rising--Danger to Europe--Mohammed II. the
Conqueror--Fortress Built at Gallipoli--Emperor Alarmed--
Europe Indifferent--First Great Siege with Artillery--Seven
Weeks Bombardment--Final Assault--50,000 Ottomans Fall--Charge
of the Janissaries--Constantine Died at His Post--Church of
St. Sophia is turned into a Mosque--Islam sits on the Throne
of Christianity 135
CHAPTER VI.
THE BULGARIAN MASSACRE.
Four Centuries of Misrule--Chios, 40,000 Slain--Christians
in Turkey Persecuted--Russia Demands their Protection--France
and England against Russia--Czar's Army Crosses into
Moldavia--Sultan Declares War--Siege of Sebastopol--Treaty of
Paris 1856--Turkish Loans--Revolt in Servia--Andrassy Note--
Reforms Promised--Bulgarian Massacres--England Horror Struck--
Gladstone on the Massacres--15,000 Butchered--Russia Arms for
the Deliverance of the Christians 159
CHAPTER VII.
THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR.
War Declared--Crossing the Danube--Siege of Plevna--
Skobeleff's Gallant Charge--Third Siege--Plevna Reduced and
Surrenders--Alexander at the Danube--Shipka Pass--The Valley
of Roses--Turkey Conquered--Adrianople--San Stefano--Berlin
Treaty--Russia Robbed of her Victories 185
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SULTAN ABDUL HAMID.
Questions of Policy--Palace Rule--Alarm of the Porte--Shrewd
Diplomacy--Playing off the Powers--Balance of Power--Reforms
Promised--Never Fulfilled 213
CHAPTER IX.
PROGRESS AND POWER OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.
The First Chapter in Turkish Missions--Have Missions been a
Failure--Modern Triumphs of the Gospel 250
CHAPTER X.
THE KURDS AND ARMENIANS.
Territory--Origin--Occupation--Character--Agriculture--Robbers
--Cruelty of Warfare--Language--Homes--Women--Ruined Castles--
Churches 277
CHAPTER XI.
THE REIGN OF TERROR--SASSOUN 303
CHAPTER XII.
THE REIGN OF TERROR--TREBIZOND AND ERZEROUM 341
CHAPTER XIII.
THE REIGN OF TERROR--VAN AND MOUSH 360
CHAPTER XIV.
THE REIGN OF TERROR--HARPOOT AND ZEITOUN 383
CHAPTER XV.
RELIEF WORK IN ARMENIA.
Mission Stations--The Christian Herald--Red Cross Society--
Miss Clara Barton 400
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CURSE OF ISLAM.
Despotic in Government--Intolerant in Religion--Evils
of Polygamy--Degradation of Women--Ignorance--Cruelty of
Officials--Extortion--Universal Distress--No Advance Possible
--The Turk never Improves--Islam--Worse and Worse--Its Rule is
against Humanity 423
CHAPTER XVII.
THE GREATEST CRIME OF THE CENTURY.
England's Inactivity--Her Solemn Obligation--Treaty of San
Stefano--Berlin--Convention with Turkey--Cyprus--Occupation
of Egypt--Position of the English Government--Difficulties
in the Way--But the Suffering Awful--Freeman--Gladstone 433
CHAPTER XVIII.
AMERICA'S DUTY AND PRIVILEGE.
Possible Solution--Universal Arbitration--Constantinople a
Free City--Europe Free--Armenia's Sorrows Healed--The Dawning
of the Twentieth Century 470
APPENDIX.
DESCRIPTION OF ILLUSTRATIONS 495
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Page
Massacre of Armenians by Police, Softas and Kurds Frontispiece.
Great and Little Ararat from the Northeast 19
Armenian Types and Costumes 38
Monastic Rock Chambers at Gueremeh 55
The Sultan Abdul Hamid in the Park of the Yildiz Palace 74
Types of Softas 91
"The Turks are upon us," A Panic in Stamboul 110
The New Grand Vizier on His Way to the Sublime Porte 127
Explaining the Inflammatory Placards 146
Taking Armenian Prisoners to the Grand Zaptie Prison 163
British Cabinet Debating the Armenian Question 182
The British Mediterranean Fleet 199
Types and Costumes.--Kurdish Gentlemen 218
A Common Scene in the Streets of Erzeroum 235
Armenian Peasant Women Weaving Turkish Carpets 254
Armenian Peasants Fleeing to Russia 271
Armenian Women, Province of Van 290
Armenian Mountaineer of Shadokh 307
Grand Mosque and Interior of Urfah 324
Passage Boat on the Arras 343
Arresting the Murderers of Armenians 362
Sketches of Armenia and Kurdestan 379
Refugees and Policemen at an Armenian Church 398
A Prayer for Revenge 415
Massacre of Armenians at Erzeroum 422
Burying the Bodies After the Massacre at Erzeroum 431
A Grim Corner of the Cemetery, Erzeroum 438
The Prison at Erzeroum 444
Trebizond 453
Principal Street and Bazaars of Erzeroum 459
Town and Citadel of Van 466
Armenian Refugees at the Labor Bureau at Van 475
MAPS.
Map of Turkey in Asia 284-285
Map of Armenia 321
INTRODUCTION.
At no time of the world's history have there ever been two months so
rich in grand tragedy as the Armenian period of November and December,
1895. It is not the enormous number of the killed nor the frightful
suffering of the survivors that give this period its unique character,
but the fact that the great majority of the 75,000 or more of the
massacred Christians had a free choice to make between life and
death, and they chose death. Civilized humanity is bound to take
a supreme interest in the action of those heroes and heroines who
sacrificed all the interests of existence to their moral ideal of
life,--in those women who, in order to escape from the outrage of
a bestial soldiery, threw themselves into the river Euphrates and
were drowned,--in those virgins who, captured by the brutal Moslems,
received twenty, thirty sword cuts in defending their honor,--in those
men who, when threatened with instant death if they would not embrace
Islam, answered, "we are ready to be immolated for the love of Christ,"
and they were slaughtered like sheep. The historian and the dramatic
writer, the poet and the painter will soon follow the diplomatist and
the journalist to take up the matter, and the Christian peoples of
all lands will continue to receive now a thrill of pious admiration,
now a tremendous shock at the recital of these events.
In fact, the Armenian occurrences have two sides, one glorious, and
one of hellish darkness. They bring out in the most striking fashion,
the infernal genius of the Mahommedan religion. The Moslems, high
and low, exhibited such foul sensuality, such satanic cruelty and
such delight in ferocity of which even the savages are incapable. And
these qualities are precisely those which Mohammedanism cultivates.
The Armenian crisis served also as a test to bring out the actual
degree of European morality. Alas! who would have believed a year ago
that the Christian powers of Europe would permit the Turk to attempt
before their eyes the extermination of a Christian nation and church
by wholesale massacre and forced conversions? Such is, nevertheless,
the dreadful revelation of the year. They did not prevent the most
colossal crime of the century, nor did they punish the criminal
who by their mercy alone had the power of committing such a crime;
moreover, they had the front, at least some of them, to declare that,
for reasons of high diplomacy, they were ready to support the authority
of the monstrous criminal over his victims.
What makes this infamous course of the Christian governments the
more ominous, is the fact that the Christian peoples and churches did
not seem to be shocked. They stifled their indignation and swallowed
their own protests if they felt or uttered any, and we see no nation
whatever boiling with the sacred rage of revolting conscience.
The British government and press have tried hard to show that England
has done all she could in order to protect the Armenians. Russia has
yet her national conscience very imperfectly developed, Germany's
conscience is nearly dead under the curse of her success against
France. It is only the government of Great Britain that feels the
obligation of executing itself. But its failure in protecting Armenia
is not merely the forced consequence of the course of the other powers
in the matter, as it would like to make the public believe. England had
sinned against Armenia during all the long period of 18 years before
the matters came to a crisis. She had been, in 1878, the champion
of the Turk against Russia, and in order to justify her support of
a Moslem power which had been the curse of its Christian subjects,
Great Britain pledged herself by the Cyprus Convention to protect
the Christians against Turkish misrule as she would protect Turkish
territory against Russian aggression.
Did England fulfill her solemn obligation toward Armenia? No! The
British consuls in Armenia did report to the government that the
Turkish authorities and Kurdish beys and Hamidieh troops continued to
oppress the Armenians just as before, nay, worse than before,--that
their worthiest leaders, bishops, professors, influential men were
being exiled, the benevolent associations scattered, the useful books
censured, the peasantry ground to dust, and hundreds of innocent
men flung into prison and tortured--but the British Government did
not move.
Let there be no misunderstanding as to my meaning. I do not mean
England remained absolutely indifferent, but she never acted in time,
and with adequate energy. She remained always behind the times. She
brought to bear upon the Sultan a pressure of 1,000 tons when a
weight of 10,000 was required, and used 10,000 when 100,000 was
needed, with the result that Abdul-Hamid, instead of coming to his
senses, grew bolder after each successful resistance. With trifling
concessions he pushed his way and had the Kurdish brigands organized
into imperial troops, acquitted Moossa Beg, enjoyed the Erzeroum
massacre, undertook the more important massacre of Sassoon, and after
all, the crowning massacres of 1895. Had England insisted upon Moossa
Beg's being hung, the Erzeroum slaughter would not have been allowed,
and if the leaders of the Erzeroum carnage at least were punished,
the greater devastation of the Sassoon province would have been
prevented. Evidently it was much easier for the British government to
successfully coerce the Sultan for the exemplary punishment of the
first criminals than later to check the greater tides of sweeping
evils. To judge aright, we must consider the whole course of the
British in the matter and not merely what happened at the critical
moment when the task was so much harder. And even then, namely in
October last, did England show herself equal to the requirements of
the crisis? Whatever Lord Salisbury and his party organs may say,
he must have many times since avowed to himself that he did not act
then as he could and ought to. He lacked courage and now the prestige
of Great Britain has sunk to a miserably low degree in the Orient.
For the present the Sultan reigns in Constantinople and the Czar
governs. The situation is evidently an unsettled one, as Hamid's
suicidal policy has prostrated the whole country, and a radical
change is to come in the near future. The final doom of the Ottoman
Empire can not delay much longer. The world expects to see some sudden
developments in the affairs of the East. The fate of agonizing Armenia
will be decided, and the relations of the Christian with the Moslem
world will enter on a new phase.
This book therefore, is devoted to "Bleeding Armenia," Under the
Rule of Islam; will touch problems of the highest importance and
command general interest. It can not give a definite solution to the
multitudinous questions raised by the condition of Armenia, but will
contribute to bring them to public comprehension and right judgment.
M. S. Gabriel.
BLEEDING ARMENIA.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY HISTORY OF ARMENIA.
"Gather you, gather you angels of God
Chivalry, Justice and Truth:
Come, for the earth has grown cursed and old
Come down and renew us her youth!
Freedom, self-sacrifice, mercy and love,
Haste to the battlefield, stoop from above
To the Day of the Lord at Hand."
"Who would sit down and sigh for a lost age of gold
While the Lord of all ages is here?
True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God,
And those who can suffer can dare
Each past age of gold was an iron age too,
And the meanest of saints may find work to do
In the Day of the Lord at Hand."
Kingsley.
The history of Armenia is a chapter of horrors unequalled by the
history of any other nation under the sun. The record should arouse
interest in the fate of this ancient and most remarkable people,
who have suffered the most cruel outrages--the victims of the most
horrible crimes that have ever stained the pages of history with
tears and blood. As we read the heart rending story of their awful
fate, we can scarcely wonder that a heartbroken mother, as she gazed
on the lifeless form of a beloved daughter whom she had sought in
vain to preserve from a ruffian band of Turks, should cry out in the
frenzy of her grief that God himself had gone mad, and that maniacs
and demons incarnate were stalking through the earth.
Where is there a voice with passion and fire enough in it to arouse
the hearts of Christian America to demand, in the name of a common
humanity, that the massacres and outrages of the fierce and fanatical
Turks shall cease? In what nobler cause did ever Christian knight
draw sword, or a nation ever spend treasure and blood.
Ours is not the terrible responsibility of the British nation which
has suffered commercial considerations to outweigh frenzied appeals
for justice and toleration, but it is a weight of shame that will be
equally hard to bear in the Day of the Lord, if we, the mightiest
Christian nation on the face of the globe, in the darkest night of
religious persecution shall put forth no effective hand to deliver this
most ancient Christian race from the clutch of fiendish fanaticism.
The cause of Armenia is founded on facts which exalt this people to
the loftiest heights of martyrdom and have made them literally for
eighteen centuries "The Blazing Torch of Asia." Her tortures will not
cease until the mailed hand of Christendom shall smite into the dust
the power of the Prophet. The blood of probably a million martyrs to
Christianity has drenched the soil of Armenia. Its fair proportions
have been curtailed by conqueror after conqueror, its fields pillaged,
its homes devastated and at no time has this devoted nation been
without the presence of the sword suspended by the single hair. Embrace
the creed of Islam, or the scimitar of the fanatic Moslem severs the
hair which separates an existence of fear from the martyr's crown,
is forever in the thoughts of every Armenian.
The historians of this people of Armenia claim for them a very ancient
heritage--a career which though narrow, is one of thrilling interest.
About the year 150 B. C., by the might of conquest a Parthian King
came to the throne of Armenia; and wishing to know something of
the origin of the race and of the history of the country, and not
finding anything satisfactory in Armenia, he sent the most learned
man in all his dominions to consult the old Chaldean manuscripts and
tablets that were to be found in the Royal Archives of Nineveh. Every
facility was afforded him in his search, and among the archives he
found a manuscript written in the Greek characters with this label:
"This book containing the annals of ancient history was translated from
Chaldean into Greek by order of Alexander the Great." He extracted
from that the history of Armenia as written and continuing it down
to his own times presented it to the King, who ordered it preserved
with great care in his treasury.
The principal sources of their national history rests upon the works
of a celebrated Armenian writer of the fifth century, who claims to
have derived his information from the above mentioned manuscript. They
derive their parentage from Gomer, the son of Japhet, or rather from
Haig, a grandson of Gomer, who moving northward from the plains of
Shinar, settled with his families and followers in the country round
about Ararat. This interesting story, which touches in many points
the authentic histories of Nineveh and Babylon, cannot here be told;
but we hastily sketch the succeeding eras in the ever fateful history
of this primitive race of people.
The grandson of the founder of this Parthian race of kings, Ardashes
I., brought all Persia under his sway, and then turned westward with an
army so vast he did not know their number. He subdued the whole of Asia
Minor--passed the Hellespont, conquered Thrace and Greece, destroying
many cities. Returning to Armenia, he planned another expedition into
Persia in which he was defeated, wounded, and in dying, exclaimed,
"Alas, how transient and unsatisfactory is glory."
A little later an immense army of allied Persians and Armenians
invade Palestine and Phenicia, the Roman armies being unable to
stop their progress. For an immense bribe of one thousand talents of
gold, Antigonus secures their assistance in dethroning Hyrcanus and
establishes himself upon the throne of Jerusalem.
In the second year of Abgar (or Agbarus) (B. C. 3,) a decree was issued
by Augustus that all the kingdoms acknowledging the Roman dominion
should be taxed, and that statues of himself should be erected in
the religious temples of every nation. Herod, King of the Jews,
puffed up with pride, also sent statues of himself to be placed near
those of Augustus. Abgar refusing to comply with this request, Herod
sent a mighty force against him into Armenia, but the invaders were
met and defeated with great loss. Abgar now determined to shake off
the Roman yoke, and built the city of Edessa and strongly fortified
it. Accused to Tiberius, the succeeding Emperor, of inciting the
Persians to rebellion, he sent messengers to justify himself.
During their stay in Palestine they heard all the wonders which were
related to them of the extraordinary power of Christ. To gratify their
curiosity they went to Jerusalem, witnessed the miracles performed
by our Lord, and then returned to Armenia. Abgar, listening to
their accounts, became satisfied that Jesus was the Son of God, and
immediately sent back his messengers to Jerusalem with a letter to
Christ in which acknowledging Him to be the true and only Son of God,
he says: "Therefore, now I have written and besought Thee to visit me,
and to heal the disease with which I am afflicted. I have also heard
that the Jews murmur against Thee and are plotting to injure Thee;
I have, however, a very small but noble state which is sufficient
for us both."
The authenticity of this letter and the answer which Jesus sent
in reply has been questioned: but truth is often stranger than
fiction. Eusebius (Ecc'l Hist. Bk. I., chap. 13), declares that in
the public registers of the city of Edessa these letters and records
of the transactions following them were still to be found in his day.
The story is that St. Thomas, directed by our Lord, wrote a reply
to this letter, promising to send to them an apostle after His
resurrection. Accordingly Thaddeus was afterwards sent to Edessa,
where King Abgar was instructed and baptized.
Many believed and were baptized. So gladly was the truth received,
that tradition says that Bartholomew and Jude also were sent into
Armenia, but later rulers apostatizing from the faith, began a fierce
persecution. Bartholomew was crucified, the others also suffered
martyrdom with multitudes of their disciples.
Thus early was the infant church of Armenia baptized in its own blood,
and for scarcely a generation has its blood ever ceased to flow. It
is the martyr church and race of Christendom. Its persecutors have
literally bathed themselves in the blood of the slain.
Witness the horrible barbarity of a Persian Governor of Armenia
in 1038, who, upon the capture of a city which had dared to rebel
against their oppressors, was so wild with rage that he ordered all
the Greek and Armenian captives to be slain; and when a trench that
had been dug was filled with the blood of his butchered victims he
satiated his revenge by bathing in it.
In 286 A. D., there was a revival of Christianity in
Armenia. Diocletian, Emperor of Rome, restored Tiridates to his
throne, driving out the Persian usurper. With Tiridates there came
from Rome Gregory the Illuminator. By his preaching of the Gospel
the whole nation was converted to Christianity; and in the year 302
A.D., on the occasion of his going to Cæsarea Gregory was consecrated
Archbishop of Armenia by Leontius the Metropolitan. Later, when the
news reached Armenia that the Emperor Constantine was a convert,
Tiridates and St. Gregory undertook the journey to Rome, when an
alliance was solemnly agreed upon between the two nations. At the
Council of Nice, A. D. 325, the church of Armenia was represented by
bishops who brought back with them the Creed of the Fathers. Thus
the true light began to shine in fuller splendor in the midst of
Cimmerian darkness.
The Armenians seem to have been born for sorrow. Their provinces were
the highways of hostile nations. The armies of Rome and of Persia
passing through always carried desolation and ruin with them. Compelled
to yield to the demands of one conquering army, they became objects of
vengeance to the other when the former had withdrawn. In the year 369,
Shabuh, King of Persia, sent a large army against Arshag of Armenia,
who, being caught in a fortress which could not stand a siege,
determined to deliver himself to the Persian general with a view of
pleading his cause before the king.
Upon his arrival in Persia a palace was given him for his residence
and that of his court. But Shabuh immediately compelled him to write
to his Queen to join him in Persia; an order was also sent to the
chiefs and nobles to proceed with their Queen to the Persian capital.
The Armenian chiefs, alarmed at the order, begged to be excused,
but the King being inexorable, they attacked the troops he had sent
for their escort, put them to flight, and then fled into distant
provinces. The Queen also taking the treasures of the royal palace
retired to a strong fortress and wrote to Bab, a royal prince held
as hostage at Constantinople, to raise an army of Greeks and hasten
to the rescue of his father.
Shabuh angry at these events caused Arshag to be loaded with chains
and cast into the castle of Oblivion, where, once immured, no one
was ever heard of again.
The King of Persia sent a powerful army against the Queen headed by
two apostate Armenians. They found the country in a most deplorable
condition and at once laid siege to the fortress in which the Queen
had sought safety. The siege became a blockade, until despairing
of relief the inhabitants opened the gates and surrendered. The
castle was plundered with horrible atrocities, while the Queen and
captives who were spared were taken to Persia and by various and
satanic methods of torture compelled to abjure their faith. Arshag,
the imprisoned King, finding his bondage hopeless, driven to despair,
fell on his sword and expired, having reigned eighteen years.
Shabuh sent Merujan the apostate again into Armenia with a large army
and a company of magi, promising him the sovereignty of the country if
he succeeded in subduing the chiefs and in forcing the Armenians to
embrace the Persian religion. A most dreadful persecution followed,
priests and bishops and people were exiled, and multitudes put to
death. All the books found in the country written in Greek characters
were destroyed, and an order issued that no Armenian should learn
that tongue, and that thenceforth all writings must be in the Persian
characters. The magi and the executioners were distributed among
the towns and villages, the miserable inhabitants having only the
alternative of abjuring their religion or meeting instant death.
This reads like a chapter of recent horrors. Finally Eastern Armenia
became a province of Persia and after the death of Shabuh enjoyed
a little tranquillity. At this time a certain Christian, Mesrob by
name, became famous for sanctity and wisdom. He invented an Armenian
alphabet, in the year 406. Learning began to flourish. Many schools
were founded, and the Armenian youth were taught their language in
their own alphabet. The Persian division of Armenia became celebrated
throughout the East for its knowledge. The Old Testament was translated
into Armenian from the Syriac, the New Testament having already been
translated by St. Mesrob.
A few years later, A. D. 428, the dominion of the Arsacides ceased
forever, after having lasted for nearly six hundred years: and Armenia
came under the dominion of Persia and was ruled by Prefects for four
hundred and fifty-six years.
In A. D. 441 Hazguerd (Yezdiged) II. came to the throne of Persia
and meditated the forcible conversion of all Armenia to the worship
of the sun (fire worship) and the doctrines of Zoroaster. He exhorted
the chiefs and people to embrace the doctrine of the magi, but without
effect. He sent officers to collect most extortionate taxes with power
to torture at discretion. Many chiefs and nobles and multitudes of
people were tortured, thrown into dungeons, suffered most terrible
forms of martyrdom, yet remained steadfast in faith. Some few yielded
under the fierceness of persecution and kissed their hands to the
sun--but only a few.
Pleading in vain for mercy, they resolved to sell their lives as
dearly as possible. The bishops and chiefs called a great assembly
where they swore to fight for the honor and in defence of the Holy
Church. They gathered an army of one hundred thousand men and attacked
all the Persians in the kingdom. The magi were put to death and their
temples were demolished. Fresh armies were poured in from Persia and
the carnage increased. Fire worship was reëstablished, the former
tragedies of blood and torture were reënacted, many churches were
demolished, the priests dying under most excruciating torture. Is it
the fifth century or the nineteenth that we are describing?
In A. D. 451, Hazguerd ordered his generals to proceed into Armenia
with a large army and put the entire Christian population to the
sword. They were opposed by Vartan, who by sending heralds throughout
the country, warned the inhabitants of the threatened doom and gathered
an army of sixty-six thousand determined men. The two armies faced each
other late in the day with only a river between. That night Vartan,
with priests and bishops, passed through the army exhorting them to
fight manfully against the invaders. The Armenians all received the
sacrament that night, and inflamed with love of Christ and country,
were ready to do and die.
On the following day which was the 2d of June the Armenians, eager
to shed their blood for their faith, crossed the river and commenced
the attack.
At first they were successful and cut down the Persians with great
slaughter. But there was treason in their ranks; and in the midst of
the battle five thousand men drew off and joined their enemies. The
fortunes of the day changed and the Armenians were routed. The glorious
Vartan and eight allied chiefs and two hundred and eighty-six warriors
were left on the field. Hundreds of wounded were taken prisoners and
immediately put to death.
These outrages so exasperated the Armenians that again they rallied,
defeated their enemies and pursuing them into Persian territory
ravaged the country, burning towns and villages. The Persian King
now offered terms of peace, promising to forbear persecuting them on
account of their religious faith; and for a time the war ceased. But
he did not deliver up his prisoners. Many bishops and priests suffered
martyrdom in 454; not until 456 did the chiefs and nobles, who had
been languishing in prison for years rather than deny their faith,
regain their freedom and return into Armenia.
From the year 600 no Persian Prefect was ever again sent into Armenia,
that office being held by men of their own race; but on the West,
however, a power was rising up that would prove a fearful scourge,
a relentless and most bitter persecutor--The Saracenic Power.
THE SARACENS IN ARMENIA.
About the year 636 Armenia was invaded by the Saracens. This was the
beginning of the most unhappy era in the annals of Armenia. The whole
country was shortly plunged into ruin and desolation.
Nothing at first could withstand the onslaught of these fierce
warriors, Saracens, Infidels, who knew no word for mercy and regarded
all women as but slaves to their worse than bestial passions.
After a fierce battle in which the Armenians were defeated with great
slaughter the whole country was ablaze with conflagrations. A city
captured after a siege of months was taken by storm. The most dreadful
havoc ensued, twelve thousand inhabitants were massacred, churches,
palaces pillaged and burned and thirty-five thousand citizens carried
into captivity.
These were but the beginning of sorrows and horrors. Invasion after
invasion followed until at last peace was bought at the cost of an
immense yearly tribute which impoverished the whole people.
Justinian, the Greek Emperor, disregarding all ties of a common faith
and heedless of the common danger from the rising power, demanded
that they should renounce obedience to the Saracens and return to
his authority. They replied: "How often have we been subject to the
rule of Greeks, yet how little assistance have they rendered us in
time of our distress. * * * Should we at present submit ourselves to
your power, our kingdom would be exposed to invasion, we should be
delivered up to the sword and our habitations to fire and pillage. *
* * We beseech you, therefore to let us remain under the dominion of
our present masters by which alone our safety and the safety of our
nation can be secured."
The Emperor enraged at this humble pleading, sent an army to
invade Armenia. Twenty-five provinces were almost depopulated by
its ravages and thousands were carried away and sold as slaves in
foreign lands. The following year another army of forty thousand
men came to ravage the remaining territory. The nation was driven to
madness and despair by the devastations committed. But as if all the
vials of wrath and the horrors of hell were to be let loose at once,
the Saracens, believing they had returned to the subjection of the
Greeks, again invaded Armenia. They destroyed every town and village
on their line of march, and carried away vast multitudes of captives.
Again they returned with greater numbers than before. Cities,
towns, villages, fortresses, were razed to the ground, garrisons and
people either butchered or carried away captive. What could the poor
Armenians do but yield up their country to the power and government
of the Saracens?
Again the Greeks returned with a large army, and the weakened,
disheartened, impoverished people could only bow in subjection. The
emperor taking hostages from among the most distinguished chiefs
returned to Constantinople, leaving behind an army of thirty thousand
men to protect his vassals. At the expiration of three years all
these had departed and the country lay open to the inroads of their
fiercest enemies.
The Saracens soon reëstablished their power; the governors being
appointed from Damascus. To punish the Armenians for what they termed
their rebellion, many of the nobility were decoyed into churches which
were then set on fire and the poor Armenians were burnt alive. Their
property was then confiscated, their families siezed and put to death
with fiendish cruelty on account of their religious faith.
This reads like a chapter of living horrors: for the photographs of
to-day are only those of yesterday retouched with human blood.
The governors everywhere oppressed the Armenians with little
intermission, levying heavy taxes and inflicting extortionate fines
for their own private use. When the Saracens began the building of
Bagdad, the tribute was mercilessly increased. The greatest distress
prevailed, the evil became intolerable, a dreadful dearth occurred
in their harvests because of the furious hailstorms that swept over
wide regions of country. Clouds of locusts devoured what the hail
had spared and famine and misery untold desolated the land.
BOGHA THE TYRANT.
It was in the year 850 that the most awful calamities fell upon this
devoted race. Bogha the Tyrant, marched with a vast army to the utter
ruin of Armenia. Everywhere terror and consternation prevailed as
at their first entrance into the upper valleys, they cut off utterly
every living soul they found. The Armenians who inhabited the summits
of the mountains, beholding the awful massacres, rushed down in great
numbers to attack their enemies, but the Saracens taking possession of
all the passes cut off their retreat. A great many were killed, and
many more were taken alive. These were bound with ropes and dragged
into the presence of the governor. Bogha selected the finest looking
men and put them in confinement, intending to force them to renounce
their religion; the remainder he ordered slain before his eyes.
This horrible carnage was repeated in several provinces. One of the
most famous chiefs sought to make his peace with costly gifts, but was
seized with his wife and children and sent in chains to Bagdad. Then
Bogha marched his army into the province of Vasburagan with orders to
seize and bind all who were able to carry arms. Separating the finest
men again for confinement and torture, the others were inexorably
consigned to death. The slaughter was immense, as the records state,
human blood fertilized the land, and the valleys were choked up with
the bodies of former inhabitants. Those whom he had spared resolutely
refusing to deny their faith were tortured with fiendish ingenuity
until death relieved them of their sufferings.
In the extremity of their anguish they cried out: "How long O Lord? How
Long?" A thousand years has brought no adequate reply. You recall the
exclamation of Sojourner Truth's humble piety when Frederick Douglas
was fiercely lamenting the death of Abraham Lincoln, "Frederick,
is God dead?" and we wonder how the faith of the harried Armenians
lived when to swear by Mohammed would have delivered them from their
horrible sufferings.
Is the heart of this nation dead? Are we so taken up with the greed
for gold, the establishment of commerce, the extension of trade,
the rivalries of political ambitions, that the bleeding arms of the
Armenians are still stretched forth in vain, and their cries drowned
by the din of business or the revels of pleasure.
But no deliverer was nigh. The mountains and the rocks reëchoed in
vain their cries for help, their appeals for mercy.
Bogha was drunk with blood. The nation must perish. Province after
province was swept of its cities, many thousands slain and massacred;
and still the nobles and the chief men were spared for torture. Many
were tortured to such an extent that scarcely a feature remained by
which to distinguish them. When every art, device and glittering
promise had failed to induce them to apostatize, and the cruel
ingenuity of their tormentors could devise no more appalling agony,
they were crucified.
The persecutions lasted almost without intermission for five years till
the earth itself was sickened with the blood of innocent men. When
almost the whole land lay desolate and many provinces were more like
slaughterhouses than inhabited countries, Bogha gathered multitudes
of captives for slavery, and the noblest, bravest men for sacrifice,
and set out for Bagdad. In the presence of the Caliph and the chief and
flower of Saracenic nobility, the most horrible scenes were reënacted
in the capital of the Saracens. This only now remains for the Sultan
of Turkey, the head of the Mohammedan religion to do, to equal in
barbarity the deeds of Bogha the tyrant; and perhaps this alone will
rouse all Christendom, viz: Drive the miserable and starving remnants
left in his eastern provinces in chains to Constantinople and repeat
in the eyes of all Europe the awful crimes with which in the blazing
light of modern civilization he has darkened the face of all the East.
The Caliph gave these hapless victims but one alternative--the only
alternative Islam ever offers when it has the power, viz: either to
renounce Christianity and embrace Islamism, or be put to torture and
to death. We shall learn what torture is when we come to rehearse
in your tingling ears the devilish cruelties under which upwards of
sixty thousand Armenians have perished within the last few months.
Many outwardly renounced Christianity as the sight of the prolonged
tortures lacerated their hearts and smote them with weakness. Many
others, more firm, gloriously died in defence and confirmation of
their faith.
THE THIRD ARMENIAN DYNASTY. (A. D. 856.)
The pressure on the reader's sympathy will be relieved by the portrayal
of a brief reign of peace in Armenia, but righteous indignation will
not be lessened.
Ashod I., the son of Sumpad, the Confessor who died in chains
at Bagdad, gathered the remains of his tribe together, after the
retirement of Bogha, the Tyrant, and by his courage, wisdom and
humanity became greatly esteemed. The Caliph of Bagdad in an hour of
strange friendliness conferred on him the government of Armenia.
He sent him also a special messenger, bearing rich presents and
splendid official robes, directing him to invest Ashod with the
supreme power.
His first effort was to restore confidence and improve the condition
of the country, to the great satisfaction of all the Armenians. George
II., Pontiff, and all the chiefs united in drawing up a petition to
the Caliph soliciting him to bestow a crown upon Ashod, promising at
the same time not to falter in their allegiance to the authority of
Bagdad. To the great joy of all Armenians, their prayer was heard and
a crown of royalty was sent. Basilius, the Emperor of Constantinople,
who was an Armenian of the family of the Arsacids also sent him a
magnificent crown. Thus patronized by two emperors, Ashod ascended with
great splendor the throne of Armenia. All the ancient royal customs
were restored and Armenia again became a great and flourishing country.
Armenia being now at peace, Ashod set out to visit Western Armenia,
and thence he passed on to Constantinople to visit Emperor Leo,
son of Basilius. His reception was magnificent. On his returning he
fell sick--his malady increasing he sent for George, the Pontiff,
and received the sacrament, after which he appointed that large sums
should be distributed to the poor at the church doors and to hospitals,
convents and almshouses. He died in his seventy-first year, having
governed Armenia thirty-one years, viz: Twenty-six as governor and
five as king. He was buried with all the royal magnificence due to
an eastern Monarch.
In 892 the Caliph confirmed the crown to Sumpad, eldest son of
Ashod and the ceremony of coronation was again performed. The treaty
of his father was renewed with the Emperor of Constantinople, but
his reign proved to be a stormy one through successive invasions of
the Persians. At length he was enticed into the power of Yussuf, the
Persian, bound in chains and cast into a dark dungeon for a year. From
prison he was taken before the walls of a castle which was being
besieged. Furious with rage because of the continued resistance,
Yussuf caused the most horrible barbarities to be executed upon
the unfortunate Sumpad in sight of the beleaguered Armenians. The
torture was renewed daily to cause him to deny Christ. Then hourly
until death released his unshaken spirit.
Ashod II., surnamed the Iron-hearted, famed for bravery and
extraordinary strength, son of Sumpad, now gathered a small body of
six hundred men like himself and began to drive out the Persians. Soon
he cleared the country of them and in gratitude the Armenians placed
him on the throne. But many chiefs refused him their allegiance. They
were a restless, jealous set of nobles, and these quarrels among
themselves are by all their historians denounced as the chief source
of their national weakness.
Nobles and peasants rose in rebellion, and Yussuf taking advantage
of the anarchy again brought upon them his fiercest bands.
The former cruelties, and persecutions and barbarities were
repeated. Aged men and women were tied together and then cut to pieces,
babes were tossed in the air to be caught on the points of the spears
or cut in twain with their swords, or dashed to the ground in the
presence of their distracted and dishonored mothers.
Religious fanaticism was burning like the fires of hell in the breast
of Yussuf and yet these Armenians though ready to fight against each
other would die the death of martyrs rather than deny their Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ.
Greater horrors followed on the devastation of their fields. Sore
and dreadful famine began its cruel work. Thousands died of
starvation. Cities and villages were attacked solely for the sake of
devouring the slain. Individuals were seized and slain by bands of
men driven to madness by their hunger.
There was no Red Cross Committee in those days for the relief of
the starving populations and even if so, no person wearing a cross
would have been permitted to carry to them a loaf of bread lest the
religious sensibilities of Yussuf and his Infidel hordes should be
deeply wounded.
Starvation was his best ally. It swept off multitudes he could not
reach with the sword. The tender heart of the Sultan of Turkey must not
to-day be lacerated with even suggestion that there is more mercy under
the cross than under his own blood-red crescent. He turns fair and
fertile provinces into cemeteries and makes of villages heaps of ruins,
then publishes to Europe that he has restored peace to his people.
Peace returned to Armenia for twenty-five years however after the
driving out of the Persians, Apas succeeding his brother Ashod
II. Multitudes of self-exiled Armenians returned to their deserted
fields and ruined villages, and peace soon made the valleys smile
again.
Cities were restored, magnificent churches erected. The city of Ani
was chosen as the new capital. But Ashod III., derives his greatest
fame from his private virtues. Having built a number of hospitals,
infirmaries and almshouses for the poor and suffering he gave his
personal attention to their management. He visited them frequently,
indulging in kindliest familiarity with the poorest.
He even invited the poor, the sick and the maimed to eat with him at
his own table. So unbounded was he in his donations to the poor and
distressed that on his death not a single piece of money was found
in his treasury. Hence he was surnamed the charitable.
These are the kind of men whom for more than a thousand years
the Saracens and Turks have been trying to exterminate as dogs of
Christians. And the work still goes fearfully on because the great
Christian Powers of Europe say the Turk must be upheld and reverenced
because he holds the balance of power. It would not do to offer him
anything more than a diplomatic hint that some slight reform might be
acceptable even if only put on paper to show to the guardians of poor,
perishing Armenia.
Sumpad II., succeeded his father and completed the fortifying of the
city of Ani. He surrounded it with a wall of exceeding height and
thickness on which he raised lofty towers for the stations of its
defenders. The wall was protected from assault by a wide, deep moat
encompassing the city the whole being faced with stone and brick. It
took him eight years to finish it. This city became the center of
power and influence. A very large number of churches were erected
so that in all they reached the surprising number of one thousand
and one. The next largest city was Ardgen containing three hundred
thousand souls and eight hundred churches.
The Empire was consolidated and strong and retained its prosperity and
power until some years after the close of the century, (A. D., 1020).
Let us leave for a while this ancient race at the height of its power
and glory, the only Christian Nation that western Asia has ever had,
and take a glance at the uprising of that power of Islam which to-day
is, as for more than a thousand years it has been, the bitterest foe
of the Church of Christ, the most ruthless destroyer of human life,
the most brutal oppressor of enslaved humanity, which has always and
everywhere robbed woman of her honor and immortality, motherhood of
its glory, childhood of its innocence, the Deity of His mercy and
even Heaven itself of its purity, making of Paradise its vestibule
only a Mohammedan Seraglio.
CHAPTER II.
THE RISE OF ISLAM.
The reader will please turn aside for awhile to consider the rise
of an alien religion which was destined to change the map of Europe
and the course of history for many centuries; a religion which binds
with fanatical zeal a sixth part of the human race; a power, which
gathering its forces from the sands of Arabia swept like a fierce and
pitiless simoon over the most ancient civilizations, until the flag
of the Prophet waved from the Indus to the pillars of Hercules over
an empire vaster than that ever ruled by Roman legions and Roman law.
While empires and kingdoms rose and fell; and the shock of contending
armies shook all Europe and Northern Africa, and convulsed the
rest of Asia, on its southwestern border, protected by the Red Sea,
the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf and vast stretches of burning sand,
lay a great peninsula by the name of Arabia, almost untouched by the
cataclysm of centuries. In the depths of its deserts, its primitive
character and independence remained unchanged, nor had the nomadic
tribes of Ishmael ever bent their haughty necks to servitude.
For more than two thousand years Ishmael had been "a wild man; his
hand against every man and every man's hand against him" and now
the other word "I will make him a great nation" was about to receive
its fulfillment.
Our first thought of Arabia is of a barren, desert country inhabited
by a few wandering tribes, of little importance. But it is an immense
country, almost as large as India, with a population of millions. Among
its mountains are beautiful and fertile valleys, towns and castles
surrounded by orchards and vineyards, groves of palm trees and
date-palms, fields of grain and well-stocked pastures. In the south
were the people of Yemen--or Arabia the Happy--that land of spices,
perfumes and frankincense; the Sheba of the Scriptures.
These were the most active and skillful navigators of the eastern
seas and brought the wealth of the far East to their ports: thence by
caravans all these mingled products were distributed to Syria, Egypt
and other lands on the borders of the Mediterranean. The caravans were
generally fitted out and conducted by the nomadic tribes, who added to
the merchandise of other lands the exquisite and costly garments woven
from the finest fleeces of their countless flocks and herds. In Arabia,
above all the other lands in the East, the track of the caravan has
borne on it greater riches even than the ships of Tarshish.
At the intersection of two such tracks where the goods of India and
of Africa were interchanged, and where the gold of the Roman Empire
was weighed against the spices of "Araby the Blest," was situated
the great emporium of Mecca.
Mecca was both the commercial and religious center of the whole
peninsula. Although there was no political capital, the tribe feeling
had led to the establishment of a form of government aristocratic
rather than despotic. The noblest tribe among them all was the Koreish;
the noblest family of the Koreish was that of Hashem: and the family
of Hashem at the time of which we are writing were the rulers of
Mecca and the guardians of its Kaaba.
The original religion of Arabia appears to have been the patriarchal
monotheism in which there was still retained some knowledge of one,
true, living, personal Deity. One supreme God was still worshiped,
but in the language of the Koran they "gave Him companions," they paid
adoration to various subordinate powers, as to the host of heaven--to
three female intelligences spoken of as the daughters of God, and to
various family, local and national idols of which three hundred and
sixty were found in the temple at Mecca.
This ancient temple, built according to Arabian tradition by the
patriarch Abraham, contained besides these molten and graven images,
the Black Stone--one of the stones of Paradise which fell down with
Adam, but being taken up at the deluge, it was brought to Abraham by
the angel Gabriel as a sacred ornament for his restored temple. At any
rate, here at this temple in Mecca was the great center of worship, of
sacrifice, and to it thronged in vast numbers the idolaters of Arabia.
The wild Arab of the desert and the comparatively civilized Arab of
the cities show, though in different degrees, the same great elements
of national character. Among them all the virtues and the vices of the
half savage state, its revenge and its rapacity, its hospitality and
its bounty were to be seen in their full force. How often have we had
pictured before us the simplicity and beauty of such a natural life.
This wild man has been described as generous and hospitable. He
delighted in giving gifts; his door was always open to the wayfarer,
with whom he was ready to share his last morsel; and his deadliest foe,
having once broken bread with him, might repose securely beneath the
inviolable sanctity of his tent.
His social life, however, was most degraded. Drunkenness, gambling and
unrestrained licentiousness abounded: the horrible practice of female
infanticide was prevalent among the pagan tribes: while polygamy,
that curse of the East, everywhere prevailed.
Though speaking a language, copious in the extreme, the words of
which have been compared to gems and flowers, literature in the strict
sense of that word can hardly be said to have existed; but the Arab
had a quick intellect, was always ready with a native vein of rhetoric
and was easily aroused by the appeals of eloquence and charmed by the
graces of poetry. He was naturally an orator, delighted in proverbs and
clothed his ideas in florid oriental style with apologue and parable.
While thus a degraded and degrading polytheism was the prevailing
religion of Arabia, many Jews were to be found at Medina and in the
cities bordering on Syria, and there was also a corrupted form of
Christianity incrusted with numerous errors and superstitions, so that
in no part of the world did Christianity give forth so feeble a light.
A very decided reform was imperatively needed to restore the belief
in the unity of God and set up a higher standard of morality.
It is claimed by his admirers that Mohammed brought about such a
reform. He was born in the year 570 of the family of Hashem and
the tribe of Koreish to whom was entrusted the guardianship of
the pagan temple and the Black Stone. Early left an orphan and in
poverty, he was reared in the family of one of his uncles under all
the influences of idolatry. This uncle was a merchant, and the youth
made long journeys with him to distant fairs, especially into Syria
where he became acquainted with the Holy Scriptures, especially with
the Old Testament. At the age of twenty-five he entered the service of
Cadijeh, a very wealthy widow conducting her immense caravans to fairs
in distant cities. His personal beauty, his intelligence and spirit,
won the heart of this powerful mistress and she became his wife.
He was now second to none in Arabia and his soul began to meditate on
great things. There was in his household his wife's cousin, Waraka,
a man of flexible faith and of speculative spirit; originally a Jew,
then a Christian, and withal a pretender to astrology. His name is
worthy of notice as being the first on record to translate parts of
the Old and New Testaments into Arabic.
As Mohammed contrasted these spiritual religions with the surrounding
idolatry, he became more and more sensible of its grossness and
absurdity. It appeared to him that the time for another reform had
arrived. He talked with his uncles, they laughed at him. Only Cadijeh
listened to him, believed in him, and encouraged him. Long afterwards,
when she was dead, Ayeshah, his young and favorite wife, once asked
him: "Am I not better than Cadijeh? Do you not love me better than
you did her? She was a widow, old and ugly?" "No, by Allah," said
the prophet, "she believed in me when no one else did. In the whole
world I had but one friend, and she was that friend."
Without her sympathy and faith he probably would have failed. He told
her, and her alone, his dreams, his ecstasies, his visions; how that
God at different times had sent prophets and teachers to reveal new
truth: how this one God who created the heavens and the earth had
never left himself without witness in the most degraded times.
It was in the fortieth year of his age while spending the month
Ramadhan in the cavern of Mount Hara in fasting and prayer that an
angel appeared to him and commanded him to read the writing displayed
to him on a silken cloth.
Instantly he felt his understanding illumined with celestial light
and read what was written thereon:--they were the decrees of God as
afterwards promulgated in the Koran. When he had finished reading the
angel said: "O Mohammed of a truth, thou art the prophet of God! and
I am His angel Gabriel--"
In the morning, as we are told, Mohammed came trembling to Cadijeh not
knowing whether what he had heard and seen was indeed true; and that
he was a prophet decreed to effect that reform so long the object of
his meditations; or whether it might not be a hallucination or worse
than all, the apparition of an evil spirit. Cadijeh, however, saw
everything with the eye of faith and the credulity of an affectionate
wife. "Rejoice, Allah will not suffer thee to fall to shame." Waraka
caught eagerly at the oracle and exclaimed, "Thou speakest true, O
Cadijeh! The angel who has appeared to thy husband is the same who,
in days of old, was sent to Moses the son of Amram. His annunciation
is true. Thy husband is indeed a prophet." The wavering mind of
Mohammed was thus confirmed and throughout his life and even in
the hour of death he never uttered a word of doubt concerning his
heaven-sent mission.
"This," says Carlyle, "is the soul of Islam. This is what Mohammed
felt and now declared to be of infinite moment, that idols and formulas
were nothing: that the jargon of argumentative Greek sects, the vague
traditions of Jews, the stupid routine of Arab idolatry were a mockery
and a delusion; that there is but one God: that we must let idols alone
and look to Him. He alone is reality. He made us and sustains us. Our
whole strength lies in submission to Him. The thing He sends us,
be it death even, is good, is the best. We resign ourselves to Him."
Thus far while possessed of this sole idea that he must proclaim to his
degenerate countrymen in the midst of all but universal polytheism,
that there is but one supreme God, Mohammed is regarded as a great
reformer. He was neither a fanatic nor hypocrite; he was a very great
man, and according to his light a very good man.
He began to preach everywhere that first word of Revelation "Hear O
Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord." "Thou shalt have no other Gods
before me." Few, however, believed in him. But why not acknowledge such
a fundamental truth, appealing to the intellect as well as the moral
sense? Because to confess that there is a supreme God who rewards and
punishes, and to whom all are responsible both for words and actions,
is to imply a confession of sinfulness and the justice of retribution.
Those degraded Arabians would not receive willingly such a truth as
this; and how did the Israelites forget it in spite of deliverance from
slavery and quickly fall back into idolatry: and how opposed it is to
the epicureanism of to-day and the natural pride of the human breast.
The uncles and friends of Mohammed treated his message with scorn
and derision. Zealously he labored for three years, yet with all his
eloquence, fervor and sincerity he had only won by his preaching some
thirteen persons, one of whom was his slave.
His worldly relatives urged him to silence. Why attack idols? Why
destroy his own interests? Why destroy his popularity? Then explained
that great hero, "If the sun stood on my right hand and the moon on
my left, ordering me to hold my peace I would still declare, there
is but one God." A speech following in spirit the famous words of
Luther at the Diet of Worms.
At last hostilities began. He was threatened, he was persecuted. They
laid plots to take his life. Then his wife died. The priests of
an idolatrous religion became furious. He had laid hands on their
idols. He was hated, persecuted and alone. Thirteen years had passed
away in reproach, in persecution, in fear. At last forty picked men
swore to assassinate him. Should he remain and die, or fly for his
life? He concluded to fly to Medina, where there were a few Jews and
some nominal converts to Christianity.
This was in the year 622--and the flight is called the Hegira--from
which the East dates its era; the fifty-third year of the prophet's
life.
In this city he was cordially welcomed and soon found himself
surrounded with enthusiastic followers. He built a mosque and openly
performed the rites of the new religion. He was for a time at a loss
to know how to call his followers to prayer. While in this perplexity,
Abdallah, the son of Zeid, suggested a form of words that he declared
were revealed to him in a vision. It was instantly adopted by Mohammed,
and is to this day heard from the lofty minarets throughout the East
calling the Moslems to prayer: "God is great! God is great! There is
no God but God. Mohammed is the apostle of God. Come to prayers! Come
to prayers! God is great! God is great. There is no God but God." To
which at dawn of day are added the words: "Prayer is better than
sleep! Prayer is better than sleep."
Mohammed soon had an army at his disposal, and with this sudden
accession of power there was wrought a fearful change in the spirit
of his dreams. He had earnestly declared his great idea of the unity
of God. He had pronounced the worship of images to be idolatrous. He
held idolatry in supreme abhorrence. He enjoined charity, justice and
forbearance. He denounced all falsehood and deception, especially
in trade. He commanded his disciples to return good for evil, to
be submissive to God; declared humility and benevolence to be the
greatest virtues. He enjoined prayers, fastings and meditation as a
means of grace.
But when he found an army at his command he lost command of
himself. His anger burned against the Koreishites and their vindictive
chief, Abu Sofian who now held full sway at Mecca. By them his fortunes
had been blasted, his family degraded, impoverished, dispersed, and
he himself driven into exile. He began to have visions to suit his
changing temper, as all false religionists have even down to our own
day. He declared himself, the last of all the prophets, to be sent
forth into the world with the sword: "Let those who promulgate my
faith enter into no argument nor discussion; but slay all who refuse
obedience to the law. Whoever fights for the true faith whether he
fall or conquer will assuredly receive a glorious reward. * * * The
sword is the key of heaven and hell; and all who draw it in the cause
of the faith will be rewarded with temporal advantages; every drop
shed of their blood, every peril and hardship endured by them, will be
registered on high as more meritorious than even fasting or prayer. If
they fall in battle, their sins will at once be blotted out, and they
will be transported to Paradise, there to revel in eternal pleasures
in the arms of black-eyed houris." He added to this promise of sensual
pleasures the doctrine of fixed-fate, predestination absolute. No man
could die sooner or later than his alloted hour and when it arrived,
it would be the same, whether the angel of death should find him in
the quiet of his bed, or amid the storm of battle.
Behold in these words the chief sources of the fanatical fury which
had well-nigh conquered the entire Christian world.
It is as if some Mephistopheles had whispered in his ear; "thy
countrymen are wild, fierce and warlike, incite their martial passions
in defence of thy doctrines. They are a fanatical people and believing
in these teachings they will fight for them and establish them not
only in Arabia but throughout the East. Grant them a reward in what
their passions crave and they will follow you to the death."
Certainly this is true, that these counsels of evil let loose upon
the world the fiercest, the most cruel and rapacious passions that
were ever set on fire in hell. He resolved to adopt his religion to
the depraved hearts of his followers. He mingled with sublimest truth
the most debasing error. It was success he wanted; he would no longer
scruple as to the means used to secure it. He became ambitious. He
would become a mighty spiritual potentate, but descended to the level
of his people to win them. He granted polygamy under the sanction
of a pretended revelation from heaven. He who in his youth had been
faithful to Cadijeh, fifteen years his senior, was now in his own
age false to his youthful wife Ayeshah, multiplied wives to himself,
robbed his faithful Zeid of his beautiful wife, absolved himself from
his own law that a believer could only have four wives, and brought
forth new revelations to justify in himself the gratifications of
passions he condemned in others.
In the second year of the Hegira, Mohammed gratified his revenge
against the Koreishites by attacking a caravan of a thousand camels
laden with the merchandise of Syria. His arch enemy, Abu Sofian,
commanded the escort. In this fight, known as the battle of Beder, the
Moslems were victorious. It was during the progress of this battle that
Mohammed encouraged his warriors with the memorable words: "Fight and
fear not; the gates of Paradise are under the shade of swords." This
first cavalcade entering Medina with spoils, made Moslems of all the
inhabitants and gave him control of the city. A few years later, at the
head of ten thousand horsemen, he entered the city of Mecca--nothing
but the swift commands of Mohammed to Khaled, "The Sword of God,"
preserving the city from a general massacre. Mohammed now proceeded to
execute the great object of his religious aspirations--the purifying
of the temple. He entered it with the sublime words: "Truth is come;
let falsehood disappear," and shivered in quick succession the three
hundred and sixty abominations which were in the holy place.
Mohammed soon found himself the sovereign of all Arabia; and yet his
military triumphs awakened no pride nor vain glory as they would have
done had they been effected for selfish ends. He ever maintained the
same simplicity of manners as in the days of his adversity. As to
the temporal rule which grew up in his hands, as he used it without
ostentation, so he took no steps to perpetuate it in his family. The
riches which poured in upon him from tribute and the spoils of
war were used in relieving the poor or expended in promoting the
victories of the faith; so that his treasury was often drained of
its last coin. "Allah" says an Arabian historian "offered him the
keys of all the treasures of the earth; but he refused to accept them."
It is this abnegation of self and his apparently heartfelt piety that
even in his own dying hour, when there could be no worldly motive
for deceit, still breathed the same religious devotion and the same
belief in his apostolic mission; that so perplexes one in trying to
estimate justly the full force of his character.
Whatever we may think of Mohammed personally, even though we may
concede that he was a sincere religious fanatic we can but hold in
abhorrence the religion which has ever appealed to the sword and
to the basest passions of men either to compel or persuade them to
yield allegiance to Islam. When he died at the age of sixty-three,
eleven years after the Hegira, Mohammed was next to Buddha, the most
successful founder of a religion the world has ever known--a religion
that is the most relentless and bitterest foe to Christianity, and
that stands like a wall of fire and of adamant to oppose its progress
in all the East.
The Saracens were ever loyal to the truth for which they fought. They
never became idolaters; but their religion has ever been built up on
the miseries of nations. To propagate the faith of Mohammed they drew
the sword and overran the world. Never were conquests more rapid,
more terrible or more remarkable.
Upon the death of Mohammed, Abu Beker, the father of Ayeshah,
was elected to the supreme power, but refused to be called king or
God's vicar on earth, assuming only that of Caliph, that is to say
Successor, and by this title the Arab sovereigns have ever since been
designated. He was indifferent to riches, to all pomp and luxuries;
his Arab establishment was of the simplest kind: his retinue consisting
of a camel and a black slave.
The Golden Age of the Saracens was the twelve years, A. D. 632-644,
comprised in the reigns of Abu Beker and Omar--a period of
uninterrupted harmony and external conquest. Though Mohammed was
dead, the sword of Islam was not buried with him; for Khaled,
surnamed the Sword of God, now advanced to sustain the fame of
former conquests. Within a year, Moseilma, a rival, and hence a false
prophet, was slain, the rebellion subdued, the empire of Islam firmly
reëstablished in Arabia; the scattered leaves gathered for the Koran;
and an army for the subjugation of Syria and the East.
It was a strangely opportune hour for the fierce warriors of the
desert. The Romans and the Persians were almost always engaged in
warfare and their last and most terrible war was contemporary with
the preaching of Mohammed.
Under the great Khosru a war began which lasted more than twenty
years and exhausted both nations and left them a more easy prey to
the Saracens. The Asiatic provinces fell under his victorious armies
and, as in the days of Darius, the Persian Empire extended to the
Mediterranean and the Ægean Seas. When Heradius in 610 A. D. came
to the throne of Constantinople, he was compelled to submit to the
sight of a Persian army encamped at Chalcedon; but after some years'
preparation, he entered on a series of campaigns which places his name
beside those of Hannibal and Belisarius. Leaving his own dominions,
he struck at the very heart of his enemy's country, and by a series
of victories, one of them gained on the site of Nineveh, he utterly
overthrew the Persian power, till Khosru was slain by his own subjects
and a peace was concluded. Heradius returned to Constantinople leaving
Persia torn by contending factions. The Prophet had been diligently
watching from his safe retreat the course of the war which is alluded
to in the Koran, and now the hour had come for the Saracens to strike
their fatal blow.
In the second year of his reign, therefore, Abu Beker prepared
for the great enterprise contemplated by Mohammed--the conquest of
Syria.--Under this general name was included all the country lying
on the north of Arabia and extending from the Mediterranean and the
Euphrates. This had long been a land of promise to them. It was a
land of abundance. From it they had drawn their chief supplies of
corn. Its cities had long been chief marts for the merchandise of
their caravans; its seaports still were the centers of an opulent
and widely extended commerce. This summons was sent to the chiefs of
Arabia Petrea, and Arabia Felix: "In the name of the Most Merciful
God * * * to all true believers, health, happiness and the blessing
of God. Praise be to God and to Mohammed his prophet. This is to
inform you that I intend to send an army of the faithful into Syria,
to deliver that country from the infidels, and I remind you that to
fight for the true faith is to obey God."
This call to the conquest of nations in the name of the most merciful
God is tender compared with the prayers which is now being daily
offered up by the Mohammedans regarding the Armenians: "O Allah! make
their children orphans, and defile their abodes. Cause their feet to
slip, give them and their families, their households and their women,
their children and their relations by marriage, their brothers and
their friends, their possessions and their race, their wealth and
their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures."
Has the spirit of Islam changed any during the last twelve hundred
years? certainly not, except it be as much for the worse as the Turk
is more lustful and cruel than the Saracen.
Speedily the plains about Medina were covered with the encampments
of the chiefs who had responded from all Arabia, in hope of the rich
booty to be had from conquered cities and provinces. From the brow
of a hill, Abu Beker reviewed the army on the point of departure. His
heart swelled with pride, as he gazed on the passing multitudes; the
glittering arms; the squadrons of horsemen; the lengthening line of
camels, and called to mind the handful of men that followed Mohammed
a fugitive from Mecca. Scarce ten years had elapsed, and now a mighty
host assembled at the summons of his successor, and distant empires
were threatened by the sword of Islam. He lifted up his voice and
prayed God to make these troops valiant and victorious. Then giving
the word to march, the tents were struck, the camels laden, and in a
little while the army poured forth in a long, continuous train over
hill and valley.
The "Scourge of God" was let loose against the nations. Before long
an immense cavalcade of horses, mules and camels came pouring in with
the booty from the first victory over a body of troops sent by the
Emperor Heradius to observe them and harass their march.
Soon four armies were in the field; Jerusalem and Damascus were doomed
and fate hastened on its march to Persia in the person of Khaled,
"The Sword of God" with an army of ten thousand men. He besieged the
city of Hira; stormed its palaces; slew the king in battle; subdued the
kingdom; imposed on it an annual tribute of seventy thousand pieces
of gold; the first tribute ever levied by Moslems on a foreign land,
and sent the same to Medina. City after city fell before him. Nothing
seemed able to withstand his arms. Planting his victorious standard on
the banks of the Euphrates, he wrote to the Persian monarch calling
upon him to embrace the faith or pay tribute. "If you refuse both, I
will come upon you with a host who love death as much as you do life."
But meantime partial defeat had discouraged the leaders of the armies
in Syria, and the caliph summoned Khaled to the command of the northern
armies. Leaving the army in Persia under the command of a tried and
trusty general, Khaled with an escort of fifteen hundred men spurred
across the Syrian borders to join the Moslem host about to besiege
the Christian city of Bosra.
It was on the Syrian frontier, a walled city of great strength and
wealth, that could at anytime put twelve thousand men into the field.
After two days of furious battle the city was taken by treachery,
many were massacred, and the survivors were compelled to pass under
the yoke.
Khaled now aspired to the capture of Damascus. This renowned and
beautiful city, one of the largest and most magnificent in the East
and possibly the oldest in the world, stood in a plain of wondrous
fertility, covered with groves and gardens. Through this plain flowed a
river called by the ancients "The Stream of Gold," feeding the canals
and water courses of its gardens and the fountains of the city.
This most beautiful city lay at the mercy of the coming foe. As the
Moslems accustomed to the barrenness of the desert came in sight of the
rich plain of Damascus and wound along the banks of the shining river,
it seemed as if they were already realizing the paradise promised
by the Prophet to true believers: but when the walls and towers and
fanes of the city rose upon their vision they could not restrain their
shouts of rapture. For the many deeds of valor and personal prowess
in single combat, and the fierce and repeated charges of either army,
the reader may be referred to the brilliant pages of Irving's Mahomet
or Ockley's Saracens.
The inhabitants tried to bribe Khaled to raise the siege. The stern
reply was: Embrace Islam, pay tribute; or fight unto the death. While
the Arabs lay close encamped about the city as if watching its expiring
throes, unusual shouts were one day heard within its walls. The cause
of it proved to be that an army of one hundred thousand men sent by
Heraclius from Antioch were drawing near to their relief.
With fierceness yet the coolness of a practiced warrior Khaled
marched to the support of a small body of horsemen who had been sent
to harass the enemy. He met and defeated division after division of
this Roman army, defeating it in detail by an army less than a third
of their number. Thousands of fugitives were slain in the pursuit that
followed. An immense booty in treasure, arms, baggage, and horses fell
into his hands; and Khaled flushed with conquest, fatigued and burdened
with the spoils, led back his army to resume the siege of Damascus.
Word was soon received however that another army of seventy
thousand men had been gathered by Heraclius to raise the siege of
Damascus. Sending swift couriers to all the Moslem generals within his
call to meet him at the camp of the Greeks, he began a hasty march
to Aiznadin. When the Moslems beheld the multitude and formidable
array of the imperial host they at first quailed at the sight: but
Khaled harangued them with fervid speech: "You behold," he said,
"the last stake of the infidels. This army met and vanquished they
can never muster another force, and all Syria is ours." Khaled armed
the fierce women who were among them--some of them of the highest
rank with orders to slay any Moslem whom they saw turning his back to
the foe. Reinforced by fresh thousands, when, after some preliminary
skirmishes, on the second day the trumpets sounded a general charge,
the imperial armies were struck with confusion and what followed was
rather a massacre than a battle. They broke and fled in all directions
to Cæsarea, to Damascus and to Antioch. The booty of the camp was
of immense value, which Khaled declared should not be divided until
after the capture of Damascus.
Great indeed was the consternation in the city when they learned
from the fugitives that escaped, of the slaughter of this second
army and that all hope of succor was gone. But they set themselves
bravely to work to meet the coming storm. New fortifications were
erected. The walls were lined with engines for hurling stones and
darts upon the besiegers.
Soon the Moslems appeared greatly reinforced. The city was
invested. The troops were carefully stationed and orders given as to
the support to be given. The battles that followed were fierce as the
passions of desperate men could make them. One day a simultaneous
sortie was made from every gate of the city at the first peep of
day. The besiegers were taken by surprise and were struck down before
they could arm themselves or mount. Khaled is said to have wept as he
beheld the carnage and the slaughter of his finest troops. "O thou,
who never sleepest, aid thy faithful servants; let them not fall
beneath the weapons of the infidels." Finally the tide of battle
turned and the Christians were repulsed and driven within the walls
leaving several thousand dead on the field. It was no disgrace for
even such Christians to be beaten by such Moslems.
For seventy days had Damascus been besieged by these fanatic legions
of the desert. They had no heart to make further sallies. They began
to talk of capitulation. Khaled turned a deaf ear to their prayer for
a truce: he was bent upon taking the city by the sword and giving it
up to be plundered by his Arabs. Then they sought under promise of
security the meek and humane Abu Obeidah. One hundred of the principal
inhabitants went by night to this leader of the mighty power that was
shaking the empire of the Orient, and found him living in a humble
haircloth tent like a mere wanderer of the desert. He listened to
their proposals, for his object was conversion rather than conquest,
and tribute rather than plunder. A covenant was written; such of the
inhabitants as pleased could depart in safety with so much of their
effects as they could carry: the rest should remain as tributaries
and have seven churches allotted to them. The gate was then thrown
open and the venerable chief entered at the head of a hundred men to
take possession.
At the eastern gate a very different transaction was taking place. An
apostate priest, on condition of security of person and property to
himself and relatives, agreed to deliver the gate into the hands of
Khaled. Thus a hundred Arabs were introduced into the city, broke the
bolts and chains and bars of the Eastern gate and threw it open with
the cry "Allah Achbar."
Khaled and his legions rushed in at the gate with sound of trumpet
and tramp of steeds; putting all to the sword, deluging the streets
with blood. "Mercy! Mercy!" was the cry. "No mercy for infidels,"
was Khaled's fierce response. He pursued his career of carnage into
the great square and there to his utter astonishment beheld Abu
Obeidah and his attendants, with priests and monks, surrounded by
the principal inhabitants and women and children.
Khaled was furious when he heard of the covenant. Abu Obeidah entreated
him to respect the covenant he had made in the name of God and the
prophet.
After fierce altercation he listened to policy though deaf to the cry
of pity. They were just beginning their career of conquest. Many cities
were to be taken. If the Moslem word was broken, other cities warned
by the fate of Damascus would in fear and fury fight to the bitter end.
Khaled finally gave a slow consent, though murmuring at every article
of the covenant.
All who chose to remain as tributaries were to enjoy the free exercise
of their religion. All who wished might depart, but Khaled only gave
them three days grace from pursuit.
It was a piteous sight to behold aged men, delicate and shrinking
women, and helpless children thus setting forth with what they could
carry on a wandering journey through wastes and deserts and mountains,
and the angry hordes of Arabs only three days behind them and swiftly
mounted. Many a time did they turn to cast another look of fondness
and despair on their beautiful palaces and luxuriant gardens; and
still they would turn and weep and beat their breasts--gaze through
tears on the stately towers of Damascus and the flowery banks of
the Pharpar. Thus Damascus was conquered and yet spared both fire
and sword after more than a twelve months' siege, which Voltaire has
likened for its stratagems, skirmishes and deeds of valor in single
combat, to Homer's Siege of Troy.
The cities of Baalbec, the famous city of the Sun, and Emessa the
capital of the plains, with many intermediate cities soon fell before
the victorious sword of Khaled.
After a short rest at Damascus Abu Obeidah wrote, asking if he should
undertake the siege of Cæsarea or Jerusalem. The decision was for
the instant siege of Jerusalem.
This was a holy war for the Moslems and soon the army was on the march
to Jerusalem. The people saw the approach of these triumphant invaders:
but sent out no plea for help. They planted engines on their walls
and prepared for vigorous defence.
At early dawn, in the morning of the first assault, the Moslem host
was marshalled--the leaders repeated the Matin prayer, each at the
head of his battalion, and all as if by one consent with a loud voice
gave the verse of the Koran "Enter ye, oh people! into the holy land
which Allah hath destined for you."
For ten days they made repeated but unavailing attacks and then
the whole army was brought to their aid. Then a summons was sent
requiring the inhabitants to accept the divine mission of Mohammed,
to acknowledge allegiance and pay tribute to the Caliph, otherwise he
concludes, "Nor will I leave you, God willing, until I have destroyed
your fighting men and made slaves of your children."
But the Christian Patriarch of Jerusalem felt confidence in setting
the invaders at defiance, and above all, there was a pious incentive
to courage and perseverance in defending the Sepulchre of Christ.
Four wintry months elapsed and still the siege was carried on with
undiminished spirit. Finally the Patriarch consented to give up the
city if the Caliph would come in person to take possession and sign
the articles of surrender.
To preserve the city, and inspirit his own troops after their long
absence and the hardships of many campaigns the Caliph consented. His
journey was made in utmost simplicity. He traveled on a red camel
across which was slung his saddle bags, one pocket containing dates
and dried fruits, and the other, nothing more than barley, rice or
wheat, parched or sodden.
His companions ate with him out of a common wooden platter, using
their fingers in true oriental style. At night he slept on a mat
under a tree or under a common Bedouin tent: and never resumed his
march until he had offered up the morning prayer.
When he came in sight of Jerusalem he lifted up his voice and exclaimed
"Allah Achbar, God is mighty! God grant us an easy conquest."
We give the degrading conditions somewhat in full as they formed the
basis upon which other cities were granted terms of peace. "The
Christians were to build no new churches in the surrendered
territory. * * No crosses should be erected on the churches nor
shown openly in the streets. They should not speak openly of their
religion; nor attempt to make proselytes; nor hinder their kinsfolk
from embracing Islam. * * * They should entertain every Moslem
traveler three days gratis. They should sell no wine, bear no arms,
and use no saddle in riding, nor sit in the presence of a Mohammedan."
This utter prostration of all civil and religious liberty took place
in the old scenes of Christian triumph. The most bitter scorn and
abhorrence of their religious adversaries formed main pillars in the
Moslem faith. Upon agreeing to these degrading terms the Caliph gave
them under his own hand an assurance of protection in their lives and
fortunes, the use of their churches and the exercise of their religion.
The gates of the once splendid city of Solomon were then opened. Omar
entered it in reverence and on foot in his simple Arab garb and
soon the flag of the Prophet waved over the battlements of the Holy
City. Strange city that is thus held in equal reverence by Moslem, Jew
and Christian. The surrender of Jerusalem took place in the seventeenth
year of the Hegira, the six hundred and thirty-seventh year of the
Christian era. With the rapidly succeeding fall of Aleppo, Antioch,
Tripoli and Tyre the conquest of Syria was complete. It still remains
under the heel of the invader after more than twelve hundred years
of varying fortunes.
Meanwhile the conquest of Persia had been pushed forward vigorously
since the fall of Damascus. After the battle of Kadesia in which
thirty thousand Persians are said to have fallen and upwards of seven
thousand Moslems, all Persia lay at the feet of the conquerors. As they
advanced with an army of sixty thousand against the capital Madayn the
ancient Ctesiphon, fear paralyzed the King and his counsellors. There
was no one brave enough to take the command and when the enemy were
only a day's march away they decided on flight to the mountains,
leaving behind them the richest city of the world to be sacked by
the Arabs. The spoil was incalculable. It required a caravan of nine
hundred heavily laden camels to convey to Medina the Caliph's fifth
part of the spoil.
Thus fell without a blow the capital of Persia in the same fateful
year that saw the desolation of Jerusalem.
But one more struggle remained--it was the death agony of the Persian
Empire. The fugitive king gathered to his standard at Nehavend, on
the plains of Hamadan, one hundred and fifty thousand men. Tidings
were sent to the Caliph Omar at Medina--and there in the Mosque,
by a handful of grey-headed Arabs, who but a few years previously
had been homeless wanderers, was debated and decided the fate of the
once magnificent empires of the Orient,--Syria, Chaldea, Babylonia
and the dominions of the Medes and Persians.
The army of the Saracens, reinforced by men hardened in war, daring,
confident, and led by able generals, was greatly inferior in numbers,
but fired with zeal and the courage of death.
At the signal given "Allah Achbar" thrice repeated with the shaking
of the standard, the army rushed to battle rending the air with the
universal shout "Allah Achbar! Allah Achbar!" The shock of the two
armies was terrific. In an hour the Persians were routed; by midnight
their slain numbered a hundred thousand men, and their Empire was
destroyed. The battle of Nehavend commemorated as "The Victory of
Victories," took place in the twenty-first year of the Hegira the
year six hundred and forty-one of our era, and only nine years after
the death of Mohammed.
If all Syria fell in six years; if the fate of Persia was decided
by a single battle, Egypt may be said to have fallen in a single
moment. With the fall of Alexandria perished the largest library of the
world, the thesaurus of all the intellectual treasures of antiquity.
While Egypt was won almost without a blow, Latin Africa withstood
the Saracens for sixty years. But at last it was conquered. Spain
also fell. The world staggered. Thirty-six thousand cities, towns and
castles had fallen. The armies of the Saracens were victorious from
Scinde in India, westward to Constantinople, then southward they had
swept through Palestine, Egypt, Northern Africa beyond the Pillars
of Hercules into Spain, and were only and finally arrested in Western
Europe as all the world knows by Charles Martel in 732 upon the field
of Tours.
But all the world does not know so well how that in 673 the Saracens
were beaten back from the walls of Constantinople and the Commander of
the Faithful compelled to purchase peace by an annual tribute of three
thousand pieces of gold, fifty slaves and fifty of the finest Arabian
horses. The year 717 saw Constantinople again besieged by a Saracen
army, but Leo, the Isaurian, again beat back the invader with utter
defeat; and no Moslem army ever again appeared under the walls of the
New Rome, until a fiercer, ruder, more cruel race of Conquerors from
the far East grasped again with bloody hand the sword of the Prophet.
CHAPTER III.
THE STORY OF THE FIRST CRUSADE.
As at one time Athens "was the Eye of Greece and Mother of the Arts"
so both to pious Jew and humble Christian, Jerusalem has ever been the
"City of God," the "Joy of the Whole Earth." To the fervid hearts
of the early Christians a pilgrimage to that Holy City to see the
sacred sights and commune with God amid scenes hallowed by the former
presence of a Christ, was regarded as a mark of special faith and a
source of peculiar blessing. After the Emperor Constantine removed
his capital from Rome to Constantinople and embraced the Christian
religion, Jerusalem was raised from its ruins, the way to the sacred
places was made more easy and safe, and the spirit of pilgrimage
greatly revived and stimulated. The magnificent church of The Holy
Sepulchre--decorated with pillars and adorned and paved with precious
stones--was raised above the obscure tomb, while churches, chapels
and monuments filled the city and marked the places made sacred by
the life and the death of the Saviour of the world.
Pilgrims flocked in crowds into Judea from almost every country in
Europe and Asia, and when they gathered in immense throngs about
these holy places, lifting their voices in prayers and hymns in many
languages, the sound was like the Babel of former Pentecosts. Each
returning pilgrim told his story of strange sights and of the
refreshment and inspiration received from his visit.
He had confirmed his faith by bathing in the Jordan, tested his faith
by exposure and perils, warmed his emotions by prayer on Calvary and
raised his soul in songs of praise in the Church of the Resurrection.
But in 610 A. D., the armies of Persia overran the provinces of the
Byzantine Empire, invading Syria, Palestine and Egypt, capturing
Jerusalem and bearing away many Christian captives.
Ten years of fiercest conflict followed and finally Heraclius, Emperor
of Constantinople, recaptured the city. In the imposing ceremonies
and festivities which followed, the Emperor walked barefoot in the
streets, bearing on his shoulders to the summit of Calvary, the wood
of the true cross, which to their weird and superstitious imaginations
had been miraculously recovered. Jerusalem rescued, became more than
ever an object of reverence. Blood had been shed for the church, only
Christians should thenceforth be its custodians. Their joy was brief.
Already the Saracenic warriors under able leaders had overrun Persia
and Syria, and in 637 Omar, their Caliph, after a four months' siege,
received the keys and homage of a city, which, though the home of
many Christians, was very sacred also in the eyes of the Mohammedans,
as a "House of God," a city of saints and miracles, since Mohammed
himself had visited it as a prophet and had thence set out for heaven
in his nocturnal voyage. During the lifetime of Omar, the Christians
escaped serious persecution, but violence and fanaticism increased at
a fearful rate under his successors--except for the period (768-814
A. D.) during which reigned Haroun al Raschid, the greatest of all
the Saracen Caliphs.
In 1076--fateful day--Jerusalem was captured by the Seljukian Turks
who had come down from the inner provinces of Asia in resistless
numbers--embraced Islamism, and under the banners of the Caliph of
Bagdad, had conquered Syria and Palestine. Their entry into Jerusalem
was signalized by a terrible massacre of all opponents. The fanatical
fury of these barbarians was untempered by any spirit of toleration
that had sometimes marked Saracenic civilization,--and soon their
wild hordes waved their banners of blood and fire before the very
gates of Constantinople. The Emperor Alexius purchased peace by
ceding Asia Minor to the victorious Solyman, who at once established
his power at Nice and began building a fleet for the capture of the
Byzantine capital.
All Europe was roused and smitten with alarm. The hour had come for
the Greek and the Latin churches to unite all their power for the
defence of their common faith and preserve their empires from being
devastated by the barbarian Turks.
Pope Gregory began to exhort the sovereigns of Europe to arm against
the infidel: when suddenly from an anchorite's cell appeared a monk who
fired with enthusiasm the heart of all Europe and blew into fiercest
blaze all the fanatical elements of a religious war. It was reserved
for a poor pilgrim who had found refuge in a cloister from the ridicule
and follies of a wicked world to become the instrument of converting
the zeal of pilgrimage into the fury of an armed crusade. This man
was Peter the Hermit.
In his cell, amid silence, fasting and prayer he grew to believe
himself the agent of heaven for the accomplishment of some great
purpose, and he left his retreat to go on a pilgrimage. What he
witnessed and suffered on the way and at Jerusalem gave to his zeal
fresh determination and to his devotion the fervor of righteous
indignation. His spirit was fired by the insults to Christians,
his piety shocked by the profanations of the Holy Sepulchre by the
barbarians and infidels. To his fevered imagination as to that of
Joan of Arc there was a vision and a voice. While prostrate before the
Holy Sepulchre the voice of Christ was heard, saying: "Peter, arise,
hasten to proclaim the tribulation of my people; it is time my servants
should receive help, and that the holy places should be delivered." He
hastened to Italy and threw himself at the feet of the Pope, Urban II.
With the blessing of the Pope he went forth, the preacher of an armed
crusade. In imitation of Christ, when he entered Jerusalem in that last
week of his life, he traveled on a mule. With crucifix in hand, feet
bare, his head uncovered, his body covered with a long frock and girded
with a thick cord, his appearance was an awesome spectacle. He went
from city to city, from province to province, working on the piety,
the superstitions and the courage of his hearers; now in churches,
then in village marts and again on the public highways. He was animated
and eloquent, his speech filled with vehement apostrophes and appalling
descriptions. His exhortations threw the people into sobs and groans,
fury and frenzy. Sympathy with the afflicted Christians took the form
of furious fervor, natural bravery went out in oaths to redeem or die;
religious emotions ran wild in excesses and swung like a pendulum
from the lowest follies of superstition to the fiercest outbursts
of fanaticism.
It was during this excitement that the Emperor Alexius sent a
message to Pope Urban II., appealing for aid. A council was called
at Clermont in France where Peter's preaching had caused the greatest
awakening. The Pope attended in person, about him gathered an immense
throng of clergy, princes and laity, from France, Italy and Germany. At
the tenth session of this council the Pope ascended a pulpit in the
open air and preached the sacred duty of redeeming the Sepulchre of
Christ from the infidels, proclaiming the certain propitiation for
sin by devotion to this meritorious service.
This historic council was most ingeniously called and managed. The
Germanic peoples were new and eager converts to Christianity. They
were fierce and warlike in disposition. Feudalism still was in its
fullest power. The hundreds of castles which add such picturesqueness
to the valley of the Rhine were then the centers of feudal pride,
and every petty Prince made war as he was able against his neighbor,
or joined with others in wars of larger proportions. There was no
national spirit as yet. These feuds which had been handed down for
generations, had greatly impoverished and destroyed the people. The
Church had sought to alleviate the distress and check these petty
wars, by issuing decrees prohibiting private wars for four days in
each week. This council renewed "The Truce of God," and threatened
all who would not comply, with its Anathemas. It placed all widows,
orphans, merchants, artisans and non-combatants generally under the
panoply of the Church--made all sanctuaries so many cities of refuge,
and declared that even the crosses by the roadside should be reverenced
as guardians from violence. These and other salutary decrees struck
into the midst of an assembly filled with enthusiasm and energy,
and prepared the way for them to unite in any cause that would add
to the strength and glory of Christendom. On this day of the tenth
session the great square was filled with an immense crowd. The Pope
ascended the throne followed by his Cardinals. By his side was Peter
the Hermit, who was to speak first, clad in his pilgrim garb. He
gave an impassioned and masterly sketch of what he had witnessed in
Palestine and Jerusalem--the outrages against the religion of Christ,
and the profanation of the most holy places, the persecutions of
pilgrim visitors whom he had seen loaded with chains, dragged into
slavery; harnessed to the yoke like cattle. And as he spoke he also
acted, until the people shuddered in consternation and horror, vented
their hate in vehement cries or wept in dismay--no heart remaining
unmoved by the very agony of his appeal.
Then Urban rose and so enlarged upon the theme as to arouse and
inflame their passions to the highest pitch; then addressing
particularly the French he said: "Nation beloved by God, it is in
your courage that the Christian Church has placed her hope. It is
because I am well acquainted with your piety and your bravery that
I have crossed the Alps, and have come to preach the word of God in
these countries. You have not forgotten that the land you inhabit
has been invaded by the Saracen, and that but for the exploits of
Charles Martel and Charlemagne, France would have received the laws
of Mohammed. Recall, without ceasing, to your minds the danger and
the glory of your fathers, led by heroes whose names shall never
die. They delivered your country. They saved the West from shameful
slavery. More noble triumphs await you under the guidance of the
God of Armies. You will deliver Europe and Asia. You will save the
city of Jesus Christ, that Jerusalem which was chosen by the Lord,
and from whence the Gospel has come down to us."
Urban swayed his audience as a wind does the leaves of the forest. It
wept as he pictured the misfortunes and sorrows of Jerusalem. Warriors
clutched their swords and swore vengeance against the Infidel when
he described the tyranny and perfidy of the Mussulman conquerors. The
enthusiasm of his auditors rose to the highest pitch, when he declared
that God had chosen them to extirpate the Mohammedan. He appealed also
to their cupidity by the promise of worldly gain, by possession of
the riches of Asia and the lands which according to Scripture flowed
with milk and honey. He played on every passion and emotion--ambition,
patriotism, love of glory and wealth, piety, power and religion:--until
at the close of his grandest outbursts the audience rose as one man
and broke into the unanimous cry--a cry that became the war cry of
the crusader--"It is the will of God! It is the will of God!"
Taking up this wild refrain Pope Urban repeated dramatically: "Yes,
without doubt it is the will of God" * * * It is He who has dictated
to you the words that I have heard. Let them be your war cry and let
them announce everywhere the presence of the "Armies of God." He then
held up to the gaze of the assemblage the sign of their redemption,
saying: "It is Christ himself who issues from the tomb and presents
to you his cross; it will be the sign raised among the nations which
is to gather together again the dispersed of Israel. Wear it on your
shoulders and on your breasts; let it shine on your arms and on your
standards; it will be the surety of victory or the palm of martyrdom;
it will unceasingly remind you that Christ died for you, and that it
is your duty to die for Him." Again the multitude rose to weep and
cheer and vow vengeance against the Mussulman.
I have dwelt thus on the Council of Clermont, and quoted from the
speech of Pope Urban, that the reader might see clearly the mixed
motives that stirred the heart of Europe for nearly two centuries, and
nerved her warriors to the most noble, heroic and almost superhuman
deeds of valor and endurance that have ever been emblazoned among
the memorials of the mightiest heroes of this mortal race.
This was the declaration of war against the Mohammedan. The
breaking up of the Council was the scattering of the firebrands of
fanaticism. Pope Urban traversed several provinces of France that
seemed to rise en masse to his appeals. France seemed to have no
country but the Holy Land. Ease, property and life were cast into
the sacrificial cause. All Christian nations seemed to forget their
internal strifes, and to plunge headlong into the excitement of the
hour. Western Europe resounded with the Papal Watchword: "He who will
not take up his cross and come after me, is not worthy of me."
It must not be forgotten, however, that the political and
physical condition of Europe contributed vastly to the warlike
conflagration. The people groaned under feudal servitude and
violence. Famine more or less severe, for years had contributed to
robbery and brigandage. Commerce was almost destroyed, agriculture
was neglected. Towns and cities were in ruins; lands everywhere were
abandoned. The Church made her appeals popular. The Crusader was freed
from all imposts and from pursuit by debts. The Cross suspended all
laws and all menaces. Tyranny could not seek a wearer of the emblem nor
could justice find the guilty. What wonder that an entire population
rushed to a cause that absolved them from a grinding past and pictured
so glowing a future! What wonder that the inexpiable wickedness of
tyrannical baron and brutal knight sought expiation or at least relief
by a desperate plunge into foreign martial excesses! What wonder if
freebooters and robbers should join the ranks in hope of sharing the
plunder of the conquered East! Yet we must not lose sight of the fact
that over and above all love of glory, all true patriotism or base
cupidity, towered the sublime passion, the pervading emotion of the
hour. Religion smelted every other sentiment into harmonious union
with her fervid zeal and her intense zealotry. Monks deserted their
cloisters, anchorites their cells or forest retreats to mingle with
and encourage the crusading throngs. Thieves and robbers came out
of their hiding places to confess their sins and expiate offences by
assuming the sacred badge.
All Europe seemed to be on the move eastward. Barons were willing to
desert their castles and Lords their manors. The artisan deserted
his shop, merchants their stores, the laborer the field. Cities
were depopulated, lands were mortgaged, castles sold. Values were
nothing. Accumulations of centuries went for a song. Even miracles
entered into the furore. To their overheated imaginations stars fell;
blood was seen in the clouds. Armed warriors were seen rushing to
battle in the skies. Saints issued from the tomb, and the shade of
Charlemagne arose to lead these phantom hosts to the rescue of the
Holy City. While everywhere the women and children and the helpless
of every estate espoused the cause of Heaven crying aloud, "It is
the will of God," and imprinting crosses on their limbs.
The early spring of 1096 saw the gathering of the impatient
throngs. They came from every quarter, from the Rhine to the
Pyrenees, and from Tiber to the Ocean. Troops of men, armed with
every conceivable weapon or without arms of any kind, swarmed towards
their respective rendezvous chanting and shouting their war cry until
every hill reëchoed "It is the will of God." Without preparation or
forethought or commissary they gathered, blindly trusting that He
who fed the sparrows would not suffer them to hunger. There was no
voice of reason in all this surging multitude. It was a spectacle
without a parallel in history. There is no way of computing the vast
aggregate, but the French historian, Carnot, estimates that five
billion enthusiasts were on the move in the spring of 1096. This
certainly is most extravagant hyperbole, but all Western Europe was
fiercely agitated and vast multitudes were on the march.
THE CRUSADE OF THE MOB.
Their story is but a harrowing recital of a tumultuous and reckless
march through an unknown country by a starving horde of men, women
and children. Pillage, rapine and blood marked their way. For a
time in Germany the people were kindly disposed and brought them
food. Fortunately for the mob Hungary had but recently embraced
Christianity and its King, Carloman, gave it a friendly passage
through his domains: but when it struck Bulgaria its struggles
and sorrows began. They were forced to pillage to keep from
starvation. Religion was laid aside. Hunger knew no law stronger
than that of self-preservation. The Bulgarians flew to arms and
inflicted great losses on the undisciplined and helpless crowd of
beggars. At last that part of the throng led by Walter the Penniless,
arrived under the walls of Constantinople and there were allowed
by the Emperor to await the coming of Peter the Hermit. Alas! the
excesses of his hosts led to still more terrible assaults while
passing through Hungary and Bulgaria. At Nissa they endeavored to
scale the ramparts and a terrific battle ensued in which the Crusaders
were cut to pieces. Women, children, horses, camp and trophy chests,
all fell a prey to the infuriated Bulgarians.
In August, Peter the Hermit appeared under the walls of Constantinople
with about seven thousand soldiers and camp followers to recruit his
wasted energies in the camp of Walter the Penniless while waiting
for other and better armed and disciplined forces to arrive. From
the banks of the Rhine, from Flanders, and even from Britain an
army largely composed of the refuse of mankind, two hundred thousand
strong, started on its march--but soon gave themselves to unheard-of
barbarities. How much worse than a Mohammedan was a member of that
hated race which had crucified the Christ and so they let loose their
fury against the defenseless Jews in most pitiless massacres, sweeping
on into Hungary, to the city of Mersburg, which shut its gates and
refused them provisions. Forests were cut down, causeways built across
the swamps which partially protected the walls and a furious assault
was made upon the city. The battle raged fiercely and for a long time
with doubtful result, but at last the scaling ladders of the Crusaders
began to give way, and then fell dragging down their occupants and
fragments of the walls and towers. These disasters carried panic into
the army of the besiegers and they fled into the forests, were caught
in the swamps and were ruthlessly slaughtered. Few of the desperate
and cruel adventurers escaped. Some found the way back to their own
country covered with disgrace--a few more made their way to the army
of Peter the Hermit encamped before Constantinople.
Thus far this fanatical spirit had cost Western Europe the lives of
nearly a quarter of a million people, and not a Saracen had been
seen. But the motley crowd encamped on the Bosphorus augmented
by adventurers from Italian cities had gradually increased until
now it probably numbered one hundred thousand all told. They were
scarcely more welcome than the Saracens to the Emperor Alexius who
had treated them as guests and supplied their famished hosts. Their
desire for plunder could not long be restrained, and the churches,
houses and palaces in the suburbs fell a prey to their rapacity which
was as insatiable as the cry for blood that rises from a pack of
ravening wolves. Alexius was therefore very glad to furnish them with
transportation across the Bosphorus. They were now on Asiatic soil
an undisciplined and motley crowd in the face of the well armed and
equally furious and fanatical Turk. They revelled in the pillage of
the fertile plains of Nicomedia, dividing the booty at night in their
camps. They plundered the valley, ravaged and burned the villages and
committed most horrible excesses; they captured a small fort near
the mountains from the Turks and massacred the garrison. The Turks
reinforced, fell upon them in turn, and put nearly all of them to the
sword. This roused the anger of the mixed crowds in camp. Nothing could
restrain the blind fury of the soldier mob. They chased the apparently
flying columns of the Turks into the mountains of an unknown country
and fell into the ambush laid for them. In vain their courage, their
despair. The carnage was horrible. Only three thousand escaped. The
entire crusading army perished in this single battle and only their
bleaching bones remained as a ghastly monument pointing out to other
crusaders the way to the Holy Land.
Europe learned with astonishment and horror of the sad fate of over
three hundred thousand soldiers who had departed amid the promises
and the blessings of the church. Their misfortune, however, did
not deter others, but seemed only to inspire them with resolution;
their disasters furnished a warning to the better regulated and
more formidable hosts which were to pour into the East from the now
thoroughly aroused West.
THE CRUSADE OF KINGS AND NOBLES.
The verdict of candid history is that the rabble which started in
obedience to a popular ferment and perished as a miserable crowd of
crazed humanity, deserved the fate they invited; for the world had
never witnessed a more pitiable exhibition of demoniacal fanaticism
and flagrant violence than was shown by these lawless crowds who
followed the cry of Peter the Hermit. They achieved nothing heroic;
but their disasters taught Europe that to conquer Jerusalem would be
no holiday work.
The Princes and Nobles of Germany, France and Britain now organized for
war. While deliverance of Jerusalem was the popular cry and religious
zeal fired the heart of all classes, the powers recognized the fact
that the battles to be fought and won were for the preservation of
their very existence.
You may call it organized infatuation and mailed folly, yet it was
a splendid spectacle. Its spiritual zeal gave a silver lining to its
superstitions. Its martial fame modified its brutality. Amid fearful
excesses there was a show of prudence; and although you may impeach
the justice of their cause, their magnanimous devotion of spirit and
fearless heroism must always command a large share of sympathy and
admiration, and make the Story of the Crusades the most thrilling of
all the chapters in the history of the Middle Ages.
History and poetry place Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lower
Lorraine, at the head of the great captains that led the flower of
all chivalry on its desperate venture. He was a descendant of the
great Charlemagne. To natural bravery he added herculean strength. He
was devout, prudent and humane. All his vengeance was for the enemies
of Christ. He was generous, faithful to his word--a model knight and
soldier. When he gave the signal, the nobility of France and the Rhine
borders opened their purses and flocked to his standards. Women sold
their jewels to equip husbands and sons for service. Men sacrificed
their domains for horses and arms. Godfrey himself sacrificed his
estates that he might equip his soldiers, and a worldly Bishop eagerly
took advantage of his zeal by purchasing his vast domains. Within
eight months of the Council of Clermont, Godfrey had gathered an army
of eighty thousand footmen and ten thousand horse. With him were a
great number of nobles whose names became famous, beside his brother
Baldwin and his cousin Baldwin de Bourg who were destined like himself
to become Kings of Jerusalem. Whether actuated by piety or the hope
of achieving fortune, they all quitted without regret their mean
possessions and tame life in Europe.
They led an immense army used to marches and battles. Their admirable
discipline and self-restraint reëstablished the honor of the Crusaders
and drew allies and champions of the cross where Peter had met his
worst enemies, and the hostile Hungarians and Bulgarians forgot their
hatred for the leaders of the Mob in their admiration for Godfrey
and his chivalric knights.
We must not neglect to mention the names of four chiefs who accompanied
by throngs of lesser knights and nobles, crossed the Alps and marched
towards the different coast cities of Italy intending to embark for
Greece by water. Count Hugh, brother of Philip I. of France, a proud
prince, brave in battle, but lacking perseverance under reverses:
Robert, Duke of Normandy, eldest son of William the Conqueror, who
pledged his domains to his crafty brother, William Rufus, that he
might equip his Norman vassals. Robert, of Flanders, whose father
some time before had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, found it an
easy task to attract a large and resolute following and exhausted
the treasures of his province in arming his men for an expedition,
which was to earn for him the reputation of a brave knight and the
surname of "Lance and Sword of the Christians." Five hundred of his
men had already preceded him to Constantinople. Then Stephen of Blois
and Chartres, whose castles numbered one for every day in the year,
and who was reckoned one of the richest nobles of his time, took up
the cross and led a large body of his retainers;--he, though lacking
in physical strength, was eloquent and wise in council and enjoyed
the exceptional distinction of being a man of letters. For the most
part these chiefs and many men of lesser rank took with them their
wives and children and camp equipments. Passing through Italy they
roused the enthusiasm of the noble Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum,
who was a cubit taller than the tallest soldier in his army. The
historian of Constantinople and the Empire of the East, Anna Comnena,
says that he was as astonishing to the eye as his reputation was to
the mind. He was eloquent in debate, skilled with sword and lance. He
was proud and haughty. Fear of God, the opinions of men, nor his own
oaths afforded him no restraint. His enlistment under the banner of
the cross was not for the purpose of delivering the tomb of Christ,
but because he had sworn eternal enmity against Alexius and the
Empire of the East. He hoped to win a kingdom long before reaching
Jerusalem. In a surprisingly short time he sailed for the coasts of
Greece with twenty thousand footmen and ten thousand horse, followed
by every renowned knight of Apulia and Sicily. None of them however
became so celebrated for deeds of prowess as the brave Tancred,
who has found a place in history and poetry and who seems to have
been actuated by the loftiest sentiments of piety, chivalric honor
and loyal friendship for his leader. From the southern provinces of
France under the leadership of Raymond of Toulouse and Bishop Adhemar,
who was as valorous in the field as he was eloquent in prayer, came
another army one hundred thousand strong, marching eastward along the
south side of the Alps and through northern Italy by way of Dalmatia,
to Constantinople.
And now that all Europe seemed pouring into the empire and capital
of Alexius, the Emperor began to be alarmed. He had not forgotten
the excesses of the first swarm of Crusaders. Should these multitudes
now sweeping into and through his domains choose to do so, they could
speedily wrest his sovereignty from him and find riches and dominion
far easier than in remote and hostile Asia. We have no time to dwell
upon the intrigues and treachery that marked his dealings with these
mighty leaders of the Crusaders. More than once the forces of Godfrey
and Alexius were called to arms with the fate of Constantinople hanging
in almost even balance. Finally a truce was made and the Emperor sent
his son as a hostage to the Camp of the Crusaders. This dissipated
all mistrust and the princes of the West swore to respect the laws
of hospitality. They went in a body to the court of Alexius, where
they bent before his throne and were magnificently received. After an
imposing ceremony the now graciously disposed Emperor adopted Godfrey
as a son, placed the Empire under his protection, promising aid to
the Crusaders by land and sea, provisions for their marches and the
countenance of his leadership in glory or defeat.
But every day brought its hosts of Crusaders and magnificent presents
must be given to all the leaders, and his profuse liberality was
a heavy drain on his royal treasuries. His security now lay in
keeping the armies in motion and hurrying them across the Bosphorus;
and once in Asia their leaders would be engrossed in preparing to
meet the Saracens and his capital would for a time be free from
insult and the unwelcome presence of his mortal foe Bohemond who,
struck with the riches of the apartments assigned him, exclaimed:
"There is enough here to conquer kingdoms with."
And now the plains of Bythinia were fast filling with the warrior
hordes of Europe and as they swept along seeking safe camping places
they came to the foot of the mountains where Walter the Penniless
and his entire army perished in battle. The painful reminder of so
great a calamity, and the recital by the starved remnants of Peter's
army found hiding in the mountains of their fearful sufferings,
hushed all discord, silenced ambition and inspired fresh zeal for
the conquest of the Holy City and the destruction of the fierce,
cruel and equally fanatical Turks who swarmed in the valleys and
filled the walled cities of Palestine with desperate garrisons.
But the first battle of invasion must be fought at the very gateway to
Asia Minor. The chief of the Infidel forces was the son of Solyman;
his name was David, surnamed Kilidge Arslan, or "The Sword of the
Lion." He called upon the defenders of Islam to rally to his standard
and they came in troops from all the surrounding provinces and even
from distant Persia. The capital of his kingdom was Nicea (Nice). It
was the advanced post of the Turks in Asia Minor and there they would
concentrate for the later invasion of Europe. Its approaches were
defended by high mountains. Its walls, surrounded by large water-filled
ditches, were wide enough for the passage of chariots and were crowned
by three hundred and seventy towers of brick. Its garrison was composed
of the finest troops of the Turkish army; and one hundred thousand
men were encamped for its defence upon the neighboring mountains.
Infatuated with their cause, blind in their faith, despising the
martial quality of the enemy, and apparently ignorant of the careful
and crafty preparations made to receive them, the Crusaders marched
in magnificently terrible swarms over the Bythinian plains towards
Nice; with a force of one hundred thousand horse and five hundred
thousand footmen among whom were a large per cent. of women and
children and ineffectives. It was the chivalry of Europe come out to
dispute with the Infidel the possession of Asia. The sight of this
immense army as the Turks gazed upon it from their mountain tops
must have thrilled their hearts even if it did not carry terror to
their camps. It was soon learned that Nice could only be captured by
siege, if at all. For this preparations began to be made; but there
was no central authority. In the camps of the Crusaders were nineteen
different nationalities grouped about their respective standards. No
count or prince would deign to receive orders from anyone. Each camp
was protected by walls or palisades, and as the supply of wood and
stone was scarce they gathered up the bones of the first Crusaders
that lay bleaching on the plains. The priests in all these various
camps were always in the ranks and so great was their power that the
commonest soldier gladly courted death for the sake of the rewards
in store for all who perished in battle with the Infidel.
At the same time David, "The Sword of the Lion" animated his
garrison by recalling former victories and saying: "We are going
to fight for our wives and children and country. The religion of
the Prophet implores our help, and the richest booty will reward
our exploits." While for every Turk that fell in battle the gates
of Paradise would open and the most beautiful Houris would minister
with wine and dance to the unlimited enjoyment of the faithful. The
rewards of the future, though so different to the imagination of the
followers of Christ and of Mohammed, had precisely the same effect
in stimulating the courage of all alike to the same pitch of frenzied
fanaticism--the utter contempt of all danger, and to the very courting
of death itself in the destruction of their enemies.
As the Crusaders advanced, their siege operations animated by the
boldness of their leaders, the Turks, similarly cheered and as bravely
led, descended from their mountain camps and prepared for battle. Their
army divided into two great bodies as they struck the plains. One of
these fell on the army of Godfrey, and the other on that of Raymond
of Toulouse. At first the troops of Raymond gave way to the fierce
onset but were soon rallied by the voices and bugles of Raymond and
Adhemar. Matthew of Edessa writes:--"The two armies joined, mingled and
attacked each other with equal fury. Everywhere glittered casques and
shields; lances rang against cuirasses; the air resounded with piercing
cries; the terrified horses recoiled from din of arms and the hissing
of arrows; the earth trembled beneath the tread of the combatants,
and the plain was for a vast space bristling with javelins." The
Crusaders were most valiantly led by Godfrey, Tancred and the two
Roberts whose steeds seemed to be everywhere, whose valor knew no
abatement and whose lances carried terror and death into the ranks of
the Infidels. It was a disastrous day for the Turkish forces that were
driven back in greatest confusion into their mountain camps. But the
Sultan did not stop to deplore his defeat. He rallied his forces during
the night and determined to avenge his disgrace on the morrow. At
break of day again his troops rushed with the violence of mountain
torrents into the plains, and with loudest cries dashed again and
again into the serried ranks of the Crusaders. All day long under
charge and counter charge the result of the battle hung in doubt. Not
till night did the Turks confess their inability to crush the battle
lines of the Christians by retiring from the scene of awful carnage,
leaving four thousand prisoners in the hands of the victors. The next
day the heads of one thousand were cut off and sent as trophies to
Alexius at Constantinople; the heads of the remaining captives were
thrown by machines over the walls of the city to inform the Turkish
garrison of the disaster which had overtaken their supporting army.
The Crusaders were now free to push forward the siege by every
artifice known to the Romans and directed by the skill and energy of
the Greeks. They allowed the garrison no rest, and the defence was as
furious as the attack. The Turks covered their ramparts with formidable
weapons which hurled destruction on their assailants. They shot forth
darts, wooden beams and enormous stones which daily destroyed the labor
of the Crusaders whose rashness and imprudence cost them many precious
lives. Hundreds died from poisoned darts, and others, venturing too
near the walls, were caught by grappling hooks, dragged alive over
the walls to be shot back, stark naked, into the Christian camp. The
tales of personal, single-handed prowess place Christian and Turkish
chief on equal footing as to strength, courage and splendid daring.
After seven weeks had passed all hope for successful defence
departed. The wife of the Sultan and her two children were captured
in trying to escape, and consternation siezed the garrison. Just
at this crisis the emissaries of Alexius entered the city, and by
creating in the inhabitants a dread of the terrible vengeance that
would be inflicted by the Crusaders, persuaded them to surrender to
the Emperor of Constantinople.
While the Crusaders were preparing for what was intended to be their
final assault, the standard of Alexius suddenly appeared on the
ramparts. The wily Emperor had secured without the loss of a man the
fruits of a victory won at terrible cost of life to the Crusaders. He
succeeded in quieting the wrath of the soldiers by distributing among
them largesses equal in extent to the booty they expected from the
looting of the captured city. He also restored to the Sultan his wife
and children, and thereby won his friendship. He also by this crafty
stroke of policy secured the lives of the Greek Christians scattered
throughout the cities of Asia Minor; but won the lasting hatred of
the Crusaders.
The siege of one city is like the siege of all, and we must hasten
to Jerusalem, in the spring of 1097. Passing by the battlefield
of Dorylaeum, where the newly gathered army of David, the Sultan,
numbering two hundred thousand men, met with an awful defeat and the
loss of nearly twenty-five thousand men; all the treasures of his
camp, provisions, tents, horses and camels, and riches of gold and
silver, falling as spoil into the hands of the Crusaders:--passing
by the terrible march through "Burning Phrygia," desolated by order
of the Sultan, we descend through the mountain passes of the Taurus
range into the fair and fertile and wealthy plains of the province of
Antioch. The armies were soon gathered for the siege of this historic
city, which lasted seven months and was finally captured through the
assistance of an Armenian within the walls.
Six months after the sack of the city of Antioch, the word was given,
"On to Jerusalem."
It was now about the first of June. The harvests of Phoenicia
were ripe, plenty of provisions were in sight, and the country was
beautiful as they marched down the seacoast from Antioch. To their
left rose the mountains of Lebanon. On their right the blue waters of
the Mediterranean flashed in the sunlight of an eastern sky. Between
mountain and sea the valleys and plains were filled with orchards of
olive, orange and pomegranate. Among the plants which were new to the
Crusaders was the sugar cane of the Syrian lowlands. Returning pilgrims
carried this plant to Italy; the Saracens introduced it into Grenada,
whence it spread throughout all the Spanish colonial possessions;
and to-day is the basis of the wealth of Cuba, and one of the chief
productions of our own Southern States.
The Crusaders marched amid plenty and under balmy skies, with time
enough to contemplate the fearful sacrifice of human life which their
expedition had already cost. Battle and famine, disease and despair
had cut off more than two hundred thousand of their number. Tens
of thousands had deserted and returned to Europe; other thousands
remained in the cities and villages of Palestine and were lost in the
mixed crowds of the native races. While yet a vast host, the fighting
force was about fifty thousand, but it was a compact and vigorous
body of warriors. It marched better and lighter. Its victories gave
it courage; its defeats had taught it the value of discipline. The
names of Crusader and Christian carried terror wherever spoken in
the Infidel camps or cities. Their zeal increased as they drew near
the end of their long and wasting marches. Often the weary columns
refused to halt for the night, but tramped on until forced to rest
by sheer fatigue. To their disordered vision luminous angels appeared
to guide them on the way.
Bending away from the sea and passing Lydda, they soon gained the
Heights of Ephraim, only sixteen miles from Jerusalem. Here their
ranks were broken up as they entered these jagged ravines and narrow,
lonesome valleys scorched by the rays of a summer sun, riddled
by gullies and choked by great fragments of rock fallen from the
precipitous sides of the mountains. Had they been attacked from the
heights above by even a few resolute Mussulmen while in such disorder,
fearful loss might have been inflicted; but no enemy appeared as the
more ardent and faithful souls advanced barefooted, carrying with
them the banner of the Prince of Peace to plant on the recaptured
walls of the Holy City of God.
On June 10th, 1099, the Crusaders marched up the gloomy steeps to
Emmaus, and looking over its barren edges caught their first sight
of Zion. The cry of "Jerusalem, Jerusalem," rang out and down the
slopes, and as the rear columns came up the war cry "It is the will
of God," resounded throughout the whole army until reëchoed by the
slopes of the Mount of Olives and heard in the City of David. Horsemen
dismounted and walked barefoot, thousands bent their knees and kissed
the earth. Hallelujahs arose, petitions went up for the remission
of their sins, tears were shed over the death of Christ, and the
profanation of His tomb. Pious fervor soon changed into fierceness
and wrath as oaths were resworn to rescue the Holy City from the
sacrilegious hands of the followers of Mohammed.
They found a fierce and valiant memory awaiting them. The surrounding
villages had been destroyed, cisterns and wells filled up or poisoned,
the land made a desert.
The siege began at once; but their situation grew desperate. They
were suffering under a scorching heat and the sand storms out of the
southern deserts. Plants and animals perished. Kedron ran dry. The
army became a prey to raging thirst. Water brought in skin bottles
a distance of nine miles was worth its weight in silver. The old
historians paint in most frightful colors the misery of the Crusaders
at this juncture; and had the Mussulmen made a determined sortie upon
the staggering hosts, the army must have perished. Their strength and
courage revived by the arrival of a Genoese fleet at Jaffa laden with
provisions. A Syrian pointed out a mountain thirty miles away that
was forest-clad. Every body wrought with unceasing energy. Water
was brought long distances by the women and children; machines of
war towers, catapults and battering rams were erected and pushed up
close under the walls of Jerusalem.
The priests exhorted to peace and harmony. The hermit of the Mount
of Olives led a penitential march around the city. On their return
to camp as the Christian army marched by the tomb of David, and
Mt. Zion they chanted "The nations of the West shall fear the Lord;
and the nations of the East shall see His glory."
On the morning of July 14, 1099, all the Crusaders flew to arms at
the sound of the trumpets to make their first grand assault.
The great war machines were pushed close to the walls. Showers of
stones were hurled upon the ramparts. Archers and crossbowmen kept up
a continual fire from their towers. Scaling ladders were planted. The
great leaders were everywhere. For twelve long hours the Crusaders
maintained the unequal fight, and then nightfall covered their first
repulse. The morning saw the renewal of the conflict more furious and
desperate than before. It was carried on with demoniac obstinacy for
half a day. Their courage began to fail; nearly all their machines
were on fire and there was no water to quench the flames; even their
leaders began to waver.
While the battle was in this desperate shape a mysterious knight made
his appearance on the Mount of Olives waving his sword and signalling
them to renew the assault. They accepted the omen as from heaven and
in the fury of their faith rushed again to the attack--dragged their
machines still nearer the walls, caught them with their grappling
hooks, lowered their drawbridges, let fly showers of flaming arrows
which set on fire sacks of wool and bundles of hay that had been
used for protection on the inner walls. The wind fanned the flames,
driving smoke and heat upon the doomed Saracens. The Crusaders sprang
upon the walls with lance and spear in hand. Godfrey, Baldwin, Raymond
and Tancred followed by their knights and soldiers were soon in the
streets and beating down the gates with their battle-axes opened the
way for the great body of Crusaders to enter. Their battle cry rang
through the streets of the Holy City.
The miracle-monger places the entry of the Crusaders at the very
hour Friday, 3 P. M., at which Christ expired on the cross. But even
this could not move their hearts to mercy. We throw a veil of silence
over the awful massacre that followed, until Godfrey throwing aside
his arms walked barefooted to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. His
example was contagious. The army ceased its bloody fury, cast aside
its blood-stained vestments, gave vent to its contrition in groans and
sobs, and marched with uncovered heads and bare feet following their
priests to the Church of the Resurrection. We marvel at the sudden
transformation. The devotion of the Crusaders seemed profoundly tender
after such horrible carnage. We do not excuse it. We do not condemn
it in bitter speech recalling some terrible experiences during our
late Civil War, when Christian men sometimes seemed possessed. The
demon of war has never yet been baptized with the Spirit of Him who
gave up His life for the salvation of the very men who crucified Him.
The last chapter in the history of this first Crusade ends with the
establishment of a kingdom of Jerusalem and the selection of the
pious Godfrey as King. With its fortunes we may not here concern
ourselves. We shall touch upon it as we sketch the resistless march
of the warriors of Islam to the conquest of Constantinople and the
overthrow of the Empire of Eastern Europe.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GREAT TARTAR INVASIONS.
From Jerusalem the reader must now transport himself beyond the
Caspian Sea eastward if he would visit the early home of the Turks or
Turcomans, or Turkmans, against which the first crusade was chiefly
directed. Their Scythian empire of the sixth century was long since
dissolved, the tribes of the nations, each a powerful and independent
kingdom, were scattered over the deserts of Central Asia from China
to the Oxus and the Danube. Hordes of these wandering shepherds were
about to overspread the kingdoms of Persia, shake the thrones of China
and India, and erect a solid and splendid empire from Samarcand to
the confines of Greece and Egypt. Their conquests were not to cease
till their victorious crescents had been planted on the walls of
Constantinople, and unfurled to the breeze from the dome of the most
magnificent Christian temple of the world--the dome of St. Sophia.
One of the greatest of Turkish princes was Mahmood, who reigned over
the eastern provinces of Persia one thousand years after the birth
of Christ, (A. D. 997-1028.) For him the title of Sultan was first
invented--a word that signifies Lord or Master. His kingdom stretched
from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the mouth of the river Indus.
In a series of twelve expeditions he waged a "Holy War" against the
Gentoos of Hindustan. Never was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the
inclemency of the seasons, the heights of the mountains, the breadths
of the rivers, the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the
enemy or the formidable array of their elephants of war. But we cannot
spare even a page to describe his swift and terrible campaigns that
brought the power and wealth of India to his feet. As in his old age
he surveyed the vast millions of gold and silver, the countless spoils
in pearls and diamonds and rubies that filled his treasure house, even
his boundless avarice might have been satiated for a moment. As he
reviewed the state of his regular military forces which comprised one
hundred thousand foot, fifty-five thousand horse and thirteen hundred
elephants of battle; he wept the instability of human greatness,
his grief embittered by the hostile progress of the Turcomans whom
as allies he had introduced into the heart of his Persian kingdom.
He was admonished of his folly by the reply of the chief of the race
of Seljuk of whom he had inquired what supply of men he could furnish
for military service. "If you send," replied Ishmael, "one of these
arrows into our camp, fifty thousand of your servants will mount
on horseback."
"And if that number should not be sufficient?" "Send this second arrow
to the horde of Balik and you will find fifty thousand more." "But,"
said Mahmood, dissembling his anxiety, "if I should stand in need of
the whole force of your kindred tribes?"
"Despatch my bow," was the last reply of Ishmael, "and as it is sent
around, the summons will be obeyed by two hundred thousand horse." Well
might he fear, for the multitude of shepherds were converted into
robbers; the bands of robbers only needed leaders to become an army
of conquerors, that would not be ashamed or afraid to measure courage
and power with the proudest sovereigns of Asia.
Too long did his son and successor neglect the advice of his wise
men. "Your enemies" they repeatedly urged "were in their origin a
swarm of ants; they are now little snakes; and unless they be instantly
crushed they will acquire the magnitude and venom of serpents."
When the day of battle came, the swarm of ants had grown into a horde
of fierce and mighty warriors: and although "Massoud exhibited such
acts of gigantic force and valor as never king had before displayed,"
in the very hour when victory was about to perch on his banners in
dismay, he beheld almost his whole army led by some generals of the
Turkish race, "devouring the paths of flight." This memorable day of
Zendecan founded in Persia the dynasty of the Shepherd Kings.
THE DYNASTY OF THE SELJUKIAN TURKS. (A. D. 1038-1152.)
The victorious Turcomans, determined by lot, it is said, the selection
of their King; and it fell to Togrul Beg, grandson of Seljuk, whose
surname was immortalized in the greatness of his posterity. At the
age of forty-five Togrul was invested with the title of Sultan in
the royal city of Nishabur, and the sceptre of Irak passed from the
Persian to the Turkish nation, that now and everywhere embraced with
fervor and sincerity the religion of Mohammed.
At the conquest of Mosul and Bagdad he received from the Caliph of
the East the title of the lieutenant of the vicar of the prophet,
his mystic veil was perfumed with musk, two crowns were placed on
his head; two scimitars were girded to his side as the symbol of a
double reign over the East and the West.
Soon myriads of Turkish horse went forth to conquest, overspreading
the frontier of six hundred miles from Tauris to Erzeroum: and the
blood of hundreds of thousands of Christians were a grateful sacrifice
to the Arabian prophet.
The first invasion of poor Armenia was with more than a hundred
thousand men and twenty-four provinces were laid waste. The second
was with two hundred thousand and they completed the utter ruin of
those provinces, carrying into captivity all the inhabitants. In the
year 1049 the armies of Togrul made a third invasion, besieging the
city of Ardzan, which had a population of three hundred thousand
souls, and contained eight hundred churches with schools and
hospitals. Notwithstanding their utmost resistance it was taken and
a hundred and forty thousand people were massacred, the remnant were
carried into captivity and the city was burned. Many other cities
were treated in the same way.
At the same time there were in Armenia sixty thousand Greek Christian
troops from Constantinople, ostensibly for the protection of Armenia,
yet they did not take a single step to repel the invaders, preferring
to see the Armenians slaughtered. Verily history repeated itself
as the great "Christian" powers of Europe stood by witnessing the
"reform of Armenia."
There is some small sense of satisfaction in the fact that before the
Turks left Armenia they utterly defeated and dispersed these miserable
"Defenders of the Faith."
Again in the year 1053 Togrul appeared in Armenia, destroying many
cities, among them the capital city of Kars and then marched to the
city of Manazguerd and laid siege to it.
Basilius, the Chief of the city, was a man of great bravery and
military skill. He was assisted in the defence of the city by a
skillful Armenian priest who, by his inventions rendered the machines
raised by the Persians against the walls entirely useless. Then they
planned to undermine the fortifications; but this new design was
revealed by a soldier who, smarting under some grievous and unjust
punishment, shot an arrow into the city to which was fastened a letter
making known their plans. A countermine was dug, and the Persian
miners being captured they were taken into the city and beheaded on
the battlements.
In his rage Togrul caused a huge wooden ballista to be erected,--so
large that it required four hundred men to drag it before the
walls. Basilius offered a great reward to the man who should succeed
in burning it. There was a very ingenious Gaul in the city who, having
composed an inflammable mixture, mounted a swift horse and proceeded
to the Persian camp holding a letter in his outstretched hand. He went
directly to the spot where the ballista stood and while the guards
fancied him a messenger sent to the King he hurled the bottles filled
with the combustible material into the machine and in the confusion
that attended the burning of the ballista escaped back to the city.
The siege was soon raised but other cities felt the fury of his baffled
rage as leaving a trail of fire and blood behind him, Togrul returned
to Persia. The native historian whom we are consulting, in simplest yet
most telling pathos, writes: "Armenia, after this, enjoyed no repose."
Upon the death of Togrul, (A. D. 1062) he was succeeded by
his nephew, Alp Arslan who, in the following year came to wreak
vengeance on unhappy Armenia. Everywhere he committed the most horrid
devastation. Marching to the province of Ararat he laid siege to Ani
the Magnificent, with its thousand and one churches.
The city was lost by the cowardice of the Governor. A breach had been
made in an unprotected part of the wall, but being narrow the citizens
so valiantly defended it that they compelled the Sultan to retire;
but the Governor, fancying that the Persians had succeeded in forcing
an entrance, retired into the citadel. Thinking themselves deserted,
a panic seized the Armenians and about fifty thousand of them fled
into the country from the gates on the opposite side of the city.
The retreat of the Persians was countermanded, the city was taken,
orders being given to put every man to the sword. Human blood flowed
in torrents. So great was the carnage that the streets were literally
choked up with dead bodies, and the waters of the river Akhurian
flowed in crimson tides. After his first fury was somewhat abated,
Alp Arslan gave orders to seize the most wealthy citizens still alive
and torture them to make them reveal places where their treasures were
hidden. Then he pillaged the thousand and one churches, murdered all
the priests found therein,--some were drowned, some he flayed alive,
others died under tortures as excruciating as most fiendish imagination
could conceive or invent. Finally, gathering his captives--men,
women and children and his plunder, Alp Arslan returned to Persia.
We must leave for awhile the bleeding Armenians whose kingdom had been
annihilated, to the tender mercies of the wicked, to follow the path of
rapine and horror as the torrents of unspeakable Turks flowed westward.
They captured cities, put the inhabitants of Asia Minor to the sword
and devastated the interior provinces to convert them into pasture
lands for their nomad followers.
Romanus, husband of the Greek Empress Eudocia took the field against
them, and driving them back to the Euphrates, laid siege to the
fortress of Manzikert or Malasgerd in Armenia midway between modern
Erzeroum and Van. It was on the plain of Manzikert in 1071 after the
capture of the fortress, that the East gained one of its greatest
triumphs over the West. The Seljuk Sultan and the Roman Emperor met
face to face. Romanus rejected in haughty pride the overtures of the
Sultan that might have secured his retreat, perhaps peace--and prepared
for battle. The Sultan with his own hands tied up the flowing tail
of his horse, exchanged his bow and arrows for a mace and scimitar,
clothed himself in a white garment, perfumed his body with musk, and
declared that if he were vanquished, that spot should be the place of
his burial. The Sultan himself had cast away his missile weapons, but
his hopes of victory were in the arrows of his cavalry whose squadrons
were loosely placed in the form of a crescent. Romanus led his army
in a single and solid phalanx and pressed with vigor the artful and
yielding resistance of the barbarians. Thus the greater part of a hot
summer's day was spent in fruitless combat until fatigue compelled
him to sound a return to camp. This was the fatal moment. The Turkish
squadrons poured a cloud of arrows on the retreating army throwing
them into confusion. The horns of the crescent closed in upon the
rear of the Greeks.
The destruction of the army was complete, the booty immense. Nobly
did the Emperor with desperate courage maintain the fight till the
close of the day. The imperial station was left naked on all sides to
the victorious Turks. His body guard fell about him--his horse was
slain and he himself was wounded, yet he stood as a lion at bay. He
was captured, despoiled of his jewelled robes, bound and guarded all
night on the field of the dead.
In the morning the successor of Constantine in plebian habit was led
into the presence of the Sultan and commanded to kiss the ground at
the feet of the Lord of Asia. Reluctantly he obeyed, and Alp Arslan,
starting from his throne, is said to have planted his foot on the
neck of the Roman Emperor. No captive was ever more nobly treated than
Romanus Diogenes; but no captivity ever wrought more lasting woe. Three
years later the Seljuk was the recognized Lord of Asia Minor, and as
such ventured to call himself the Lord of Rome. Following the defeat of
the Romans the Turks marched into Syria and reduced Damascus by famine
and the sword. Other cities in Palestine yielded until the victorious
army passing southward stood on the banks of the Nile. The city of
Cairo in desperate battle drove back the armies of the Sultan from
the confines of Egypt; but in their retreat Jerusalem was conquered
and the house of Seljuk held the city for some twenty years.
When Jerusalem fell before the arms of the Crusaders in 1099, the
event was applauded as a deliverance in Europe, and was deplored as
a calamity in Asia. The Syrian fugitives diffused everywhere their
sorrow and consternation: Bagdad mourned in the dust; the Cadi of
Damascus tore his beard in the Caliph's presence; the Commanders of
the faithful could only weep and vow vengeance on the head of the
infidels who had defiled the Holy City.
It is not our purpose to pursue the story of the crusades through all
the years that made Jerusalem the prize of battle equally to Christian
and Mohammedan. The life and exploits of Saladin and Richard, the
lion-hearted are more thrilling than any romance. In a fanatic age,
himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of Saladin commanded the esteem
of the Christians; the Emperor of Germany gloried in his friendship;
the Greek Emperor solicited his alliance. Egypt, Syria, and Arabia
were adorned by the royal foundations of hospitals, colleges and
mosques; Cairo was fortified with a wall and citadel; but his works
were consecrated to public use: nor did the Sultan indulge himself in
a garden or palace of private luxury. The son of Job, a simple Kurd,
Saladin was after the follies of a hot youth, a rigid Mussulman,
his garment of coarse woolen, and water his only drink.
But already had he won for himself the name of "The Scourge of God." He
had united all the forces and riches of Egypt and Asia under his
sword and now (1187 A. D.) hastened with eighty thousand horse to
the deliverance of Palestine.
Three months after the battle of Tiberias (July 4 and 5, 1187)
he appeared in arms before Jerusalem. When Saladin had partially
completed its investment, he invited its principal inhabitants to meet
him in council. When they were assembled he said: "I acknowledge that
Jerusalem is the House of God. I do not wish to profane its sanctity
by the shedding of blood. Abandon its walls and I will bestow on
you a part of my treasures, and I will bestow on you as much land
as you will be able to cultivate." To which the Christians replied:
"We cannot yield the city in which our God died: still less can we
give it up to you."
This refusal enraged Saladin, and he swore to destroy the towers
and ramparts of Jerusalem, and avenge the death of the Mussulmen
slaughtered by the soldiers of Godfrey of Bouillon.
The siege went on. Many and fierce the sorties from the gates of
the city: but fight as they would the operations of the infidels
could not be stayed. Despair set in, mingled with wailing, tears and
prayers. Jerusalem was filled with sobs and groans.
Deputies were sent out to propose a capitulation on the terms which he
had first proposed. He sent them back without one word of hope. But
one day as the deputies were pleading with unusual earnestness,
Saladin pointed to his standards just placed upon the walls saying:
"How can you ask me to grant conditions to a city which is already
taken?" But he spoke too confidently, for at that moment they were
stricken down again.
As they went down Baleau the leader of the Christian forces spoke up:
"You see Jerusalem is not without defenders. If we can obtain no
mercy from you we will form a terrible resolution which will fill you
with horror. These temples and palaces you are so anxious to conquer
shall be destroyed. The riches which excite your cupidity shall be
burned. We will destroy the mosque of Omar. We will pound into dust
the stone of Jacob which is an object of your worship. We will stay
our women and our children with our own hands that they shall never be
your slaves. When the Holy City shall become a ruin--a vast tomb--we
will march out of it armed with fire and sword and no one of us will
ascend to Paradise without first consigning ten Mussulmen to hell. We
shall thus obtain a glorious death and in dying shall call down on
your head the maledictions of the God of Jerusalem."
Saladin was awed by this terrible speech: told the deputies to return
the next day, when the terms of capitulation were signed in the tent
of the great sultan, and Jerusalem passed again into the hands of
the infidels, after having remained for eighty-eight years in the
possession of the Christians. The Saracens boast that they retook
the Holy City on Friday, the anniversary of the day on which Mohammed
ascended from it into heaven: but the complete conquest of the Holy
Land by the Turks was to be delayed yet an hundred years.
Finally, however, before Mamelukes of Egypt, Jerusalem, and all the
cities of the coast fell, and Acre became the last stronghold of the
crusaders. Against it marched the Sultan Khali at the head of sixty
thousand horse and one hundred and forty thousand foot.
After a siege of thirty-three days the double wall was forced, the
towers yielded to their engines, the Moslems stormed the city May 18,
(A. D., 1291) carried it by the sword; and death or slavery was the
lot of sixty thousand Christians. By the command of the Sultan the
churches and the fortifications of the Latin cities were demolished,
and a mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which had
so long resounded with the World's Debate; and hundreds of thousands of
warriors had found the "Paradise that lies under the shade of swords."
Again must we go to the "roof of the world" to behold the great
eruption of Moguls and Tartars whose fierce and rapid and cruel
conquests can only be compared with the destructive forces of nature in
her wildest moods when she lets loose upon the earth fire and flood,
earthquake, avalanche and volcano. From these spacious highlands
the tides of emigration and the floods of war have repeatedly been
poured. In the twelfth century the various tribes akin to Hun and
Turk were united and led to conquest by the formidable Jenghiz Khan,
i. e. the most great Khan or Emperor of the Moguls and Tartars.
The code of laws which Jenghiz Khan dictated to his subjects was
adapted to the preservation of domestic peace and the exercise of
foreign hostility. These fiercest of men were mild and just in their
intercourse with each other. Their primitive religion consisted in
belief in the existence of one God, the author of all good, who fills
by His presence the heavens and the earth which He has created by His
power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their
various tribes yet there were among them converts to the religions
of Moses, Mohammed and of Christ.
Soon all the kindred tribes from the great wall of China to the Volga
owned his sway. He was the Khan of many millions of shepherds and
warriors. The court of Pekin was astonished at receiving an embassy
from a former vassal demanding the same tribute and obedience which he
himself had but lately paid. On receiving a haughty answer innumerable
squadrons soon pierced on all sides the feeble rampart of the great
wall and ninety cities were laid low. On his second invasion he
laid siege to Pekin. The famine was terrible. Men were chosen by
lot to be slain for food. The Moguls mined under the capital and the
conflagration of the city lasted for thirty days. China was desolated
by Tartar war and domestic faction and the five northern provinces were
added to the empire of Jenghiz. On the west he touched the dominions
of Mohammed, sultan of Carizme, who reigned from the Persian gulf to
the borders of India and Turkestan.
A caravan of three ambassadors and one hundred and fifty merchants
having been put to death by the orders of Mohammed, after he had fasted
and prayed for three nights on a mountain, Jenghiz appealed to the
judgment of God and his own sword. Seven hundred thousand Moguls and
Tartars are said to have marched under the banners of Jenghiz and his
four sons. On the vast plains stretching north of the river Jaxartes
(now Jihon) they encountered four hundred thousand soldiers of the
Sultan. In the first battle it is said that one hundred and sixty
thousand Carizmians were slain. The whole country then lay open to
his fierce warriors and from the Caspian to the Indus, a tract of
many hundreds of miles, adorned with the habitations and labors of the
most highly civilized races of Asia, was desolated so completely that
five centuries have not repaired the ravages of four years. In all
this Jenghiz Khan indulged and encouraged the fury of his army. He
now yielded with reluctance to the murmurs of his weary but wealthy
troops who sighed for the rest of their native lands.
The return of Jenghiz was signalized by the overthrow of the few
remaining independent kingdoms in Tartary: and he died in the fulness
of years and glory, with his last breath exhorting his sons to achieve
the conquest of the Chinese Empire. In the sixty-eight years of his
first four successors the Mogul had subdued almost all Asia and a
large portion of Europe.
To the East China was subdued; to the South the conquest of
Hindustan was reserved for the house of Timour or Tamerlane. While
the hosts that went forth to conquer Russia, Poland, Hungary, etc.,
(1235-1245) inscribed on the military roll numbered fifteen hundred
thousand men. Holagon the grandson of Jenghiz Khan had but to thrust
at the phantom of power which the Caliphs of Bagdad enjoyed when it
vanished like the mist. Bagdad after a siege of two brief months,
was stormed and sacked and the savage Tartar pronounced the death of
the Caliph Mostasem the last of the temporal successors of Mohammed
whose noble kinsmen of the race of Abbas had reigned in Asia above
five hundred years.
Once more the torrents of woe flow in upon Armenia lying in the track
of the Tartar armies westward. Ani is again besieged and soon a famine
broke out within the walls and many of the citizens rushed out and
gave themselves up to the mercy of their enemies. They were kindly
received and a sufficient supply of food was given to them. Induced
by this kindness more than half of the inhabitants were soon found in
the camp of the Tartars. All at once the poor wretches were divided
into small parties under the pretext of receiving better protection
when the soldiers fell upon them and massacred every individual. Then
the city was easily taken, destroyed by fire and the entire population
put to the sword.
Many cities suffered the desolations and horrors of Ani till the Khan
ordered his chiefs on to other conquests. Then followed the infliction
of a heavy capitation tax on all the remaining provinces--sixty
pieces of money being demanded of every Armenian from the age of ten
upwards. Those who were unable to pay this sum suffered intolerable
tortures. Those who were possessed of lands lost them, their wives and
children being seized and sold into slavery. Nothing ever equalled
the horrors that now overspread this unhappy country, most of the
inhabitants having no money to pay the tax and having no place to
which to flee from their oppressors. Finally an embassy to Mangon Khan,
a grandson of Jenghiz secured some little alleviation of their misery.
Meantime there was growing up in Cilicia a subordinate kingdom of
Armenia with Tarsus for its capital--and receiving favor from the
Sultan of Egypt and the Khan of the Tartars. Leo III. resumed the
kingly reins of his kingdom comprising all of Modern Anatolia. He
repaired his cities; he erected public schools. He caused all the
literary productions of the Armenians from the earliest ages to be
recopied and distributed among the convents of the kingdom. He reigned
for twenty years ardently devoted to the service of God and died in
the year 1289.
His son, Hethum, was a prince who despised all worldly pomp and
grandeur, seldom arrayed himself in royal apparel. He was greatly
attached to the priests of his capital engaging daily with them in
prayers and other religious exercises. He was particularly fond of
the literary productions of the Fathers of the Church. His Bible was
his daily companion. He caused a copy of it to be prepared expressly
for himself, and at the end of it wrote some lines expressive of the
high satisfaction and comfort he had derived from its frequent perusal.
These paragraphs may show what has ever been the character of these
people who are still being harried to death in the same provinces
where they have lived and suffered for centuries.
The decline of the spirit of conquest in the Mogul princes of
Persia gave a free scope to the rise and progress of the Ottoman
Empire which was soon to strike fear into the heart of the Emperor
of Constantinople, and finally establish itself in Europe where it
remains to this day a blot on Western civilization and a curse to
all the people over which it rules.
In 1360 we find the throne of the Ottoman Turks established at
Adrianople almost within sight of Constantinople which after resisting
for a thousand years the assaults of barbarians of the East and the
West, now saw herself hemmed in, both in Europe and Asia, by the same
hostile power and her Emperor following at his summons the court and
camp of an Ottoman Prince.
Bajazet surnamed Ilderim, or "The Lightning" who came to the throne
in 1389, and reigned fourteen years, fills a brilliant page in Ottoman
history. He forced Constantinople to pay tribute and enjoyed the glory
of being the first to found a royal Mosque in the glorious metropolis
of the Eastern Church. He would speedily have forced its absolute
surrender but that he was doomed to meet and be overthrown by a savage
still more savage than himself--the name that caused all Europe and
Asia to tremble with fear--the great, the terrible, the blood-thirsty
Timour or Tamerlane. The family of Tamerlane was another branch of the
imperial stem of Jenghiz Khan. He was born 1335 A. D., in a village
that lies forty miles to the south of Samarcand, in a tribe of which
his fathers were the hereditary chiefs. His birth was cast in a time
of anarchy of bitter domestic feuds; when the Khans of Kashgar with
an army of Calmucks harassed the Trans-oxian Kingdom. At the age of
twenty-five he stood forth as the deliverer of his people: and in ten
years he was invested with imperial command of the Zagatai. The rule
over a fertile and populous land five hundred miles in extent either
way, might have satisfied an ordinary man: but Timour aspired to the
dominion of the world and before his death the crown of Zagatai was
but one of twenty-seven which he had placed upon his head. He first
swept Persia to the sea. The city of Ormuz bought its safety for an
annual tribute of six hundred thousand pieces of gold. Bagdad was
laid in ruins: and from the gulf to the mountains of Ararat the whole
course of the Tigris and Euphrates was reduced to his obedience.
The Khan of the Mogul Empire of the North swept down through the gates
of Derbend entering Persia at the head of ninety thousand horse,
burned the palaces of Timour and compelled him amidst the snows of
winter to contend for Samarcand and his life.
After a mild expostulation, and a glorious victory he resolved on
revenge. He invaded Tartary with armies so vast that thirteen miles
stretched between his left and right wing. In a march of five months
they rarely beheld the footsteps of man. At length the armies met
in most fearful conflict. In the heat of conflict the treachery of
the bearer of the imperial standard of Kipzak turned the tide of
victory to the Zagatai, and Timour gave up the mingled hosts to the
"wind of desolation." The pursuit of a flying enemy led him into the
provinces of Russia. Moscow trembled at the approach of the Tartar, but
he turned his armies southward, and on the banks of the Don received
a deputation of the merchants of Egypt, Venice, Genoa, and Spain, who
had built up the great commerce and the city of Azoph. They offered him
gifts, admired his magnificence, trusted his word. But the peaceful
visit of an Emir who explored the state of the magazines and harbors
was speedily followed by the destructive presence of the Tartars,
who reduced the city to ashes, pillaged the Moslems, and put every
Christian to the sword or sold them into slavery. Having laid waste all
the cities in Southern Russia, he returned to his capital at Samarcand.
Samarcand, the center of his magnificence, the depot of all riches,
arose and extended itself as by magic at each return of the world's
conqueror. It is said that Babylon, Bagdad, Persepolis, Palmyra,
Baalbec and Damascus, were all cast into the shade by the mosques,
palaces, gardens, and aqueducts which arose under the hands of most
skillful artisans brought from every captured city to decorate the
capital of a barbarian.
Here amid the delights of his gardens, the love of his women,
the conversation of his men of letters, the eulogies of poets,
did Tamerlane refresh himself after the exploits of a five years'
campaign. But his loves, and delights of ease, did not make him forget
that dream of all conquerors--India, and at this invasion he overran
it from the Indus to Delhi, and from the Ocean to Thibet.
As he proceeded on his march, his army became encumbered with the
captives, and he ordered one hundred thousand of them slain in a
single night. Remorse, pity, and indignation, seized even a Tartar
army, but Tamerlane answered it only by the conquest and massacre
of Delhi, that great and magnificent city which had flourished for
three hundred years, under Mohammedan kings; the ruins of which are
still seen for miles on every side of the modern city. The blood
of the slain, crimsoned the waters of the Sacred Ganges for many,
many miles on its course to the sea. The recital of his cruelties
could not be believed, were they not recorded in the history of all
the nations he conquered. The treasures were of incalculable value,
and every soldier received one hundred slaves for his share and every
Tartar camp follower, twenty.
It was while camping on the bank of the Ganges that Tamerlane received
from his couriers the tidings of the disturbances on the confines of
Anatolia and Georgia, of the revolt of the Christians and the ambitious
designs of Bajazet. He returned to Samarcand having accomplished in
a twelve month the ten years' campaign of Alexander the Great.
After enjoying a few months tranquillity he proclaimed a seven years'
campaign against the countries of Western Asia. To the soldiers who
had served in the Indian wars he granted their choice of home or
camp, but the troops of all the kingdoms and provinces of Persia were
commanded to assemble at Ispahan and await the imperial standard.
With an army of eight hundred thousand fighting men and a multitude
of slaves so vast that it is said that they dried up the earth as
they marched, he started westward. Words are lacking to describe
the desolation and cruelty that attended his march and the sacking
of cities.
Multitudes of Christians suffered untold horrors rather than deny
their faith. The cities that attempted to resist behind their walls
were effaced from the earth, and upon their sites towers were erected,
the walls of which were composed of living men cemented in the lime.
Pursuing the people of Georgia into the gorges of the Caucasus
Mountains he inflicted upon them great slaughter, and discovering
many caverns into which men, women and children had fled for safety
he walled up their entrances and left them to perish.
Ispahan in a moment of folly having rebelled and massacred three
thousand Tartars he sent back one hundred thousand soldiers with
orders that every man should bring him a head on penalty of losing
his own. Ispahan in consternation and horror paid this price for its
revolt, and on the site of a dismantled city, a mason-wrought pyramid
of a hundred thousand heads told the awful story of their doom.
Proceeding westward Tamerlane laid siege to Siwas, or Sebaste, modern
Siwas, a city having walls of prodigious thickness and a broad moat
filled with running water.
It contained one hundred and fifty thousand souls, was defended by
intrepid Armenians and seemed able to defy every assault of a Tartar
multitude without battering artillery to shake the walls.
But Tamerlane hesitated only a moment. Prodigal of men, he set
thousands at work to undermine the rocks that formed the foundation
of the walls. He emptied the moats by cutting deeper channels for the
river. He cut down adjacent forests to prop up the mines dug under the
towers of the walls; and then setting on fire this underground forest
he saw the rocks give way engulfing walls, houses and defenders in
the ruins. Twenty days and nights sufficed to open enormous breaches
for his soldiers. The city naked and trembling before him awaited its
fate. Timour promised to spare the lives of Mohammedans and Christians,
and to be content with servitude. But scarcely had he entered it before
he inundated it with the blood of its defenders. By his ferocity he
made all the East and the West to shudder, and the world to stand
aghast at its recital after more than four centuries have covered its
horrors. Four thousand Ottomans were buried alive up to the neck and
thus left to perish. Countless Christians were bound in couples and
cast into trenches which were then covered with boards and earth, and
over them the Tartars pitched their tents and took fiendish delight
in their moanings. Women were bound by the hair of their heads to
the tails of wild young horses and thus dragged to death. The young
children were bound hand and foot and laid together on an open plain
and trampled to death by his cavalry. With the exception of the male
children fit for slavery, and the young girls reserved for the harem
the entire population was destroyed.
Do you shudder at even this cool recital? Far worse horrors are
still being endured by the Christian people of Armenia this very
day on ground that is dyed with the blood of a thousand years of
martyrdom. And still Christian Europe is unmoved; and the Turk, drunk
with the blood of his victims still is propped up on his throne by
the arms that should drive him back to the deserts of Tartary: and
Christian America contents itself with trying by their relief funds
to keep alive the starving remnants of this harried race whose cry
to Christendom is "either kill us or in God's name redeem us."
As Timour took up again his march from desolated Siwas he dragged
with cords along the stones of the road at the heels of his horse the
head of the governor of Siwas, one of the sons of Bajazet who was then
besieging Constantinople. Aroused by the danger that threatened him yet
with a deep sadness caused by the death of his son which settled upon
him as if in presentiment of his own fate, Bajazet raised the siege,
called all his forces together to meet the bloody Conqueror of the
East. Aleppo and Damascus meanwhile fell with terrible slaughter,
and now on the plains not far from Siwas, Timour awaited the coming
of Bajazet.
Tamerlane hesitated to engage in this battle with a race of his own
blood, the champions of the faith of the Prophet, who were fighting
like himself for the triumph of Islam. His envoys were disgracefully
treated and his messages were answered with most haughty and insulting
letters. "Thy armies" said Bajazet "are innumerable; be they so:
but what are the arrows of the flying Tartars against the scimitars
and battle-axes of my firm and invincible Janizaries?"
Then this deadly insult: "If I fly from thy arms, may my wives be
thrice divorced from my bed; but, if thou hast not courage to meet
me in the field mayest thou again receive thy wives after they have
thrice endured the embraces of a stranger."
On receiving this letter Timour exclaimed: "Decidedly the son of
Mourad is mad."
All day long Timour reviewed his troops of horse as the squadrons
passed before him, then turning again to the envoy he made a last
offer of peace, "Say to your master that he can still, in accepting
my just and moderate conditions, spare the fatal dissension of two
servants of the one God, and torrents of human blood to Asia."
Bajazet was both deaf and blind to the advice of his viziers, his
generals and the last message of Tamerlane; and was determined to
meet with his army of four hundred thousand men which he had seen
gathering for two years, the well trained army of eight hundred
thousand men who were formed in nine divisions under the four sons
and five favored grandsons of the greatest warrior of the world.
Never had the sun of Asia shed its light upon so vast a multitude of
warriors gathered for so deadly a conflict on July 28, 1402. Timour
brought forward only five hundred thousand of his choicest troops,
horse and foot, yet they covered the amphitheater of the hills which
arose behind the river in the basin to the north of Angora. He had
most carefully chosen his field of battle and his position, and facing
him was the vast army of Bajazet. All historians, Arabian, Greek and
Ottoman agree that over one million men faced each other on this listed
field. The situation added to the tragic majesty of the spectacle. The
plain, the gradation of the hills and the rugged mountains of Angora
made a circus worthy of these imperial gladiators of the two Asias.
Timour was stationed on an elevated mound whence he could survey the
whole field, while behind him and out of sight from the enemy were
forty divisions of select cavalry ready at the critical moment to
strengthen any wavering squadrons, or to be hurled on the field to
consummate the victory.
The first dawn of day upon the mountains of Angora illuminated those
two armies in order of battle but motionless. But when the sun had
dispelled the shade from the foot of the hills, at the rolling of
drums of the Turks with the cry of Allah Achbar the army of Bajazet
was put in motion. Soon the battle was on. The first charge of one
wing of Tartar cavalry was broken by the immobility of the Servian
mountaineers.
Then in the rapid advance of his enemy's troops Timour discovered
that the Asiatic army of Bajazet had passed the level of the Ottoman
lines in order to turn the hills he was occupying, and down he rushed
with his reserve cavalry of forty divisions and cut in two the army
of Europe and the army of Asia, throwing one of them back upon the
hills and the other into the marshes on the left, slaughtering at the
center some thousands of Ottomans and forcing Bajazet himself to fly
with ten thousand of his Janizaries to a rising ground detached from
the mountains whose steep declivities checked the impetuosity of the
Tartar cavalry.
Timour watched with admiration the retreat of the Servian mountaineers,
as in dense columns clad in splendid mail, unshaken by repeated
charges of his cavalry they forced their way obliquely through that
multitude until they gained the foothills in safety. "These miserable
peasants are lions," he exclaimed in admiration of their discipline
and their courage.
Two sons of Bajazet were rescued by the bold daring of their devoted
followers, but in vain did they urge the Emperor himself to seek
refuge in flight. Satisfied that his sons were safe he continued to
fight for glory or for death behind the rampart of his Janizaries who
formed about him a circular wall with their dead bodies. Never was
fidelity more desperate, more unswerving. Stolen from Christian homes
at an early age and trained as warriors they knew no other home than
the camp. They knew that their birth among the Christians and their
name of renegades left them no other choice than that of death upon
the field of battle or the field of torture. The retreat of the ten
thousand after the death of Cyrus did not equal the glorious suicide
of these ten thousand Janizaries about the body of their Sultan.
As the shades of evening began to fall, Bajazet, his youngest son and
a few faithful generals and a group of horsemen sought to escape into
the woody recesses of the mountains. A troop of Tartar cavalry closely
pursued the trail of the retreating Sultan. The day was about to break
and they hoped to escape by swimming a swift stream, the horsemen
they heard galloping behind them when a loose shoe caused the horse
of the Sultan to stumble. None would save themselves and leave their
master, and as one of the Beys was presenting his own horse to him,
a Tartar emir with a body of horsemen surrounded the small group of
the Ottomans and they were prisoners.
Before night had fallen the vanquished Sultan in chains, covered with
dust and blood, was brought before Timour, who was seated in the shade
of his tent playing chess with the son whom he called the hope of his
race. The vanquisher showed neither pride nor insolence before the
vanquished. He remembered the maxims and respected the finger of God
even in the enemy overthrown at his feet. He remembered that he was of
the same race, that they were fighting for the same faith and he almost
begged his pardon for the victory. He ordered him to be released,
begged him to take a seat with him at the front of his tent on the same
rank with himself and promised him that his honor and his life would
suffer no risk during his brief captivity. Three imperial tents were
prepared for his use; and after the discovery of his attempt to escape,
Bajazet was chained at night in one of those iron-barred litters
wherein women in their journeys are carried between two mules. Hence
the popular, but erroneous, tradition throughout the East about the
iron cage wherein Timour had shut up the Sultan intending to exhibit
him in his palace at Samarcand. Timour permitted Bajazet to send for
his favorite wife, the Princess of Servia--exacting from her at a
banquet, but only for a single time, that she should hand him a cup
of Cyprus wine the sole vengeance he wished to take for the insulting
letter wherein Bajazet had threatened him with taking off his harem.
Bajazet died about nine months after his defeat at Antioch in
Pisidia--his empire, lost in a single battle--having fallen into
fragments before his eyes.
Turning away from the possible conquest of Europe Tamerlane soon
returned to Samarcand and in 1405 set out for the final and complete
conquest of China. Neither age nor the severity of the winter could
retard the impatience of Timour, he passed the Sihon on the ice,
marched hundreds of miles, then pitching his last camp, died of fever
and fatigue and the indiscreet use of iced water April 1, 1405. The
conqueror of Asia had reigned for thirty-five years and died at the
age of seventy-one, having shed more blood and caused more misery
than any other human being ever born on the earth.
CHAPTER V.
THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
With the death of Tamerlane all his further designs were lost; his
armies were disbanded; China was saved; and fourteen years after
his decease, the most powerful of his children sent an embassy of
friendship and commerce to the court of Pekin. But far different was
the fate of the Ottoman monarchy. The massive trunk was bent to the
ground, but no sooner had the hurricane passed than it again rose
with fresh vigor and more luxuriant foliage.
The province of Anatolia was desolated; the cities without walls
or palaces, without treasures or rulers: while the open country was
overspread with hordes of shepherds of Tartar or Turcoman origin. The
five living sons of Bajazet were soon fighting for the spoils of their
father's empire: finally the favorite son Mohammed I., stood forth
as the sole heir of the empire. He obtained Anatolia by treaty and
Roumania by force of arms and the eight years of his peaceful reign
were spent in banishing the vices of civil discord and placing on a
firmer basis the fabric of the Ottoman monarchy. The wisest Turks were
devoted to the unifying of the empire and from Anatolia to Roumania
one spirit seemed to animate them all. The Christian powers of Europe
might have emulated their example, but the bitter schism between
the Greek and the Latin divisions of the church, the factions and
the wars of France and England, blinded them to the danger that was
threatening in the East.
Had a confederate fleet occupied the straits of the Dardanelles and a
strong fort been built on the west side at Gallipoli, the Ottoman power
must speedily have been annihilated; but as it was the dissensions and
the indifference of the other powers of Europe first yielded up the
Greek Empire to the Turks as they have since sustained it--an alien
power--race and religion in one of the fairest regions of the earth.
In sheerest folly did Manuel the Emperor of Constantinople enter
into an alliance with Mohammed I., whereas his policy should have
been to prolong the division of the Ottoman powers. The Sultan and
his troops were transported over the Bosphorus, and were hospitably
entertained in the capital. Not long after he unsheathed a sword
of revenge in delivering the true or the false Mustapha, real or
pretended son of Bajazet I., on his promise of delivering up the
keys of Gallipoli, or rather of Europe, so soon as he was placed
on the throne of Roumania. But no sooner was he established than he
dismissed the Greek ambassadors with a smile of contempt, saying in
a pious tone that at the day of judgment he would rather answer for
the violation of an oath than for having delivered up a Mussulman
city into the hands of an infidel.
The Emperor was thus at once the hated of the two rivals for the
Ottoman throne; and the victory of Amurath over Mustapha was followed
by the siege of Constantinople, the following spring (A. D. 1422,
June 10, Aug. 24). The strength of the walls successfully resisted
an army of two hundred thousand Turks for some two months, when the
army was drawn off to quell some domestic revolt, and the fall of the
city was delayed for thirty years under the disgraceful conditions
of the payment of tribute to Turkey.
Meantime the Ottomans were with cruel severity, organizing a terrible
power for further conquest. The captured provinces of Thrace,
Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria and Servia, became the perpetual
recruiting ground for the Turkish army. After the royal fifth of
the captives was diminished by conquest, an inhuman tax of the fifth
child or of every fifth year was rigorously levied on the Christian
families. At the age of twelve or fourteen, the most robust youths were
torn away from their parents to be trained for the army or for civil
service. They might pass through four successive schools according
to their development or promise and then found themselves without
friendships, outside their own number, without parents, without homes,
dependent on the will of the despot on the throne, whose hand, on the
slightest displeasure could break in pieces "these statues of glass."
Thus with satanic craftiness and cruelty were the stolen children
of Christian races trained to become the destroyers of a Christian
empire, which, for more than a thousand years had stayed the flood
of barbarism from sweeping over all Europe.
Freeman, the historian, declares that we may take Mohammed II.,
as the ideal of his race, the embodiment in their fullest form of
Ottoman greatness and Ottoman wickedness. A general and a statesman
of the highest order, he was also a man of intellectual cultivation
in other ways, a master of many languages and a patron of the art
and the literature of his time. At the same time the three abiding
Ottoman vices, cruelty, lust and faithlessness, stand forth in terrible
preëminence. His first act was the murder of his infant brother and
he made the murder of brothers the standing law of his empire. He
made the Ottoman power what it has been ever since. He defined its
northern and western boundaries. "The Ottoman Empire as our age has to
deal with it, is before all things the work of Mohammed the Conqueror."
His reign was from 1451 to 1481. Coming to the throne at the early
age of twenty-one, he had read Plutarch assiduously and studied the
careers of Alexander, Cæsar and other great conquerors; causing also
the biographies of illustrious men to be translated into Turkish,
to give to himself and to his people the emulation of glory.
On returning to Adrianople, this thirst of glory and of conquest
devoured him as it had devoured his ancient models. He coveted
Constantinople with a consuming avidity that often woke him with
a bound from his sleep. The phantom of Constantinople beset by day
and night the young conqueror. He tried to conceal his impatience
for fear of exciting before the hour the emotions of the Christian
West. He could not restrain it. He sent for his grand vizier, Khalil,
at night. Alarmed, the vizier embraced as in a last farewell his wife
and daughter, made his death prayer and appeared before the Sultan. He
prostrated himself as if to redeem his life by a ransom and presented
to Mohammed II. the golden cup. "Do not fear, my lala, (familiar term
as father), do not fear, it is not thy gold nor thy life I want: what
I want that thou shouldest give me is Constantinople." Then showing
him his eyes, fatigued with sleeplessness, and his couch disordered,
he added, "I cannot sleep unless you promise me what I dream of night
and day."
"You must have it, my master," responded Khalil. "Who could refuse you
that which belonged to you by the grandeur of your views, and by the
omnipotence of your arms. I have divined this long time your desires
beneath your silence; I have all prepared to satisfy on an appointed
day, your religion, your patriotism, your glory. Constantinople or
my head is at your feet."
The next day the Sultan set out with Khalil for Gallipoli and then
proceeded to the village situated on the European shore of the
Bosphorus at the point which formerly gave passage to the Persians
of Darius. There he ordered Khalil to construct forthwith a fortress
in front of the Asiatic fortress constructed twenty years before by
his ancestor, Bajazet-Ilderim.
This promontory on the Bosphorus, at a point where the channel is not
wider than a river and only a few miles distant from Constantinople,
was admirably chosen to extend the limits of the conquest, to wall
in the city, and to smother it by terror even before being swept by
the fury of their fiery onslaught.
With fantastic superstition the Sultan or his architect gave the
different compartments the form of the letters, which in Arabic
compose both his name and the name of the false prophet, as if to
stamp with the very walls of a fortress on the soil of Europe, the
seal of Islamism, and the empire on the last promontory that still
sheltered the capital of the Christians.
The Greek Emperor alarmed at this menace almost under the very walls
of his capital sent Ambassadors who timidly demanded explanations
from the Sultan.
"Of what do you complain?" replied he, "I form no project against your
city. To provide for the security of my dominions is not to infringe
the treaties. Have you forgotten the extremity to which my father was
reduced when your Emperor, leagued against him with the Hungarians,
sought to hinder him from passing into Europe? His galleys at that
time barred the passage and Mourad was obliged to claim the aid
of the Genoese. * * * * My father at the battle of Varna vowed to
construct a fortress on the European shore. This vow I fulfil. Have
you the right or power to control in this manner what are mine;
that of Asia because it is inhabited by Ottomans; that of Europe,
because you are unable to defend it.
"Go tell your master that the reigning Sultan is not like his
predecessors: that their wishes did not go so far as does to-day
my power. I permit you to retire for this time: but I will have the
skin flayed off the bodies of those who henceforth should have the
insolence of calling me to an account for what I do in my own empire."
A thousand masons and a host of laborers were soon at work on this
fortress.
Some Greek peasants, at work in their harvest fields, having been
slain, Constantine, the Emperor, sent messengers to expostulate, and
then to add: "If unmerited reverses menace the capital of the empire,
the Omnipotent will be the refuge of the Emperor. The inhabitants
will defend themselves by all the means which destiny leaves them,
so long as God shall not have inspired the Sultan with thoughts of
justice and peace."
Mohammed II. replied to this adjuration of his justice, but by the
first cannon shot discharged from the fortress, already armed, at a
Venetian vessel wishing to try if the Bosphorus were still free.
While Mohammed thus threatened the capital of the East the Emperor
implored with fervent prayers the assistance of earth and heaven. The
invisible powers seemed deaf to his supplications; the Powers of Europe
were stupid, jealous or deaf. Christendom beheld with indifference
the fall of Constantinople. Some states were too weak and others too
remote. By some the danger was considered imaginary, by others as
inevitable. The western princes were involved in endless quarrels;
and the Roman Pontiff was exasperated by the falsehood or obstinacy
of the Greeks. Thus they were left to the tender mercies of the Turks.
The Sultan and Khalil had already returned to Adrianople to prepare
the two hundred thousand men, the machines, the arms and the munitions
stored in secret for the assault. From Germany and Italy were brought
all the arts and the latest secrets of scientific warfare. A cannon
founder, Urban, a Hungarian, deserted from Constantinople on pretext
of poor pay and sought the service of the Sultan.
Mohammed thought nothing dear in exchange for Constantinople: and
lavished gold and honors on the refugee. "Can you found me a piece
sufficiently like a thunderbolt that a ball launched from it may
shake the walls of Constantinople?"
"I can found you one," replied the Hungarian, "that would overthrow
the walls of Babylon."
A foundry was established at Adrianople, the metal was prepared, and
at the end of three months Urban produced a piece of brass ordnance of
stupendous and almost incredible magnitude. The stone bullet was of
twelve palms circumference and weighed twelve hundred pounds. Before
its trial the population were warned of the coming event. The explosion
was felt or heard in the circuit of an hundred furlongs, the ball
was driven above a mile and buried itself a fathom in the ground. It
required a force of a hundred oxen and seven hundred men to move it,
and nearly two months were consumed in dragging it one hundred and
fifty miles to Constantinople.
In the spring of 1453 two hundred thousand men from Asia, and two
hundred thousand from Europe assembled rapidly in the vast plains
that extend from Gallipoli to Constantinople under the eye of the
Sultan, Khalil and his generals. The land and the sea supplied them in
abundance for all the wants of the army; while a fleet of one hundred
and sixty vessels of war, many of them but small ones, cruised about
in full view of the tents upon the sea of Marmora.
Constantine, the Emperor, must have been
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